United Kingdom Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) quickly took down an official warning against Kraken after apparent confusion but alert about BitMEX remains active.
The UK watchdog published a notice on its website on 3 March to warn citizens against Kraken. The warning stated that the second-largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange by volume is not authorized to operate in the UK.
The warning said:
We believe this firm has been providing financial services or products in the UK without our authorization. Find out why to be especially wary of dealing with this unauthorized firm and how to protect yourself from scammers.
FCA took the alert against Kraken down after a representative of the company contacted the regulator. Activities from investment scammers claiming to represent Kraken were the likely reason for the confusion. The clues were some of the contact Gmail email addresses quoted in the warning.
The UK regulator also put out an alert against the digital assets trading platform BitMEX. The warning states that the company targets UK citizens and operates without authorization. The contact email addresses in the warning entry appear to be official accounts – “[email protected]” and “[email protected]”.
In October 2019, the FCA proposed a ban on cryptocurrency derivatives targeting retail investors — similar to the types of products BitMEX offers.
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