Yesterday, the cryptocurrency world was hit strongly, yet again, as the French stock market established a regulation blacklisting over 15 crypto-assets and cryptocurrency investment sites.
The organization in charge of the regulation, AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers), is adding cryptocurrency to the current “liste noir”; platforms conceived as offensive. In the list there is already a pool of businesses which offer investment services at the margin of French law, such as diamonds and rare metal investments.
In the announcement made by the regulator, it is stated:
“Companies in France offering the purchase of rights over goods promoting the possibility of a yield or its economic equivalent are subject to the regulation of diverse goods and as such their offer must have a registration number provided by the AMF.”
AMF’s decision not only goes to the cryptocurrency investment services, but also to those companies who were warned of their regulatory disobedience but continued their operations regardless. Most of the companies listed by the AMF are pinpointed in the UK.
One of the companies listed is AJK Crypto, a company which offers several services, among which are asset storage and account management. On the other hand, Crypteo is listed as being a crypto-marketplace.
The announcement made by the AMF aimed to caution investors that all the great possible wins also carry greater possibilities of risk, and any sales-focused pitch should not outshine this fact. Besides this, AMF advised investors to carefully consider criteria exploited to put the price of a product in place, and to perform due diligence.
The regulator urges investors to think about the channels where an item can get resold, as well as the proper deadlines. On the same line, the authority alerted them to not invest if they don’t fully understand what they are doing.
This isn’t the first time the AMF have been involved in the cryptocurrency industry’s affairs. About a month ago, the organization released an announcement where they stated that all the trading platforms shouldn’t market electronically products derived from cryptocurrency, otherwise they might be facing law under the Sapin 2 and MiFID 2’s realm, the first of which outlaws adverts for particular financial contracts.
Similarly, in October 2017, AMF re-released the program ‘UNICORN’, universal-node towards the research network of ICO. The initiative was promoted as an aid for ICO users, guaranteeing a framework to ensure protection for those who want to become investors.
In conclusion, the AMF has the cryptocurrency industry in its sights. This indeed may be a threat to the investment business, but also an opportunity to regulate its operations and to escalate into the global market.
