It almost seems like every day is Groundhog Day.
BaFin warns publicly of another crypto exchange. Cakedefi.com is offering its crypto services to German customers – by means of a website in deutsch (German language). As reported before, this is probably the most distinct and obvious evidence for BaFin – the German Financial Supervisory Authority – that an public offer is made in Germany.
Cake Pte. Ltd., Singapure, the owner of cakedefi.com according to its website, obviously targets the German market as it further promotes (alleged) customers from Germany giving testimony on the excellent service of Cake.
What are the consequences for Cake Pte. and its directors? In the first line, this depends on the national rules in Singapure. Given the numerous crypto enterprises headquartered in Singapure offering their services all over the world, one might have the impression that this kind of evidently illegal behavior is not sanctioned in Singapore (even if MAS, the Singapure Financial Supervisory Authority, is thinking a lot about crypto regulation).
In the second line, however, BaFin supposedly issued a warning to Cake Pte. and if this one is ignored, the company and its executives are threatened with criminal prosecution in Germany – eventually, even in the EU on behalf of Germany.
Even if Cake Pte. is registered in Singapure, it remains everything but clear whether the company really exists and performs exchange services as promoted on the website (which would also require a license for establishing and operating an organised market – be it for Security Token as Capital Market Products under the Singapure Securities and Future Act or for Digital Payment Tokens under the Payment Services Act). The days of Crypto Wild West are ending and the groundhog is taking over.
