Huobi Global Targeted by Malaysian Regulator: Details

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share


article image
Vladislav Sopov

One of largest and most trust­ed cryp­to exchanges glob­al­ly, Huo­bi, must stop oper­at­ing in Malaysia, as reg­u­la­tor sues plat­form and its CEO

Con­tents

The Secu­ri­ties Com­mis­sion Malaysia (SC, Suruhan­jaya Seku­ri­ti) ordered Huo­bi Glob­al to imme­di­ate­ly cease all oper­a­tions in Malaysia. The plat­form is said to be run­ning an ille­gal dig­i­tal asset exchange (DAX) in Malaysia with­out prop­er registration.

Malaysian watchdog takes action against Huobi and CEO Leon Li

Accord­ing to the offi­cial media release shared by the Secu­ri­ties Com­mis­sion Malaysia today, May, 22, 2023, cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange Huo­bi Glob­al becomes a tar­get of law enforce­ment action.

A pub­lic rep­ri­mand is issued against both the plat­form itself and its CEO Leon Li. Huo­bi Glob­al is urged to stop oper­at­ing in Malaysia in any form: it should dis­able web­site and mobile appli­ca­tions and stop spread­ing adver­tis­ing con­tent of all types that tar­gets Malaysian investors.

The reg­u­la­tor stressed that it is con­cerned by Huo­bi’s com­pli­ance with local reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments and pro­tect­ing investors’ interests:

The SC views this breach seri­ous­ly, as oper­at­ing a DAX with­out obtain­ing the SC’s reg­is­tra­tion as a Recog­nised Mar­ket Oper­a­tor (RMO) is an offence under Sec­tion 7(1) of the Cap­i­tal Mar­kets and Ser­vices Act 2007.

All Malaysian cit­i­zens who used Huo­bi Glob­al for trad­ing should imme­di­ate­ly stop work­ing with the plat­form, with­draw funds and deac­ti­vate accounts, the Malaysian SC says.

Huo­bi CEO Leon Li is respon­si­ble for imple­ment­ing the direc­tives issued by Malaysian SC. So far, the offi­cial account of Huo­bi Glob­al is keep­ing silence about the situation.

Crypto services face increased regulatory scrutiny

Accord­ing to the data of CoinGecko aggre­ga­tor, Huo­bi is the third largest cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange in the world with over $366 mil­lion in dai­ly trad­ing vol­ume. Huo­bi start­ed oper­at­ing in Malaysia in Novem­ber 2020.

Malaysian reg­u­la­tors usu­al­ly take all poten­tial vio­la­tions very seri­ous­ly: in 2022, they destroyed 1,773 Bit­coin ASIC min­ers oper­at­ed by users accused of steal­ing elec­tric­i­ty. In addi­tion, it offi­cial­ly refused to accept Bit­coin (BTC) as legal tender.

As cov­ered by U.Today pre­vi­ous­ly, the glob­al cryp­tocur­ren­cy com­mu­ni­ty oppos­es reg­u­la­to­ry attacks. Ear­li­er this month, the Poly­gon (MATIC) team asked EU reg­u­la­tors to except DeFi projects from the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works for VASPs.



Source link

Please fol­low and like us:
Pin Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *