We recently brought an update on Novox Capital Ltd, a CySEC-regulated investment firm (CIV) that was notorious for facilitating vast binary options scams. Until a few months ago, the entity was controlled by Shay Hillel and Yehoram Hillel. The company was apparently sold to Dmitrij Pruglo and renamed PXBT Trading Ltd. It applied for voluntary suspension of its CySEC license due to the acquisition. Pruglo is the CEO and shareholder behind the Malta-registered crypto company Coinvesting and one of the key players of the PrimeXBT offshore crypto trading platform.
Key Data
| Trading name | PrimeXBT (powered by Covesting) |
| Business activity | Offshore multi-asset and CFD broker |
| Domains | https://primexbt.com https://primexbt.ch https://covesting.io |
| Telegram channel | Coinvesting channel link |
| Legal entity | Prime XBT Trading Services LLC PXBT Trading Ltd (prev. Novox Capital Ltd) PXBT EU Ltd Covesting International Limited |
| Jurisdiction | St. Vincent & The Grenadines Cyprus |
| Authorization | Gibraltar FSC license for DLT No authorization for financial services under MiFID II |
| Payment options | Crypto, Crypto via credit/debit card |
| Payment processor | Coinfiny, Paxful |
| Related individuals | Dmitrij Pruglo (LinkedIn) Tim Voronin (LinkedIn) |
A Short Narrative
PrimeXBT is a leading Bitcoin-based trading platform for active traders in over 150 countries offering CFD trading on instruments like Bitcoin, gold, oil, the S&P 500, forex, and more.
Covesting, developed by Gibraltar-based Covesting International Limited, is a peer-to-peer (P2P) copy trading module that connects new traders or inexperienced investors that wouldn’t otherwise trade with skilled traders and professional strategy managers from around the global trading community. Covesting is available exclusively on PrimeXBT.
The Regulatory Issue
Covesting is a fully licensed Distributed Ledger Technology Services Provider (DLT) operating under the supervision of Gibraltar FSC with license no. FSC1328B.
When registering at PrimeXBT, the website informs that the scheme is not regulated by an EU regulator and falls outside the EU regulatory framework. Its clients are not eligible for an Investor Compensation Scheme. We currently have no information on whether the new shareholders of the former Novox Capital intend to reactivate the CySEC license, but we assume they do. Otherwise, it would be incomprehensible why they would take over a CySEC-regulated CIF.
Regulatory Warning
In December 2021, the Italian regulator Consob issued a warning against PrimeXBT, noting that St. Vincent & The Grenadines-registered company does not have permission to offer its crypto-based financial services. The regulator apparently had no indication of the link between Covesting and PrimeXBT. This is understandable, as PrimeXBT‘s website fails to disclose who is behind the trading platform. Only the offshore entity in St. Vincent & The Grenadines is stated.
Similarweb Snapshot
The crypto-based trading platform is quite successful if you look at the latest Similarweb data. In the last 28 days before December 23, 2022, more than 590,000 people have visited the website with no regional focus. Visitors come from Turkey, Germany, India, the US, and other jurisdictions.
