The Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) warns the public about the activities of several fraudulent market participants and publishes a new ‘blacklist’ (focused on crypto-assets service providers in France).
As part of its update, the AMF is adding “to and reorganizing the list of websites illegally offering digital asset services and raising funds through token issues (ICOs) in France into a dedicated blacklist.”
This crypto-asset blacklist includes “all the websites that are not authorised by the AMF, as well as newly identified websites.”
Today, in order to offer services in France “entailing the custody of digital assets (more commonly known as crypto-assets), the purchase/sale of digital assets against legal tender, the trading of digital assets for other digital assets or the operation of a digital asset trading platform, it is essential to be registered with the AMF.”
In addition, only companies that have “obtained AMF approval for an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) may canvass investors when issuing these tokens.”
On its website, the AMF lists those websites that are “offering such services illegally in France or that are canvassing investors illegally to offer them tokens without having obtained AMF approval.”
It has just added nine new sites to this list:
- www.zoomex.com
- trade-pro.io
- the-bitcoin-bank.com
- krawl-offers.com/bitcoin-bank-alt
- www.mexc.com
- www.coinex.com
- biticodes.com
- zenithexchange.ltd
- sparkgenesisai.com
With the aim of making its prevention and warning initiatives more transparent, the AMF has decided to create a new blacklist, “specifically dedicated to these unauthorized websites operating in the crypto-asset segment.”
Retail and professional investors alike will “now be able to download the list of unauthorised websites specifically for this field, without having to consult the full table of warnings.”
This new list supplements the AMF’s arsenal of blacklists, which also “includes a list of unauthorized websites specifically offering crypto-asset derivatives.”
The list of all the websites that are “not authorized to offer services based on digital assets or ICOs is available on the AMF website (under: Warnings → Blacklists) and on the website of Assurance Banque Épargne Info Service (ABEIS) (under: Prévention arnaques → Listes noires et alertes des autorités).”
In order to ensure that an entity offering digital asset services is authorised to operate in France, the whitelist of digital asset services providers is available on the AMF website.
A list of initial coin offerings that have “been approved by the AMF is also available.”
Approval indicates that the AMF has verified “that the information document for this offer is complete and easy for investors to understand.”
It by no means constitutes “an incentive to invest in these offers, which are inherently very risky.”
The AMF is an independent public authority responsible for ensuring “that savings invested in financial products are protected and that investors are provided with adequate information.”
The AMF also supervises the “orderly operations of markets.”
