Digital option
 Simona Weinglass on prosecuting binary options firms, Times of Israel, 3:06 |
A binary option is a financial option in which the payoff is either some fixed monetary amount or nothing at all. While binary options theoretically play a role in asset pricing, they are prone to fraud and banned by regulators in many jurisdictions as a form of gambling. Many binary option outlets have been exposed as scams. The U.S. FBI is investigating binary option scams throughout the world. They estimate that the scammers steal $10 billion annually worldwide.
The two main types of binary options are the cash-or-nothing binary option and the asset-or-nothing binary option. The cash-or-nothing binary option pays some fixed amount of cash if the option expires in-the-money while the asset-or-nothing pays the value of the underlying security. They are also called all-or-nothing options, digital options (more common in forex/interest rate markets), and fixed return options (FROs) (on the ).
Many binary option "brokers" have been exposed as questionable operations. In those cases, there is no real brokerage; the customer is betting against the broker, who is acting as a . Manipulation of price data to cause customers to lose is common. Withdrawals are regularly stalled or refused by such operations. Though binary options sometimes trade on regulated exchanges, they are generally unregulated, trading on the internet, and prone to fraud. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have issued a joint warning to American investors regarding unregulated binary options, and have forced a major operator, Banc de Binary, to cease operations in the US and pay back all customer losses. In Israel, where a high concentration of such firms can be found, binary options trading was prohibited for Israeli customers in March 2016, on the grounds that it is a form of gambling and not a legitimate investment technique. A ban on marketing of binary options to overseas customers is under consideration.
Binary options "are based on a simple 'yes' or 'no' proposition: Will an underlying asset be above a certain price at a certain time?" Trades place wagers as to whether that will or will not happen. If a customer believes the price of a commodity or currency will be above a certain price at a set time, he buys the binary option. If he believes it will be below that price, he sells the option. The price of a binary is always under $100.
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Wikipedia