Binance lacks authorisation in Italy, says CONSOB
Binance is facing more regulatory pressure after the Italian regulator said that the cryptocurrency exchange is operating without authorisation in the country
Italy’s financial regulator, CONSOB, has revealed that leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance is operating without authorisation in the country. CONSOB mentioned this in a statement on its website, lamenting that the unsupervised widespread use of cryptocurrency is a cause for concern.
CONSOB stated that “Companies of the Binance Group are not authorised to provide investment services and activities in Italy, not even through the website www.binance.com whose sections called “derivatives” and “Stock Token,” relating to instruments related to crypto-assets, were previously also written in Italian.”
The regulator said it is making Italians aware of the situation and advises them to make use of their utmost diligence to make their investment choices with full awareness. Similar to other regulators in various parts of the world, CONSOB has warned investors to be careful with cryptocurrency investments.
According to the CONSOB, cryptocurrency investors could lose all their money due to the nature of the market.
“In any case, it is important that savers are informed that transactions in instruments related to crypto-assets may present risks that are not immediately perceptible, due to their complexity, the high volatility of the prices of these instruments as well as for malfunctions and cyber-attacks to which the IT infrastructures used for such operations may be subjected,”CONSOB added.
It is unclear if CONSOB intends to take any action on Binance at the moment. The news from Italy came barely three weeks after UK regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) banned Binance Markets Limited from operating in Britain due to a lack of licence.
Since then, some banks and financial institutions such as Barclays and Santander have banned their customers from depositing funds into Binance accounts using their debit and credit cards.
