Atomic Trade Review – Can You Trust AtomicTrade.io?

The website of Atomic Trade appears to be modern and even simple, with all the important information orderly displayed – all except for a little detail: there is absolutely no information concerning a forex license available, which quickly lowers the broker’s trustworthiness down to zero. 

 

To keep a long and complicated story short, it is abundantly clear that we are dealing with an elaborate fraud, which, if you care about the security of your money, you should do everything in your power to avoid.

Atomic Trade Regulation and Safety of Funds

 

Unfortunately, a key problem is that Atomic Trade lacks a proper Forex license. Atomic Trade is not regulated anywhere; we even went to the trouble of checking the FCA registrations, but no firm or broker by the name of Atomic Trade could be located there. 

 

The website claims to be based in the United Kingdom, but if that were true, it should also have been licensed and regulated by the local Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

 

The website is effectively anonymous because the broker’s identity cannot be verified in the registries of the corresponding regulatory institution. Therefore, you have no reason to believe anything this broker would claim, including whether or not its supposed London address is legitimate.

 

Never, ever, ever invest your hard-earned money on such websites, as they are likely to include deceptive or fabricated information. Instead, you have the option of selecting one of the many businesses that conduct their operations lawfully while being monitored by respectable regulatory organizations such as CySEC or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

 

In the unfortunate event that your broker goes out of business, you, as a customer, will be protected from negative balances and will have capital protection.

 

Meanwhile, here are several untrustworthy offshore brokers to avoid:

 

  • SagaTrade: As an unregulated broker, SagaTrade is unable to ensure the security of your funds.
  • TriumphFX: Because they are unlicensed to conduct business, you should steer clear of making any investments with this unscrupulous broker.
  • Kiplar: Because they are an unregulated brokerage, they put your money in jeopardy and put you at risk.

 

Trading Software Overview

 

Although the Webtrader offered by Atomictrade.io is appealing to the eye, it does not offer any advantages of any kind. Because it is simplistic and lacks the capability of both MT4 and MT5, we would like to recommend that you use brokers that offer MetaTrader 4 or  MetaTrader 5 instead of spending your time with Atomictrade.io’s inferior platform.

 

The highest-rated companies are reliable and risk-free investments since they comply with all applicable regulations and offer the most advantageous trading platforms to retail customers. Both of these trading terminals are market leaders and are known for their consistency as well as the abundance of advanced features that they provide, such as automated trading and analytical tools, dependable indicators, user-friendly charting tools, and an in-built marketplace that contains thousands of trading applications.

 

There is no use in using the Webtrader at Atomictrade.io because it lacks all of these features and the broker is a possible scammer operating outside of any regulatory framework.

 

Actually, Atomic Trade claims to offer the MT4 desktop and mobile version but when you try to install the said software, you’ll get a warning from your computer to not continue with the installation since they don’t recognize the application.

Deposit and Withdraw Method

 

When compared to more reasonable requirements imposed by affordable brokers, such as those that are willing to start an account for as low as $5, the minimum first deposit demand of Atomic Trade of $2500 is too high.

 

It is claimed that credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers are the means for making deposits, but we are unable to confirm this information because the deposit platform was not functioning correctly at the time of writing.

 

When it comes to withdrawals, Atomictrade.io is not very forthcoming with information, as it does not disclose any restrictions or costs associated with transactions. Having said that, the broker retains the power to set particular restrictions; hence, we have our doubts as to whether or not withdrawals can be unrestricted or completely free of charge.

 

Atomictrade.io is a pricey brokerage; nonetheless, other costs, such as a $50 per month inactivity tax for dormant accounts, further demonstrate that this brokerage is expensive (no login, no trading, no deposits). 

 

In comparison, the majority of licensed brokers do not charge more than $5 per month for their services, which effectively makes the identical service (maintenance of dormant accounts) ten times more affordable! Atomictrade.io is a fraud!

How Does the Scam Work?

 

Con artists operating in the foreign exchange market are not nearly as clever as you would believe. Typically, the operation is comprised of a phony website and an illegal phone center that is referred to as a boiler room.

 

Scammers aren’t concerned with excellence; they just want to swindle as many people out of their money as possible. Because of this, their websites are typically of a low quality and filled with poor content.

 

And to identify victims, con artists utilize social media, Discord groups, Telegram chats, deceptive adverts, and most importantly, they communicate with hackers to buy people’s personal information and then use that information to target them.

 

Scammers will typically contact you via an unwanted phone call or through a conversation on one of the several social media platforms in order to sell you on their get-rich-quick programs, guaranteed income, bonus offers, and so on.

