ASIC has warned Australian traders to be careful when going through unlicensed entities to invest in crypto-asset related financial products like options and futures.
ASIC noted that it has received reports from investors having used unlicensed platforms to trade crypto-asset related financial products and losing funds due to excessive leverage, platform outages, or unfair liquidations.
ASIC said:
ASIC understands that some unlicensed overseas platforms are taking, or have already taken, steps to prevent Australian clients from accessing these financial products. These steps include removing references and links, placing additional warnings and disclosures on the relevant webpages and apps, and introducing geographically based IP restrictions (geo-blocking). This prevents more Australian consumers from accessing financial products provided by the unlicensed platform.
The Australian regulator reminded that licensed entities provide investors with certain protections and urged investors to check if the entity they are dealing with holds a AFS or AML licence.
An authorisation from ASIC is required for the provision of financial services and offering financial products such as options, futures, leveraged tokens and binary options. Retail trading in binary options was recently banned in Australia for 18 months after which, the ban may be extended or become permanent.
