Italian Consob has blocked “Bitcoin Trader”

The Italian Consob has blocked the Bitcoin Trader website. Indeed the URL bitcointrader.software now shows a warning from Consob that the website is not reachable because the government agency determined that: 

“The requested website offers or performs investment services or activities to the Italian public in the absence of the required authorizations or offers financial products to the public and/or advertises the offer of financial products to the Italian public in the absence of the prospectus”.

On May 13th, 2020, the Italian National Commission for Companies and the Stock Exchange issued Resolution no. 21360, according to which it is ordered to put an end to the violation of Article 18 of Legislative Decree no. 58/98 carried out through the website https://bitcointrader.software/. 

The problems detected consisted in the fact that on the website, generically attributable to “Bitcoin Trader”, the user is offered the possibility to trade on the Forex market and to carry out CFD trading operations, both automatically and manually, through the use of a software called Bitcoin Trader. 

After registration, the user was automatically directed to another site where they had to make a minimum deposit of 250 euros. 

This activity is regulated by law, in particular by art. 1, paragraph 5, of the Tuf, since it offers customers the possibility to give a sum of money that would be managed as part of operations of purchase or sale of financial instruments. 

In order to operate in this way, it is necessary to have adequate authorizations, and Bitcoin Trader does not appear to have been authorized. 

A month ago, The Cryptonomist reported that it was essentially a scam, and continues to report the proliferation of other very similar scams. 

For example, in the same warning to investors with which Consob communicated the measure against Bitcoin Trader, similar offers were also reported that exploit the name of bitcoin, or other cryptocurrencies, in order to convince naive investors to give money to the scammers. 

These include Prime Bitcoin Miners, Libra Markets, Bitcoin Storm, BTC-Billionaire, Bitcoin Billion Club and Dash-Trader. 

These alerts are published every Monday on the official Consob website and help to keep track of all the illegal offers that promise profits with cryptocurrencies and that very often conceal real scams.