Attention: Crypto Exchange Bybit Under Regulatory Scrutiny Receives Red Compliance Rating!

The Binance case has kept the crypto scene busy over the last few days. Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), have pleaded guilty to money laundering as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. authorities. The U.S. authorities are also investigating Bybit, which works with the same payment processors as Binance. We have added this crypto exchange to our Red Compliance list in our initial review. Here is our review.

Payment Facilitators

Bybit FIAT payments are processed through UAB Onlychain Fintech Limited in Lithuania and Bybit Fintech Limited in the Seychelles, the website says.

The most important payment facilitators for Bybit are well-known names. We have found MoonPay, Banxa, and the notorious Advcash. Binance terminated its business relationship with Advcash a few weeks ago due to its involvement in illegal transactions and the circumvention of Western sanctions against Russia.

Last week, Binance and its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) pleaded guilty to being involved in money laundering and violating the U.S. Banking Secrecy Act (BSA). Advcash was part of the Binance system.

Bybit Compliance Check

The search for Bybit‘s authorizations on their website is difficult. This is a red flag. We only found out through a Google search that Bybit has an MVP license as a crypto business in the UAE and is regulated as a crypto service business in Cyprus. Registration is not a regulatory license or supervision. As such, Bybit does not have a license in the EEA jurisdictions.

However, Bybit onboards customers in EEA, Russia, and other regulatory regimes without a regulatory license.

An analysis of the website on Similarweb shows that by far most visitors to Bybit come from Russia. In the last 28 days, almost 20% of the approximately 18.5 million website visitors came from Russia. In this respect, Bybit should be able to cope with the Western sanctions against Russia.

Users continue to enter into the User Agreement as of November 30, 2023, with Bybit Fintech Limited, registered in BVI, with Singapore as the relevant jurisdiction.

Verification is required to deposit FIAT funds or purchase cryptocurrencies via bank transfer or credit/debit cards. This includes uploading an ID and facial recognition. The address is not checked in Level 1 (Lv 1). Using Advcash, we could have deposited theoretically unlimited amounts without a KYC Check.

In recent years, several regulators have already issued warnings against Bybit. According to the latest reports, Bybit has also received a subpoena from the U.S. CFTC for allegedly onboarding U.S. customers.

In view of the existing regulatory warnings, the lack of regulatory authorizations, and the use of well-known payment processors such as Advcash, we have placed Bybit on our Red Compliance List.

Bybit Key Data

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