Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Canadian provincial regulator British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) warned on Wednesday binary options brokers BSDOption, operated by Lybss Ltd. and owned by YDBM, and BinaryOnline are not authorized to provide financial services in the province. The entities are not registered to trade in, or advise on, securities or exchange contracts in British Columbia.
The brokers have been targeting British Columbia residents and at least one person was able to open a trading account with either of them.
BinaryOnline, www.binaryonline.com, is operated by Bulgaria-based Zola Ltd. It is a binary options platform that offers trading with as little as $5. Clients can open contracts with an expiry time ranging between 15 minutes to 7 months and earn a payout of up to 85%.
BSDOption, www.bsdoption.com, provides an online platform for binary options trading on some 200 tradable assets, including currencies, commodities, stocks and indices. Traders can choose from five types of trading accounts with different features and minimum deposits – Basic (€500), Silve (€5,000), Gold (€15,000), Premium (€30,000) and VIP (€50,000). It claims it “has the level of efficiency of over 97%“.
The broker says it is based in the UK. Some of the links of the website do not work or lead back to the home page. The Canadian regulator warns investors to be caution when engaging with firms that are not registered to trade in the region.
Earlier this week, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC) issued a list of more than 100 forex and binary options websites that are not authorized to provide financial services in the country, but nevertheless do so. BSDOption was one of them.
In Canada, capital markets fall under the regulation of provincial watchdogs and legislation rules may vary in from province to province. Binary options are not forbidden throughout the entire country, but providers of such instruments need to be regulated in order to operate. However, there is not a single binary options broker or platform authorized or licensed to operate in Canada. Under the BCSC’s legislation, binary options are treated as securities.
When engaging with unauthorized and non-regulated brokers, traders are putting their investments at higher risk. We strongly advise you to only deal with regulated forex brokers, authorized by reputable regulatory bodies like CySec, FCA, and CFTC/NFA, among others.
