On Thursday, the local French financial agency, the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), issued a warning to investors, advising them not to trade on the ByBit cryptocurrency platform.
One of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, ByBit, has seen explosive growth recently. In 2023, after 5 years of operation, the exchange had 20 million registered users.
Nonetheless, the French government has been looking into the trade since it doesn’t seem to be breaking any rules. This led to the French authority placing the site on a blacklist on May 20, 2022.
“ByBit is not authorized to deliver its digital asset services in France,” the warning said. “Regarding this matter, the AMF is requesting that French retail investors who have put money into this platform do whatever it takes to make sure they can get their hands on their funds.”
According to AMF, ByBit also failed to get a DASP license in France. It went on to say that the regulator might sue to restrict the platform’s website if necessary.
French legislation makes it unlawful for unregistered platforms to provide these services in France, AMF emphasized again.
Bitget is a cryptocurrency exchange that the AMF cautioned investors about last month in a similar vein. Users were prompted to remember that the platform was blacklisted in November 2023.
The market watchdog in Hong Kong put ByBit to its blacklist of potentially fraudulent crypto exchanges in March. Additionally, it included a number of the cryptocurrency exchange’s offerings on its list of potentially risky investments.
The SFC warned that investors run the danger of losing all of their funds and promised not to hesitate in taking enforcement action if necessary.
The exchange has been working hard to comply with all relevant legislation and has been in “a close relationship with authorities throughout the globe, including HK,” according to a representative from ByBit.
“You may be certain that these items are not accessible in the HK market, since they are listed for different locations to fulfil local compliance standards,” as previously revealed by a source.
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