South Africa's financial watchdog, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), is considering imposing stricter rules for digital assets such as ETH, XRP and LTC due to the country’s largest Ponzi scheme, Bloomberg has learned.
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Brandon Topham, Divisional Executive for Investigations at the FSCA, says the regulator needs the police and the prosecuting authority"to work fast and put people in jail." The proposal comes after South African bitcoin trading platform MTI, which reportedly had over 260,000 users, was placed under provisional liquidation in December with users' funds worth almost $900 million. Later, MTI's management wrote on Telegram they were misled and the company’s head Johann Steynberg allegedly fled to Brazil.
The FSCA found that MTI had no accounting records or a secure register of clients. While, the watchdog has not officially concluded MTI as a Ponzi scheme, it emphasized the service operated without a license.
iHodl previously reported that according to Blockchaincenter.net, the most crypto-active users are located in Africa and South America. In particular, according to the analysis, most "Bitcoin" searches are concentrated in Brazil and Kenya. In Kenya, 94.7% of all searches related to cryptos are focused on BTC, while in the case of Nigeria and South Africa the percentage is 89.4% and 89%, respectively.
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