eToro – the leading social trading and investment network – IS NOT A SCAM

All about eToro’s Responsible Trading Regulations

With so many online trading platforms available nowadays, people are very quick to point fingers and yell “Forex scam” whenever things don’t go their way, even if their broker is really not to blame. This has been the case for all of the leading providers, including the eToro trading platform and social investment network.

First and foremost, it's important to point out that eToro is NOT a Forex scam in the slightest. If you look at the eToro site and at the site of their operating brokers you can see that both are reputable companies properly licensed by authorities who take it upon themselves to regulate and prevent Forex fraud.

eToro is also the largest social investment network online with over a million and a half traders sharing live trading information, following each other’s trading activities and even copying each other’s trades automatically using the eToro OpenBook and eToro CopyTrader.

Like most scam alerts, the eToro scam allegations stem from a simple lack of understanding the basic terms and conditions of trading in the financial markets, which are standard in the industry. For instance, it is absolutely standard for legitimate FX providers to demand identification upon withdrawal, and does not in any way make that provider into a scam artist.

Moreover, eToro has now become the most popular social trading network online, according to recent Alexa stats, in addition to winning prestigious financial awards from well-respected bodies. A Forex scam company could never become that popular without causing multiple complaints and law suits and getting itself shut down by the authorities.

Some eToro rumors…are just rumors

Let us now go over the more recurrent eToro scam claims and see how they are all completely baseless.

Rumor #1 - eToro charts and signals

It is possible that eToro's charts and signals aren't updating on your platform due to a bad or slow internet connection or due to intense market volatility which causes lack of liquidity. In these cases it is certainly wrong to accuse eToro of being a scam, since any online Forex platform depends on a decent internet connection for updates of price rates. And if there’s no market liquidity, the charts cannot update since the massive volume of trade has caused a momentary standstill in the price.

Rumor #2 - eToro OpenBook

All of the members on eToro’s social investment network are real traders that have no association with eToro other than the fact that they use eToro’s services to trade in the Forex market. There have been several people accusing eToro OpenBook of being a scam, claiming that the top traders on eToro OpenBook are eToro employees that lure people into copying them so that they can then copy losing trades.

This is simply not true; all you have to do is login to OpenBook and talk to these traders to see that they are unaffiliated with eToro. eToro also has nothing to gain from traders making losing trades since all of their income comes from spreads alone.

Rumor #3 - eToro makes it too easy for traders to deposit

eToro does accept many methods of deposit which the traders can use to fund their account. No one in their right mind would really consider this to be grounds for a Forex fraud accusation. It is simply a means to better the company's service to the client, so that if they want to fund their real trading account they are able to do it through the method of their choice.

Rumor #4 - eToro restricts withdrawals

The only restrictions eToro have on withdrawals are that they ask the trader to fill out a withdrawal request and attach some id verification documents. This is done to protect the company and the clients themselves from credit card fraud and identity fraud.

In the Foreign currency exchange world, where fiscal transactions are made by the thousands a day, one can never be too careful about such types of fraud as they are abundant and are heavily fined by the processing companies. It is not fraud, but a standard procedure in the trading industry to demand identity proof with the first withdrawal. After you’ve supplied eToro with the requested documents, your future withdrawals will go through automatically without additional delay.

Rumor #5 - eToro belongs to a gambling company

This scam accusation is simply a fiction with no basis in reality. eToro is the product of a licensed software development company, and is operated by licensed international Forex brokers. It has absolutely no connections to the world of online or offline gaming, and certainly doesn't belong to a gambling company.

Those among the financial exchange community who spread such fraud allegations without any basis except an unreasonable personal grudge, only ruin the online trading world for those who are naive enough to take them to heart. Hopefully, those who read these lines take care to investigate the claims made by others by doing further research on the subject, or at least getting a second opinion from other Forex traders and bloggers.

We do advise you to take the time to read more about Forex scams and how to recognize a real Forex scam when you see one.