Japan’s crypto friendly status has been achieved through a solid regulatory framework which protect investors without stifling trading or innovation. This has been strengthened this week when its financial watchdog announced plans for further ICO regulation.
ICO Regulation for Investor Protection
Earlier this week Japan announced that it was ready to launch ICO regulations to protect investors from the ever growing number of scams in the industry. According to local media, citing sources familiar, the Financial Services Agency is set to go ahead with new procedures to limit the amount of investment that can go into initial coin offerings.
In addition to the extra layer of investor protection the FSA will require business operators that issue their own cryptocurrencies based on the ICO model to be registered with the agency. Crypto exchanges are currently required to do this also but only 16 have successfully completed the procedure so far.
The agency plans to submit bills which will revise financial services and payment services laws during January’s parliamentary session. Citing a growing number of fraudulent ICOs abroad the regulator is aiming to protect domestic and foreign investors from losses by limiting the amount they have to participate in token sales.
BitTrade Joins Huobi Family
It is not easy to make it on to Japan’s short list of fully regulated crypto exchanges which is only 16 at the moment. Huobi, the world’s third largest exchange by trade volume, does not have that accolade so to get around it decided to buy into an exchange that does.
BitTrade, one of Japan’s fully regulated exchanges, has sold a controlling stake to Huobi Japan Holding Ltd in a move that will enable Huobi to gain wider access to Japanese markets. According to reports BitTrade will be closing its platform in order to re-open under the Huobi Group family.
The exchange has asked its customers to re-register a new account and perform the KYC procedures again; “Please prepare your identity confirmation document again … from the viewpoint of thoroughly pursuing the criminal profit transfer prevention law, please register new accounts,”
The new platform will be accessed via huobi.co.jp which was not available at the time of writing. It will support 11 trading pairs and the following six cryptocurrencies; Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, Monacoin, and Litecoin.
BitTrade apologized for the inconvenience and urged clients to withdraw their assets;
“We are sorry for the inconvenience caused by the termination of the Bittrade service and updating to the Huobi new system. In the new system, we will continue to offer more liquidity and convenience services, so we appreciate your patronage.”
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