Various media reports are that binary options broker iOption has shut down and laid off its employees, just days after formally receiving its CySEC CIF license.

Israel business newspaper Calcalist has reported today that binary options broker iOption has shut down.

The report would not be too unusual — there simply isn’t room for every binary broker out there, and many new ones are being born all the time — except that iOption was one of the larger ones, employee-wise (about 60-70 employees). And even more strange, iOption had just formally (as of October 30) been granted a CySEC CIF license (to parent Scorpid Trading Ltd), making iOption one of the few licensed binary brokers out there.

The Calcalist report (in Hebrew, courtesy of Google Translate) stated that the company’s 60-70 employees, most of whom were in Israel, were dismissed on Friday. Calcalist reports that problems began being reported a few weeks back in October at iOption, when some of iOption’s trading clients were unable to process withdrawals. Similarly, some of iOptions affiliates stopped being paid. 

In parallel with the withdrawal problems, apparently company management began to tell employees that the company was on the verge of being sold, with the buyer’s identity soon to be revealed.

The company’s website remains up at www.ioption.com as of the time of writing, and the Home Page still asks people to ‘Trade Binary Options with the World’s No. 1 Broker’ (see above). However calls placed by LeapRate to company contact numbers on Sunday were not answered.

Could this be the beginning of a fallout in the binary options world, which has become very crowded with many brokers going after basically the same potential client base?

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.