It’s been almost two years since the European Securities and Markets Authority, or ESMA announced that it had formally adopted the ban on the offering and marketing of binary options to retail investors. The typical assumption, then, is that all binary options firms would be purged from the ESMA-regulated regions. However, the situation has turned out to be more complex.
At least, this is the case in Cyprus, where the local watchdog, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, or CySEC, continued to enforce this ban. Ever so slowly, CySEC is withdrawing the various authorizations of the binary options trading services providers within its borders.
CySEC Slow To Realise Overarching Legislation
It was earlier today that CySEC had published its brief notice. This notice announced that it had made a decision at a meeting that was held on the 13th of May, 2020. This decision, in line with Section 8(1)(a) of the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets Law of 2017, is in regard to the withdrawal of the Cyprus Investment Firm (CIF) authorization. Notably, this CIF authorization withdrawal is for Number 220/13 of Optionally Financial Services Ltd. The regulator’s decision comes as a response of the company itself expressly renouncing its CIF authorization.
Pulling Out On Their Own
This, in and of itself, shouldn’t be surprising for anyone in the loop. In short, Optionrally’s website had become unresponsive ever since the summer of 2018.
OptionRally had leveraged the SpotOption platform, having had its offices situated in Tel Aviv, Limassol, Israel, and Cyprus. It was back in 2016 when the firm had started to restructure itself, redesign a large segment of its sales team in Cyprus redundant. According to sources, it means that 50 people had lost their jobs there, as a result.
Small Beginnings
OptionRally was initially founded ten years ago, in 2010. Its original offices were the situation in Sonol Tower, southern Tel Aviv, Israel. The company itself was founded by a group of partners led by one Tal Fromchenko, a former software engineer of SuperDerivatives. In 2013, the company started to expand and managed to gain its CySEC license. Subsequently, it had opened up an office within the Cypriot city of Limassol later on.
Optionrally’s initial form was one of the largest brands available for SpotOption, holding more than 85 members of staff for its offices in Tel Aviv in 2012. The basic model had organic desks sell binary options to various retail customers across the Middle East and Europe. The Tel Aviv offices had staff that could speak multiple languages as a result.