Invest.com has officially announced that the regulated subsidiary of the company is closing its doors. The move comes amid a shifting regulatory environment and increasing regulatory scrutiny over the retail Forex and CFDs industry.
Only about ten months ago the company announced that it was acquiring AnyOption, a binary options brokerage turned CFDs trading provider. Just like other popular binary brands in the industry the switch was rather difficult as the trading conditions which such firms are offering to the market are far inferior from established competitors who have been working with forex and CFDs for years.
Going Unregulated
Commenting to Finance Magnates, a spokesperson for the company stated that the firm is undertaking a strategic shift. The official response indicated that the brand name Invest.com will cease operating as a CFDs provider and will explore new opportunities in the crypto space. The company denied providing information whether this effort is related to Stox.com.
The company that owns the brand has voluntarily withdrawn its Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) authorization. As a result, Invest.com will no longer be providing any investment services and will have ceased accepting new clients and deposits on April 9.
Clients with open positions have been asked to close their open trades. They will have to take action before April 23, 2018. At that point in time, all of the services of the company will grind to a halt with the only remaining option for clients being to withdraw their funds.
The firm is asking all of its customers to withdraw their funds and contact the support team of the firm. All of the accounts will get closed on July 31, 2018, with Invest.com closing all accounts and depositing the remaining funds with a third party fiduciary.
Stox.com ICO
In July 2017, the Invest.com Group committed to launching Stox.com, a prediction market platform. The group was well known in the online trading industry at the time for its CySEC -regulated brokerage subsidiary.
At the time the Stox token sale officially ended after hitting the hard-cap of 148,000 ETH, which was worth about $33 million. The company used data from Invest.com's user base to support the raw stats of the potential users of the platform.
Since the Stox.com ICO ended, the market capitalization of Stox.com dropped from a high of $80 million to about $10 million at today’s prices. Holders of ETH would have ended up with a 50 percent gain in USD terms had they held on to their Ether.
