On Monday, December 17th, the Consob (Italian Companies and Exchange Commission) published in its Weekly Newsletter an alert concerning two companies in the crypto sector operating in Italy, the measure provides for the suspension of 90 days related to Bitsurge Token contracts and Green Earth Certificate.
According to what was officially reported by the Consob, the two resolutions took place on December 12th and that’s when the suspension of 90 days for all the contracts and certificates between users and the two crypto companies began. The Italian government regulatory body will investigate further.
In more detail, the resolution on suspended contracts with the company Bitsurge that were published on the website bitsurge.io and on the Facebook page Bitsurge Token, concern all those purchased tokens that the Consob defines as follows:
“Token that gives you the opportunity without previous knowledge to participate in the main areas of Blockchain technology. With the Token BitSurge you participate directly in the following [six] projects: ATM shop, mining opportunities, artificial intelligence arbitrage, currency trading, master nodes loan system, crypto risk capital“.
On these tokens, the company offered a contract with monthly yields from 6% to 13% without giving any authority on the management of the tokens themselves.
While, on the resolution of the Green Earth certificates that were advertised on the Facebook page Project Crypto Green Earth, the Consob described them as follows:
“Green Earth Certificates in order to protect rainforests from deforestation“, capable of guaranteeing “a compensation of 6% per year … distributed monthly at 0.5%“.
And in the posts it is stated that:
“the areas of rainforest purchased will be resaleable on the appropriate Green Earth platform [and] the minimum purchasing area is 10 m2, the maximum is 10,000 m2 [at] a cost of 2 dollars per m2 (payable only in the form of Bitcoin)“.
In addition, the resolutions themselves mention the participation of Avalon Life, a non-EU company and therefore outside the control of the Consob.
Therefore, the Consob regulation, from the moment in which it is ascertained that the product sold is of a financial nature, even if in the crypto sector, may require the suspension of activities to investigate and control the company’s operations or even close them down.
In fact, this is not the first Italian government intervention against risky investments in crypto, already last November, the Consob intervened and ordered the termination of three crypto businesses.