Beware! Demaxis is an offshore broker! Your investment may be at risk.
RECOMMENDED FOREX BROKERS
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Open trading accounts with at least two brokers.
When you come across a broker’s website that claims to be “globally licensed and regulated”, you should check if this is true. In the case of Demaxis, these claims are a lie – this website is owned by an unregulated offshore company. Demaxis does not provide information about the terms of trade it claims to offer. In fact, we have been unable to find any evidence that Demaxis is indeed offering brokerage services and is not just another online scam. Therefore, we cannot recommend trusting Demaxiswith your money.
DEMAXIS REGULATION AND SAFETY OF FUNDS
The company that owns and operates this website is Demaxis Ltd, which is listed as being based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).
Such a company can indeed be found among those registered in the SVG. But this does not provide any guarantees of customer protection. SVG is an offshore zone with no broker regulations in place. As soon as you open the website of the local Financial Services Authority you see a warning that the institution does not license forex and other types of brokers and does not supervise the activities of International Business Companies engaged in such activities.
Some large brokerage firms set up offshore subsidiaries, including in SVG. The aim is to be able to compete successfully in unregulated emerging markets in Asia and Africa. But these companies want to maintain a good brand name, which is why they provide guarantees and transparency even for clients of their unregulated divisions. This cannot be said of Demaxis, which is simply an unregulated company that may or may not offer the services it claims.
Especially if you are new to trading, you should only trust legitimate brokers operating in one of the established financial centres like the UK, EU, USA or Australia. There, the activities of brokers are controlled by powerful regulatory bodies such as UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in US or Australian Securities and Exchanges Commission (ASIC). Clients of these brokers receive protections such as negative balance protection and segregation of the client’s funds from the broker’s funds.
In the EU and the UK, brokers must also participate in guarantee schemes that cover a certain amount of the trader’s investment if the broker becomes insolvent. These guarantees amount to up to 20 000 EUR in the EU and 85 000 GBP in the UK. However, the likelihood of such a bankruptcy is low because regulators also have significant net capital requirements that companies must maintain – EUR 730 000 in UK and Cyprus, AUD 1000 000 in Australia and at least 20 million USD in the United States.
DEMAXIS TRADING SOFTWARE
Demaxis’ website promises an unnamed “advanced platform” with a desktop and web version, but we have been unable to confirm whether this claim corresponds to the truth.
The links to download the software lead to the account registration form, and this registration requires you to have a reference code. This kind of ensuring that only invitees can register is more typical of scammers who recruit potential victims through social networks.
Legitimate brokers inform exactly what software they offer because this is the most important tool when trading financial instruments. The most widely used platforms in the industry are MetaTrader 4 (MT4) and MetaTrader 5 (MT5). These platforms have established themselves as industry standard because they offer a wide range of features, including a variety of options for customization, multiple account usage, designing and implementing custom scripts for automated trading and backtesting trade strategies.
DEMAXIS TRADING CONDITIONS
When you visit the website of a genuine broker you will find proposals for different types of trading accounts suitable for investors with different preferences, as well as detailed descriptions of trading parameters – minimum deposit, order execution method, tradable financial instruments, leverage, spread, swap, commissions, etc.
This information is almost completely missing from the Demaxis website. The descriptions of the supposed account types lack any concrete data. So it’s not clear exactly what the “unparalleled” trading options are that Demaxis advertises that it offers.
It is stated in the FAQ section that the minimum deposit is quite high – 500 USD. It would definitely be a wiser choice to approach a licensed broker, many of which allow you to start trading with token amounts of 100 USD, 50 USD or even less.
The only specified parameter is leverage up to 1:400. Regulated brokers do not offer such levels to retail traders as trading with high leverage carries risks of sudden and excessive losses. A maximum leverage of 1:30 is allowed in the European Union and the United Kingdom and 1:50 in the United States.
DEMAXIS DEPOSIT/WITHDRAW METHODS AND FEES
Demaxis claims to use three payment methods – wire transfer, credit cards and Bitcoin. Due to our inability to register an account, we have been unable to confirm whether this is correct.
On the website we see a claim that Demaxis does not charge deposit and withdrawal fees, but the Terms and Conditions reveal a different picture. Withdrawals of less than 100 USD by wire transfer and less than 20 USD by other methods are charged a flat fee of 10 USD. The minimum withdrawal amount is 50 USD.
Most legitimate brokers do not charge transaction fees at all. We find other atypical and vaguely defined costs in the Demaxis documentation. For example, the clause that “The Client agrees that his/her trading account must meet the determined statistical requirements, which may otherwise be charged with additional fees for non -compliance.” Neither the statistical requirements nor the fees are specified. If the client requests a chargeback, Demaxis may charge the client a 60 USD “administration fee.”
HOW DOES THE SCAM WORK
Unfortunately, the internet is full of scammers. In the age of cryptocurrencies, many of them pretend to be brokers and take advantage of people’s desire to get rich easily through financial instruments they don’t really understand.
Fake brokerage sites lure you in with promises to take on all the difficult and confusing aspects of investing for you. If you make contact with such sites, they will first convince you to make a small, “risk-free” investment of a few hundred dollars. Experienced scammers will then begin to persuade you to “invest” more and more money, and will even deceive you into believing that your initial investment is generating incredible profits.
But you will never see those profits or the money you deposited. These scammers hide behind fake names and offshore shell companies that are not subject to oversight and regulations like regulated brokers. They use cryptocurrencies or other shady payment methods that make refunding money difficult or often impossible. The terms and conditions of these sites are riddled with pitfalls that block withdrawals with impossible-to-fulfill conditions for minimum traded volume and extremely high fees reaching 10, 20 or more percent of the amount.
WHAT TO DO WHEN SCAMMED
If you find yourself in such a situation, you should be very careful not to fall into the clutches of other fraudsters while trying to recover your money. Offers from people on the internet who promise to get you your money back from scammers for an upfront fee are also one hundred percent scammers.
If you used a credit or debit card for the transactions to the scammers, there is some chance you can get your money back by requesting a chargeback. Visa and MasterCard allow this to be done within 540 days. But such a claim can be challenged if you have provided the scammers with documents such as a copy of your ID and proof of address.