Key Events Review for Brokers in the 1st Half of 2021

1, Vantage FX Announces Exit from China

On January 11, 2021, the official website of Vantage FX released an announcement on the suspension of services in mainland China. The content is as follows: Vantage FX has stopped new account opening services and will close the deposit channel from January 27, 2021, Beijing time. The withdrawal channel is not affected; starting at 23:00 on March 9, 2021 server time, only existing orders can be closed, and new orders cannot be opened.

2, Eightcap ceased to provide services to customers outside Australia.

In January 2021, Eightcap sent an email claiming that due to the new regulations of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the entity under the Eightcap brand name Eightcap Pty Ltd (Eightcap) would soon cease to provide services to customers outside Australia.

To ensure the continuity of the platform's trading experience, the EightCap brand offers EightCap Global Ltd to provide services to clients outside Australia. EightCap Global is an entity of the EightCap brand based in Vanuatu.

3, FXTM Closed Forex Retail Business in Europe

FXTM, the Cyprus entity of ForexTime, ceased to provide services to European retail investors on February 26, 2021. Since then, the focus of FXTM's work in the EEA region will shift to the B2B business, dedicated to providing services for professional clients and institutional traders. Exness also decided to close EU/EEA retail business including the UK. Since the implementation of the new ESMA regulations, more and more brokers have begun to abandon/adjust their European retail business. We believe that FXTM will not be the last.

4, IC Markets Bitcoin quotes plummeted by $50,000 in an instant

On March 13, 2021, the quotation of Bitcoin on the IC Markets platform slumped 50,000 U.S. dollars in an instant. IC stated that it will make cash adjustments to the accounts affected by this abnormal quotation and complete it in the next few working days.

IC is not the only broker with abnormal quotations and executions in the Bitcoin market. Affected by the further amplification of Bitcoin market volatility, FXCM's Bitcoin quotation spread in February 2021 has expanded again; The Israeli broker eToro experienced a multi-hour failure on February 24; on May 9, 2021, due to the nearly 30% drop in the price of Dogecoin, a technical problem occurred in the US trading platform Robinhood, which prevented thousands of Robinhood users from failing to visit the platform.

5, Online Forex broker FBS leaked 16B customer records via an unsecured server

In March 2021, the WizCase security team discovered a serious data breach when scanning the server of the foreign exchange broker FBS. Millions of confidential records, user names, account passwords, mailing addresses, and even credit card information were tragically leaked and possibly fall into the hands of lawbreakers.

Founded in 2009, FBS is an international online foreign exchange trading platform with more than 400,000 partners and 16 million traders in more than 190 countries and regions around the world. It is one of the world's core foreign exchange trading platforms.

6, Nomura and Credit Suisse Issue Warning about Significant Losses

Japanese financial services giants Nomura Holdings and Credit Suisse announced on March 29, 2021, that they had suffered severe losses due to the liquidation incident by Bill Hwang, a well-known fund manager. Client losses are estimated to be approximately US$2 billion, Nomura Holdings’ share price has fallen by 16%, and Credit Suisse reported a net loss of 353 million Swiss francs in the fourth quarter of 2020.

7, ADSS Announces Exit from Asia Market

On April 19, 2021, ADSS issued an important notice regarding the pull out of Asia. From the announcement, we can see that after full consideration, ADSS Group has decided to exit from Asia, and some retail client accounts (including accounts currently held by users) will be closed.

8, The patent war between Forex.com and OANDA has turned on its head again, with the two giants continuing to fight each other

On May 27, 2021, OANDA filed an amended lawsuit against Forex.com for alleged patent infringement. Two weeks later, Forex.com responded to the allegations and filed a counterclaim against OANDA. According to the latest documents submitted to the District Court of New Jersey, Forex.com currently states that it has not infringed on OANDA’s patent rights. Forex.com is working hard to push the court to reject OANDA‘s First Amendment complaint regarding patent infringement and declare Forex. .com did not violate any requirements of the '336' and '311' patents. 

9, Pepperstone Chinese customers are required to transfer to the Bahamas

In May 2021, Pepperstone's official news stated that in order to continue to cooperate with Pepperstone Markets Limited as a partner, its customers must agree to the terms and conditions of its partner program and inform "Agree" before May 24, 2021. Or "disagree" to transfer Chinese customer accounts to the Bahamas for supervision.

At the same time, the Bahamas supervision is also undergoing reorganization. The country's supervision, the Securities Commission of Bahama has implemented a series of new regulations. The new regulations include the implementation of a 200:1 leverage limit and the prohibition of binary options trading. Regulators will also impose marketing restrictions, which will limit telemarketing and other aggressive marketing strategies.

10, Robinhood was ordered by the regulator to compensate users with US$65 million

Robinhood was ordered by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Enforcement Department to pay the victimized clients US$65 million through a fund allocation plan for allegedly publishing false and misleading information to users between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2019 Compensation payments.