Another Canadian Crypto Exchange Under Fire
After the ongoing saga of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange QuadrigaCX’s downfall, another Canadian cryptocurrency company is now coming under scrutiny. Canada Bitcoin Exchange Inc. is now being investigated as a possible scam.
Warning Against Canada Bitcoin Exchange
The British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), a Canadian financial regulator, has issued a warning against Canada Bitcoin Exchange. The watchdog stated that the company was offering overly attractive BTC (Bitcoin) investment plans to its customers.
Canada Bitcoin Exchange was offering 4 different BTC investment plans on its website. Each of the programs asked users to invest a certain amount of capital for a period of 24 to 48 hours. In return, the company offered returns that started at 3.586% and went as high as 7.985%.
The website stated that Canada Bitcoin Exchange would reinvest customers’ BTC in other stocks as well as cryptocurrencies. The company claimed to have a team of professional market analysts in place who knew how to find hot stocks. The company also stated that this project was run by the Canada Bitcoin Exchange Group.
Signs of a Scam
Upon investigating the company, the BCSC found that Canada Bitcoin Exchange was an unregistered entity and therefore did not have the required licenses to offer any form of trading services, securities or exchange contracts or even conduct investment consultations.
Added to that, it was revealed that a search of the company’s BTC address on Blockchain.info came up with nothing. There was no transaction history for the company. On top of that, the company raised even more suspicious as the same BTC address was found on BCH’s (Bitcoin Cash’s) Blockchain.
Information about the company was also sketchy. The company’s domain was registered US domain registration portal based out of Arizona. Besides that, no other information was available about the company or even who the backers of the company were. There was a work address given on the company’s website that listed a Vancouver address.
The BCSC warned customers to exercise caution when dealing with companies such as Canada Bitcoin Exchange were not registered either to trade or to advise.
Companies that are scamming customers are on the rise. Recently, OneCoin, which was created in 2014 by a Bulgarian brother-and-sister team, was revealed to be an illegal pyramid scheme that had scammed users across the world of billions of dollars. One of the ring leaders, Konstantin Ignatov, was arrested last week, however, his sister Ruja Ignatova still remains at large.