Regulator Advises Being More Proactive in Protecting Crypto Investors

Switzerland’s top market watchdog has called for regulators to take more and proper action on Wednesday to protect cryptocurrency traders from the risks involved in the sphere.

According to Reuters, regulators should protect consumers from ‘abuse in the freewheeling sector’. “There’s much more that can be done. It would seem to me that a lot of trading in digital assets looks like the US stock market in 1928, where all kinds of abuse, pump and dump, are now in fact frequently common,” Urban Angehrn, the CEO of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), commented during a conference in Zurich.

He added: “Let’s also think about the potential of technology to make it easy to deal with the large amounts of data and to protect consumers from trading on abusive markets.”

Regulators have been actively pushing for stricter rules in the crypto markets. The US watchdogs have warned several times about the possibility of market manipulation.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued similar warnings regarding the same issue.

For the first time since December 2020, Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency, fell below $20,000 on June 18. Stocks and other higher-risk assets have taken a beating this year due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates.

Recently, the UK FCA issued another reminder to warn consumers about the risks of investing in cryptocurrencies. In the advisory note, the watchdog raised concerns about some social media posts promoting crypto assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), although it clarified that comments on individual products could not be made.

Moreover, the FCA stated that marketers of crypto assets must adhere to the guidelines set by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and declare that they do not regulate crypto assets. In addition, crypto assets should be clearly marketed as not being covered by financial compensation schemes. The ASA has investigated ads for cryptocurrencies because they failed to make it clear that the products are not regulated or protected in the country.