For the first time in Italy, a bitcoin and other cryptocurrency trading site has been seized. The site in question is Crypt.trade, and the seizure order was issued by the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office. The complaint was brought by CoNSoB, the National Commission for Companies and the Stock Exchange. This is the first such action in Europe. The news was reported by La Repubblica on March 21 and has raised some concern in the Italian cryptocurrency community. Readers of the article were particularly perplexed by the headline "Illegal Offering of Bitcoin Online, First Ruling in Italy (and Europe): Site Seized" and statements contained within the article—such as "the judicial authority has ruled that offering cryptocurrencies is an illicit sale of financial products"—written by Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer specializing in information law and copyright. As a result, the ruling will also impact other cryptocurrency trading sites.
I tried to understand more about the matter, first trying to find the ruling—but I only found references dating back a few months on the CoNSoB website. Attorney Sarzana himself, whom I contacted by phone, then resolved my doubts. The first key point to clarify is that his statements refer to a seizure order regarding the preliminary investigation into the site, a document the lawyer had access to but which is not publicly available. Therefore, we must rely on what the lawyer also reported on his firm's website, in a post about "The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office against cryptocurrencies."“
Sarzana himself posed the issue in a different way in a Facebook post. If, as reported in the documents accessed by the lawyer, the site promised savers monthly returns between 17 and 29 percent through cryptocurrency trading, it can be assumed it was operating a fraud scheme used with inexperienced investors known as a "Ponzi" or "pyramid scheme." Such a system achieves the promised fixed returns, but to maintain its viability, it continually requires new investors willing to invest, because the earnings themselves derive from the fees paid by the last investors, not from productive or financial activities. Obviously, when the chain is broken, the last to invest see no financial return, because no one has invested since them.
The document accessed by Sarzana, however, reveals that the crime the platform is accused of falls under Article 166 of Decree 58 of 1998 (consolidated text of provisions on financial intermediation, pursuant to Articles 8 and 21 of Law 6 February 1996).
Continue reading at https://motherboard.vice.com/it/article/ne9vab/primo-sito-di-trading-di-criptovalute-sequestrato-in-italia
English 
Italian 