Binance unauthorised, says Italian regulator, as crackdown widens

Binance Group companies are not authorised to provide investment services and activities in Italy, despite sections of its website offering information in Italian, Consob said https://www.consob.it/documents/46180/46181/pr_20210715.pdf/7f78ad2d-a146-4b17-abe8-92efac07f49e in a statement. "Savers are invited to make use of their utmost diligence in order to make their investment choices in full awareness, verifying in advance that the websites through which they make the investment can be attributed to authorised subjects," it said.

Binance is not authorized to carry out activities in Italy, the country's market watchdog said on Thursday, joining a string of global regulatory moves against the cryptocurrency exchange. Binance Group companies are not authorized to provide investment services and activities in Italy, despite sections of its website offering information in Italian, Consob said in a statement.

"Savers are invited to make use of their utmost diligence to make their investment choices in full awareness, verifying in advance that the websites through which they invest can be attributed to authorized subjects," it said. A spokesperson for Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously said it took a collaborative approach to work with regulators and seriously take its compliance obligations.

Britain's financial watchdog last month barred Binance - one of the world's biggest exchanges - from carrying out regulated activities in the UK. Regulators in Thailand, Japan, Germany, and the United States have also targeted the platform recently.

Binance offers a wide range of services to users across the globe, from the crypto spot and derivatives trading to tokenized versions of stocks. Its Italian-language channel on the Telegram messaging site has over 25,500 members. Trading volumes in June were $668 billion, up almost ten-fold from July 2020, data from CryptoCompare showed.