The Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin), the highest financial authority in the Federal Republic of Germany, has issued a statement warning the public about CoinBene, a crytpocurrency exchange currently occupying the fifth position in terms of trading volume. In essence, the BaFin memorandum reminds the public that CoinBene is engaged in the trading of digital currency assets, which German law considers as financial assets; however, the exchange has not acquired the appropriate licensing in this regard.

While CoinBene is hardly the only cryptocurrency exchange that has not obtained authorization to trade financial instruments or assets in Germany, the BaFin warning was apparently prompted by reports that the company has been looking to hire "freelance digital currency traders" to work at an upcoming office in the country. The company promptly posted a Twitter update denying its intentions to hire anyone in Germany or even do business in the Bundesrepublik; within the update, pictures of what appears to be letters printed on CoinBene letterhead purport to make job offers to cryptocurrency traders, but they were superimposed with the word "fake."

Based in Hong Kong, CoinBene is an active exchange that has not been a stranger to controversy. In March 2019, reports about CoinBene having fallen victim to cyber attack were discussed on various online forums frequented by cryptocurrency traders. What prompted this discussion was an announcement indicating that the platform was undergoing maintenance, but account holders looked into blockchain records and discovered that more than $100 million were transferred from CoinBene's active digital currency wallet into a new one, mostly alt-coins based on the ERC-20 blockchain commonly referred to as Ethereum.

The aforementioned transfer of funds took place over three days amidst speculation that CoinBene had been breached, but the company insisted that it was performing system maintenance. At least one blockchain research firm that specializes in platform security still believes that CoinBene was hacked; in a report published in early May, CipherTrace mentioned that the movement of funds from CoinBene to other exchange platforms strongly suggested that the company was engaged in loss mitigation. To this day, CoinBene insists that their systems have never been breached.