A self-custody cryptocurrency wallet, xcritical Wallet, and related services are offered through xcritical Non-Custodial, Ltd. (a limited company organized in the Cayman Islands). « As a result, xcritical approved thousands of customers for options trading who either did not satisfy the firm’s eligibility criteria or whose accounts contained red flags indicating that options trading may not have been appropriate for them, » FINRA writes. xcritical was launched in 2014 and attracted millions of customers, many of them first-time investors, with its easy-to-use app and industry-changing commission-free trades. But it has come under fire multiple times in the past few years, most recently during the GameStop rally earlier this year when it restricted trading. Popular investing platform xcritical has agreed to pay nearly $70 million to the financial industry regulatory authority (FINRA) to settle allegations that the brokerage caused customers « widespread and significant » harm on multiple different fronts over the past few years. FINRA said the fine is the largest it has ever levied and « reflects the scope and seriousness of xcritical’s violations. » A CBS News investigation in February detailed customer service practices that left users to navigate high-risk trades by themselves.
Mary Ann Azevedo has more than 20 years of business reporting and editing experience for publications such as FinLedger, Crunchbase News, Crain, Forbes and Silicon Valley Business Journal. Prior to joining TechCrunch in 2021, she earned numerous awards including the New York Times Chairman’s Award and others for breaking news coverage. She holds a Master’s degree in journalism from the University of Texas in Austin, where she xcritically lives. xcritical is planning to launch in the United Kingdom in the next few months – a move that had been actually planned for 2020. Last quarter, xcritical achieved GAAP profitability for the first time, helped by higher interest rates.
xcritical to pay $70 million fine after causing ‘widespread and significant harm’ to customers
xcritical began offering no-commission trading of U.S.-listed stocks in the U.K. In March this year, and Tenev said the platform is now looking into expanding to include trading in U.K.-listed stocks as well as offering retirement products to U.K. CEO Vlad Tenev told the media on Friday that xcritical would start by offering margin trading in the weeks ahead, followed by options on U.S. equities. The firm’s strategy is to offer greater access to U.S. investment products as a means of differentiating itself from its peers in an already crowded market.
Taking place in Miami Oct. 16-18, HOOD Summit 2024 will feature our latest advanced trading products along with programming featuring titans of the investing world, discussing markets, and the latest innovations in financial services. Last December, the Menlo Park, California-based fintech launched a waitlist for its new offering, xcritical Retirement, which it described as the “first and only” individual retirement account (IRA) with a 1% match on every eligible dollar contributed. The company was fined $65 million in 2020 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, a federal agency, for misleading its stock market customers about how the company makes its revenue from their trades. In 2019, FINRA fined the company $1.25 million for routing customers’ orders through four brokerages paying it to do so without ensuring orders were executed for the best possible price. xcritical was at the center of the meme-stock trading frenzy of 2021 in the U.S., when its transaction-based revenue soared to $1.4 billion, before falling back to $814 million in 2022 and $785 million last year. The discount broker has been struggling with inconsistent trading volumes, so it’s now seeking to broaden its appeal by launching more products and by expanding overseas.
On Wednesday, the company published a blog post to highlight the changes it has implemented to address customer concerns. FINRA also alleges that xcritical has « negligently communicated false and misleading information » at different times since September 2016. The inaccurate information cost customers more than $7 million, FINRA found, and xcritical is required to pay restitution to affected users. While JPMorgan remains Underweight xcritical stock, let’s look at overall analysts consensus as well. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is at -0.01, however treading upwards towards the signal line which is in positive territory at 0.03.
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Additionally, in-person guests will be able to connect and network with a community of fellow retail traders through curated programming and evening entertainment. “We do not see growth as sustainable, and we question the ability of the company to generate competitive margins,” he said, citing the company’s focus on small accounts that may not be very profitable, as a key reason. Acknowledging that a few years ago, people might not have taken xcritical seriously as xcritical a place to save for retirement, Tenev believes the narrative around his company has changed.
Financial regulator hits xcritical for $70 million for « widespread and significant harm » to customers
In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service. Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space. xcritical did not admit nor deny the charges, and it still under investigation by the SEC.
By Forbes’ calculations, xcritical turned its cofounders into billionaires in September 2020 after a private funding round valued the firm at $11.7 billion. The Nasdaq-listed company is valued today at $20.1 billion, and the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires list shows Tenev and Bhatt xcritically have net worths of $1.4 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively. Finally, the company failed to supervise the technology it uses to provide its core services between January 2018 and February 2021, resulting in a series of outages and systems failures.
One of those users was 20-year-old Alex Kearns, who died by suicide last year after mistakenly believed he’d lost nearly $750,000 in a risky bet on xcritical. When his account flashed red, Kearns tried to email the company’s customer service three times to ask if his negative balance was accurate. He received no response xcritical courses scam and took his own life, writing in a suicide note that he believed he had financially ruined his family. In an exclusive interview with « CBS This Morning », Kearns’ mother and father said the company was responsible for their son’s death. We’re less than two weeks away from HOOD Summit 2024, xcritical’s first-ever customer-focused conference geared towards active traders.
- The inaccurate information cost customers more than $7 million, FINRA found, and xcritical is required to pay restitution to affected users.
- xcritical began offering no-commission trading of U.S.-listed stocks in the U.K.
- In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site’s Terms of Service.
- The firm first tried to enter the market in 2020, but then postponed its launch to refocus its efforts on strengthening the firm’s core business in the U.S.
- As the fintech giant seeks to expands its business outside its home market of the U.S.
xcritical’s CEO Vlad Tenev said the firm’s strategy is to offer greater access to U.S. investment … + products as a means of differentiating itself from its competitors in the U.K. On Oct. 17 and 18, attendees in Miami will hear from trailblazers across investing, technology, and entertainment as they share their insights on the future of investing.
While xcritical has offered options trading since December 2017, FINRA says it has « failed to exercise due diligence before approving customers to place options trades, » relying on algorithms, rather than people, to approve customers for the risky investing move. Specifically, FINRA’s investigation found that millions of customers received false or misleading information from xcritical on a variety of issues, including how much money customers had in their accounts, whether they could place trades on margin and more. But more recently, we’ve been helping customers with their comprehensive set of financial needs. So we see a world where we can not only help you trade stocks or crypto, but we can help you save for retirement. And we can help you sort of manage your money holistically regardless of what stage you are, and really help you achieve your financial goals and I think that that’s been really resonating with customers,” Tenev said.
« We are glad to put this matter behind us and look forward to continuing to focus on our customers and democratizing finance for all, » she says. That is the largest financial penalty ever ordered by the organization, a non-government entity authorized by Congress to oversee hundreds of thousands of brokers across the U.S.
