Japanese Regulator Adds Staff to Review Crypto Exchange License Applications

Japan's leading financial regulator is expanding its team of 30 people to examine cryptocurrency foreign exchange license applications to meet growing interest as companies such as Yahoo, Rakuten and LINE enter the market. sector.

Kiyotaka Sasaki, Deputy Commissioner for Policy Coordination at the Financial Services Agency (FSA), said the agency's "biggest problem" was with new operators looking for licenses to establish cryptocurrency exchanges. country.

As Reuters Japan reports, the regulator anticipates more than 160 applications from companies wishing to launch crypto-trading platforms on a regulated market. The FSA currently employs 30 people in a team that monitors encrypted commerce, unregistered operators and the process of reviewing new applications.

With a targeted policy to specifically assign staff to the registration process, Sasaki revealed that the agency was addressing its understaffing concerns by adding an additional 12 members to the team.

According to the FSA's own statistics released last April, Japan has more than 3.5 million active cryptocurrency traders in the country, whose annual transactions total $ 97 billion in 2017. Ethereum, Ripple (XRP), Bitcoin LTC) are also among the most traded parts in Japan.
After having developed legislation that recognized bitcoin as the legal method of payment in April 2017, Japanese law required all new domestic or international cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan to register and obtain FSA license.

The FSA stepped up its investigation of the sector after the infamous $ 530 million hack of the Coincheck exchange, based in Tokyo, in January. The regulator also issued its first rejection of a cryptographic exchange license application in June.

Nevertheless, the new FSA chief has ruled out excessive regulation of the industry, supporting the growth of the sector, while several Japanese technology giants, including Yahoo, Rakuten and LINE, are starting to exploit their cryptographic exchanges.

The new FSA commissioner, Toshihide Endo, said at the end of August:

"We do not intend to overly curb [the cryptocurrency sector]. We would like to see it develop under appropriate regulation. "