 

However, once the initial payment has been made, the scam will reveal its most deceitful aspects. Customers are going to be duped by being shown bogus earnings, which will then be followed by assurances of even greater gains and calls for additional investments.

 

The worst-case scenario is that victims will make additional deposits, but they will be unable to make withdrawals even if they do so. Swindlers often tell their victims that in order to get their money back, they must first pay taxes in advance. This is a common tactic.

 

When this occurs, it becomes very clear that fraud has been committed, and victims typically realize that they have been taken advantage of.

FTX Saga Continues

Last week was crypto’s Lehman Brothers’ event when cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com filed for bankruptcy, paused all withdrawals, and slowly started showing us how broken their entire ecosystem was. 

First, FTX International went under, and we were assured that FTX US would be fine. Only days passed before FTX US also went under as one of the 134 companies that were included in FTX’s bankruptcy filing.

FTX was valued at over $30 billion and had $9 billion of customer funds, and was trusted by some large entities. On top of this, other entities widely held their exchange token, FTT, as collateral. Let’s take a look to see who was affected by this and whether we can expect more exchanges to fail in a similarly tragic fashion.

Important note: none of this is financial advice, and we are not saying whether any of the following exchanges are insolvent or not. It is good to keep an eye on the state of things, though.

Binance held $2.1 billion of FTT and BUSD equivalent.

This tweet on November 6 from Binance’s Changpeng Zhen (CZ) was the beginning of the end for FTX:

“As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have come to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books.”

The announcement that Binance was about to sell its FTT triggered the collapse of the exchange token. At that point, CZ said that he would stop selling in order to prevent things from getting any worse and even offered to bail out FTX until he completed due diligence and saw the atrocious state of FTX’s books. What this means is that Binance has been left holding some undisclosed amount of FTT tokens, likely well less than the total $2.1 billion at the start, but very likely hundreds of millions of dollars worth.

CZ has stated multiple times that they do not invest in customer funds (like FTX did), and their SAFU fund is designed to be ringfenced and protect customers from any failure in Binance itself, such as a failed investment or a theft from hacking. As such, it sounds like Binance is fairly stable, although they will be taking a loss on their tokens and any other investments they had in FTX.

Crypto.com had $10 million exposure to FTX.

Crypto.com is another large exchange well known for its advertising during the 2022 NFL Superbowl and its sponsorship deals with celebrities such as Matt Damon (and his subsequent appearances in South Park). CEO Kris Marszalek has been very vocal in defending the exchange and held an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on YouTube on Monday to dispel any fears customers had. At his AMA, he acknowledged a few interesting points:

  • Yes, they did accidentally send $400 million in ETH to the wrong address, but they recovered it.
  • Crypto.com holds 20% of its reserves in Shiba Inu tokens. This was because their customers were trading it a lot, and they needed to hold the tokens themselves on behalf of their customers.
  • At one point, they transferred $1 billion to FTX, but this has since been reduced to $10 million. This is a lot of money, but for a company the size of Crypto.com, they should be able to weather this.

Marszalek also mentioned that they have never used their exchange token Cronos (CRO) as collateral to back any loans. This is very fortunate, as CRO has plummeted from a peak of $0.90 to $0.11 in the last year and then was cut in half to hit a low of $0.056 in the wake of the FTX bankruptcy.

From what we’ve seen, Crypto.com could survive this, but many experts in the crypto space are also using FTX’s failure as a reminder not to trust any exchange that has its own exchange and offers yield products.

BlockFi

At the time of writing, BlockFi is still recommending that customers do not deposit any funds on their exchange, and withdrawals are still paused. BlockFi was badly burnt in the wake of the Luna failure and was being propped up by a $400 million line of credit from FTX. 

Naturally, FTX failing means that this line of credit is no longer useful, so they are now again asking around for a new big brother to bail them out so they can continue operating.

Voyager Digital

This is a very similar case to BlockFi, where Voyager was saved from bankruptcy by FTX, only to find themselves back at square one again. They, too, are now looking for a new big brother to bail them out of this mess.

How To Keep Yourself Safe

The gold standard for crypto is to self-custody your coins, and the last week has taught us that even entities that seem “too big to fail” are, in practice, not perfect and can still leave you high and dry. If your coins are on an exchange that is still letting you withdraw, great! Take the opportunity to become your own bank, as is the promise of the Bitcoin maxis. 

