France’s Financial Regulators Alert Public About Unauthorized Crypto Investing Sites

The French financial market has been establishing new regulations in an effort to police the crypto actions in their country. On Thursday, they warned the public of many crypto websites that they need to stay away from, due to their lack of authorization to operate within France. There is a dual-structure regulatory effort, which involved both the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) and the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR).

AMF and ACPR are in charge for checking for crypto-assets derivatives. Right now, there is a list of 26 brokers that the entities have listed as unauthorized for operation in France, which are:

• 365globalmarket.com
• buy-money.com
• algo-crypto.com
• bank-of-crypto.com
• bit24coin.com
• c4iex.com
• capital-coins.com
• cryptocash24.com
• cryptoeraonline.com
• cryptofrancecapital.com
• crypto-institute.com
• cryptomonaies.com
• cryptomoney888.com
• cryptoning.com
• cryptoquicker.com
• epargnebitcoin.com
• euro-crypto.com
• interactivecoins.com
• kryptofx.com
• kryptoneo.com
• lacentraledescryptomonnaies.com
• monnaiestech.com
• stock-crypto.com
• undercryptos.com
• union-crypto.com
• ydconsultant.com

Along with the warnings from Paris, regulations are also stopping these websites from performing any advertising or distribution efforts. The ACPR sector will also require firms to get approval before they can support smart contracts. Finance Minister Le Maire said earlier in 2018,

“France has every interest in becoming the first major financial center to propose an ad-hoc legislative framework for companies making an Initial Coin Offering.”

Though the rules for these regulatory groups are still in the proposal stage, AMF would have authority to approve ICO launches from different companies. However, they will still need to adhere to the criteria that puts investors first. In April, the government established a tax reform plan that will reduce the taxes that investors have to pay on the profit they make in cryptocurrency. More specifically, they changed the high-band rate from a high of 45% to a low of 19%. These tax cuts seem to be a reaction to Bitcoin’s new classification and related tokens as “moveable property.” Previously, the majority of gains through crypto were called “industrial and commercial profits.”

Consumers can see this list update on the AMF regulator website, since these websites can easily change their URL or develop additional links. If the investor is in doubt of whether the platform they want to use is authorized, they can visit regafi.fr and orias.fr/search.