Yahoo Japan Will be Launching a Cryptocurrency Exchange in 2019

Over the past few years, Japan has established itself as a leading center for cryptocurrency trading in Asia and also over the entire world. The country has been known for fostering crypto-friendly conditions for businesses to operate with some of the very relaxed regulatory laws in comparison to other countries.

As per the latest reports by local publication Nikkei Asian Review, Yahoo Japan is launching a cryptocurrency exchange and will start its operations with a year’s time. The publications stated that a joint venture between SoftBank and Altaba (formerly Yahoo!) will start with the acquisition process of BitARG Exchange Tokyo in April.

The publication also details the process of acquisition saying that “The purchase of BitARG shares will be made through Tokyo's YJFX, a wholly owned Yahoo subsidiary that operates foreign exchange transaction services. YJFX will pay about 2 billion yen ($19 million) for a 40% stake in BitARG. The stake will be made up of outstanding shares and newly issued stock.”

Over the next one year, YJFX will be using BitARG’s technology to develop a full-fledged cryptocurrency exchange which it will be launching in early 2019. In this one year, the YJFX executives will be scaling further the platform’s operations by working in different areas like customer management system, internal controls and corporate governance structure.

In addition to Yahoo Japan, many other firms are having a similar planning of opening a cryptocurrency exchange in Japan. Earlier this year, a few local media sources reported that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), the country’s largest financial institution, is working on the launch of its own cryptocurrency exchange.

Also, Japan’s biggest banking group SBI Holdings is working for the launch of its own cryptocurrency exchange. However, after an increased scrutiny from the local regulatory body - Financial Services Agency (FSA) - the group has delayed its plans so that further strengthen its security provision and make them more robust.

Japan’s popular chat app - Line also announced this January that it plans to create a crypto exchange that in addition to Japan will also operate in Luxembourg and Hong-Kong.

However, it has to be noted that although Japan still stands on its crypto friendly nature, the FSA has beefed up security regulations and requirements for the exchanges to get a license. This happened after the latest $500 million hack on the Coincheck exchange that left the entire crypto community is a state of severe shock.

Ever since then, the FSA has been scrutinizing heavily on all the local exchanges operating within the country. The latest report shows the FSA has issued a warning to popular and world’s largest crypto exchange Binance which was trying to expand its operations by hiring more staff without informing the FSA.