You might be one of the unfortunate souls who still have their crypto stuck on FTX or any other exchange that has “temporarily paused” withdrawals. Now is the time to get in touch with your local authorities and get yourself in the queue as a creditor, or even take advantage of ways to claw back your funds before things go completely downhill. Our experts are experienced in recovering lost crypto and will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Investous Review – Jumping From One Suspension to Another

Investous Review: this firm is one of the many trademarks used by the leading company – F1Markets Ltd. They propose investments in CFDs and forex. Although their selection is impressive, Investous keeps causing troubles to CySEC (the regulatory body that oversees their activity). Furthermore, CySEC is continually placing the broker on a temporary suspension. However, Investous doesn’t meet the conditions to remove their suspension, and that’s a warning fact to consider before using their services.

Suspended by CySEC and FCA (Investous Review)

Recently, CySEC partially suspended several forex and CFD brokers. That list includes F1 Markets Ltd, the company operating Investous. CySEC suspended it due to the use of falsified celebrity endorsements in the UK. The accusation is that the company has been using these tactics to expand its UK investor base illegitimately. CySEC has set the suspension in place until investors takes corrective measures to prevent this conduct from happening again. During the suspension, Investous is only allowed to do business with current clients and cannot seek out or advertise to new clients. However, It seems as if Investous keeps targeting new clients despite the constant suspension state.

The regulatory body of the UK, the FCA, has also cracked down on Investous and other firms. They have removed the passporting rights of those firms. Passporting rights are what allow firms under CySEC to trade within the jurisdiction of the FCA. Investous is no longer able to take on new clients within the UK. They also have to end their relationships with their current UK clients, after the clients have withdrawn any funds they have with the broker. If those clients had gone with an unregulated broker they wouldn’t have these FCA and CySEC protections.

Dealing with Investous

From this Investous review, we can establish the company has a decent selection of options when dealing forex, 46 pairs overall. This is considered quite a lot. Plus, Investous provides a wide variety of CFDs on various types of assets. CFDs are available on commodities, stocks from various markets, indices, and cryptocurrencies. They offer leverage of up to 1:30, consistent with leverage regulations. CFDs are not something to play with when you start investing. Only seasoned traders can handle them efficiently. Investous constantly targeting novice traders with fake celebrity endorsement promotions. That must be one of the reasons they got suspended in the first place.

Investous lets clients use the popular MetaTrader4 platform. They purpose a demo account available for potential clients to try before investing. They have many payment options, including more obscure payment processors like Skrill.

Trade99 Review – Avoid This Unregulated Broker

Trade99 Review: this firm is a well-known online forex and CFD broker. Trade99 is considered as an unregulated broker that makes many baseless claims about their services. They engage in recruitment tactics that most reputable brokers wouldn’t, such as offering trading bonuses. We would recommend that investors steer clear of Trade99.

Trade99 Provides Unregulated Services

Part of their unregulated services, the given contact information that Trade99 provides an address in Hong Kong. However, a company known as Nohelious International Marketing Operations operates Trade99. NIMO is incorporated in the Dominican Republic, a country widely used as a haven for offshore operations and scammers. None of the official regulatory agencies confirmed Trade99 to be registered with them. A broker that operates in Hong Kong would have to register with the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, which would hold the broker to high standards.

Trade99 claims to be under the jurisdiction of “The Financial Commission.” This commission is not a financial regulator like the FCA or CySEC. It appears to be nothing more than a small website that gives its approval to offshore brokers, with no apparent review or regulation policies. The Financial Commission has placed Trade99 in its A-Category; it is not clear what this designation implies. Even if the Financial Commission does have the full intent of regulating Trade99, they don’t have the authority of a national regulatory body. Without the legal inspection, whenever this company runs into a scandal they could simply vanish overnight.

Trading Bonuses – Trade99 Is Seducing Novice Traders

One of the ways that Trade99 is seducing novice investors is by suggesting trading bonuses. These trading bonuses draw in inexperienced traders. Both the FCA and CySEC have banned this practice among the brokers that they regulate. Users who receive a trading bonus are likely to run into issues when they try to withdraw any profits. The reward must go through a certain amount of trades before being withdrawn, and most traders are likely to have nothing left by that time.

Ambiguous and Unreliable Communication(Trade99 Review)

Trade99 says they have several fees that apply to their users, withdrawal fees, service fees, etc. However, our Trade99 review establishes that the company is ambiguous and unreliable. Furthermore, the problem is that the broker doesn’t clearly state the amounts or terms for any of these fees. Most reputable brokers give their users clear and accessible fee schedules. Another discrepancy, Trade99 tells their potential clients that they will have access to MetaTrader5. Users only get access to a web-based platform that doesn’t have the standard features of MetaTrader5. It’s not clear if this is an intentional bait and switch or a technical error, but neither of those options bodes well.