On April 4, 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission released an advisory against eToro, a trading and investing platform, for operating as an unregistered corporation in the Philippines without the necessary licenses and/or authority. eToro is a social trading and multi-asset investment company that focuses on providing financial services which  aims  to  make  trading  accessible  to  anyone,  anywhere  and  reduce  the  dependency  on traditional financial institutions.

In the statement they’ve released, they stressed on Etoro offering investment products as a crypto exchange platform with more than 30 cryptocurrencies to trade and invest in. Though they provide different investing platforms such as an exchange for trading commodities, currencies, indices, as well as an online brokerage platform with a  limited  selection  of  stocks  and  exchange-traded  funds, they have also onboarded unregistered investment products to Filipino users.

Influencers, promoters, and representatives who endorse eToro in the Philippines may be fined up to a maximum of up to 5 million pesos and/or imprisoned for up to 21 years subject to Section  73  of  the  SRC. This crackdown on investment platforms offering cryptocurrency investment products continues to ensue after the SEC, with the request of the NTC, to block crypto-exchange giant Binance in the Philippines last March 25, 2024.

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