16 Crypto Trading Sites Get Blacklisted by French Market Regulator

Sixteen crypto sites have been blacklisted in France for offering unauthorized trading services,  market regulator Autorite des marches financiers (AMF) said on Wednesday. Seven of the platforms were still up and running at the time of writing, while the remaining nine had been taken down or had their IP addresses changed as seen on Thursday morning UTC.

The blacklisted platforms had approached the French public without having a registration with AMF, which is obligatory under the transparency and anti-corruption regulations stipulated in the country’s Sapin II law of 2016.

Among the seven platforms still in operation is Achat-bitcoin.co, which offers services to Bitcoin (BTC) traders. It claims that Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and Stripe provide it with payment support although the logos of the four processors are static and do not direct to their websites, as it is the usual business practice. Another one, Adg-placement.com, supports investments in twenty cryptos, among them BTC, Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Dash (DASH), Monero (XMR), XRP (XRP), and Tether (USDT). Cryptofrance.info claims minimum returns of 6%, 16%, and 36% on a three, six, and one-year basis, respectively, for investments in Bitcoin. Eminage.com services include BTC and EHT trading, while Rachatbitcoin.com offers only BTC support.

Two of the companies, Goodcoin.fr and Toutsurlebitcoin.com, seem connected as the former redirects visitors to the latter, which offers trading pairs between euro and BTC, ETH, LTC, and XRP.

Seven of the websites were shut down as of 08:30 UTC on Thursday: acheterdubitcoin.com, buy-bitcoin-pagedemo.co, cryptos-maker.com, infoscrypto.com, investirvin.info, lesgrandscrus.net, and netcoinplace.com. Bitnexx.tech and versatiscoin.com have changed their IP addresses or moved to a different server, according to information from the cPanel hosting platform.

The Wednesday blacklisting is the third such instance of AMF actions against crypto companies in 2018 after similar decisions in March and June. The agency is authorized for ex-ante (before the activity) control of investment proposals. AMF has been maintaining a blacklist since July 2017 and added crypto assets to the miscellaneous category at the end of the year.