Is eToro safe? Licences, account freezes and incidents
Is eToro safe?
eToro has 2 licences found in the ESMA MiCA register and the register at dfs.ny.gov, issued by the CySEC and NYDFS to eToro (Europe) Ltd, not to eToro (Europe) Limited, the company in the terms read. Its terms let it freeze, suspend or close an account. Its gambling clause is not verified. 1 primary-source incident is recorded, dated 2024-09-12.
Documents last checked Reviewed by CryptoGuardz Register Desk, editorial desk
Disclosure: CryptoGuardz has no commercial relationship with eToro and earns nothing if you open an account there. Every statement below is read from a document eToro publishes or from a public register, and each carries the date it was read. Corrections go to the corrections page.
eToro review: the documents
This is a review of the documents eToro publishes and of the registers that should list it, not a test of the platform: no account was funded and no withdrawal was run. The binding terms name eToro (Europe) Limited as the company you contract with, in Cyprus. The record quotes 6 clauses across 5 topics, read 2026-10-08, from 8 sources. eToro has 2 licences found in the ESMA MiCA register and the register at dfs.ny.gov, issued by the CySEC and NYDFS to eToro (Europe) Ltd, not to eToro (Europe) Limited, the company in the terms read. 5 further licences it claims were not confirmed in any register. Its proof-of-reserves page could not be loaded, so that field is no data. The terms carry a clause on what happens to customer assets if the company fails, quoted below. Its gambling clause is not verified. 8 points could not be verified and are listed below.
Is my crypto safe on eToro?
eToro is a custodial exchange: coins on the account are held by the exchange, not by a key you control. What protects them is what the binding terms say about holding customer assets and about the company failing. The terms read contain no clause on how customer assets are held.
Insolvency and bankruptcy language in the terms, verbatim:
we will only have an unsecured claim against the party on behalf of you and our other clients.etoro.com
Can eToro freeze my account?
Yes, by its terms. The 2 clauses are quoted as written, followed by the clause on suspending withdrawals. Grounds named in the text: a legal, regulatory or court requirement, a suspected breach of the terms or the law and a security event or platform incident.
26.5 We will take reasonable steps to provide you with appropriate notice if we freeze, block, or terminate our Services and/or your etoro account. However, there might be times when we are required to freeze, block, or terminate our Services and/or your etoro account without telling you in advance. We will do this if we reasonably believe that there is a security or regulatory risk, you have breached the Agreement, there is an Exceptional Event, we are required to do so by Applicable Law or by a regulator, and/or there is an application, order, resolution or another announcement in relation to a winding up/bankruptcy in which you are involved.etoro.com
(a) we decide to stop providing you with our Services;etoro.com
Our processing may be delayed or declined if required under Applicable Law, including if we have an AML concern. We may, or may not be able to, disclose to you the reasons for such delay or rejection.etoro.com
The gambling clause is not verified. The full reading is in section 10 of the review.
Has eToro been hacked or fined?
One matter is recorded, each from the primary source linked beside it. The descriptions are the record’s, with the date. Other events may exist that no primary source in this collection confirms, so this list is not proof that there are no others.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission announced that "eToro USA LLC has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges that it operated an unregistered broker and unregistered clearing agency in connection with its trading platform that facilitated buying and selling certain crypto assets as securities." The release, headed "eToro Reaches Settlement with SEC and Will Cease Trading Activity in Nearly All Crypto Assets", states that without admitting or denying the findings eToro agreed to a cease-and-desist order and, within 187 days, to liquidate crypto assets offered and sold as securities that it is unable to transfer to its customers and return the proceeds to them.
eToro support and scams
The official domain in the record is etoro.com. Type it yourself rather than following a link from an ad, a search result or a message, and reach support only from inside the account you signed in to there.
Real support never asks for a seed phrase or for remote access to your device. An exchange account is opened with a login, not a recovery phrase, so a request for one is a request for a wallet you hold elsewhere. A request to install a screen-sharing or remote-desktop app hands the caller your signed-in session. Either one ends the conversation.
If money has already gone, the next message offering to get it back is the commonest second loss. The FBI, the FTC, the CFTC and the UK FCA have each published warnings about it, quoted on crypto scam recovery: what is real.
What we could not verify
The gaps in this record, as the record states them. A point listed here was looked for and not confirmed; it is neither a finding for eToro nor against it.
- Schedule D (Trading Cryptoassets) of the EU terms, including its clause 12 on custody. The terms were retrieved as text of 134,695 characters that ends inside Schedule A, so Schedules B to F were not read. Segregation and insolvency treatment of cryptoassets are therefore not recorded.
- Whether the EU terms contain a gambling clause. None of gambling, lottery, casino, betting or wager appears in the retrieved text; "gaming" appears only as "gaming the system" in clause 28.1(d). The schedules were not read.
- The CySEC investment firm licence 109/10. cysec.gov.cy entity pages are disallowed by robots.txt to the retrieval tool.
- The FCA, ASIC, FSAS and ADGM FSRA licences claimed for other eToro entities. The FCA register returned a JavaScript error page on two attempts; the others were not searched.
- The cryptoassets and networks supported for withdrawal from the eToro crypto wallet. The help centre article returned a JavaScript error page and the wallet product page names no networks.
- Company number HE 200585 against the Cyprus companies registry.
- The outcome of ASIC's 2023 Federal Court action against eToro AUS Capital over its CFD target market determination (ASIC media release 23-204MR). It concerns CFDs, not crypto, and its outcome was not retrieved, so it is not recorded as an incident.
- Any proof of reserves.