JAPANESE REGULATOR TIGHTENS SUPERVISION OVER CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGES

The financial services Agency (FSA) of Japan plans to tighten supervision over cryptocurrency exchanges in the country in order to smooth the fears of the authorities about money laundering on these sites.

It is reported that the Japanese regulator will also check compliance with local exchanges KYC and AML rules. In addition, the FSA will pay attention to the daily operations of traditional financial institutions.

Later this year, the intergovernmental Group on financial action against money laundering (FATF) is also planning to check local cryptocurrency exchanges. Note that after checking FATF local financial institutions in 2008, Japan was assigned the lowest score in the field of identification.

After that, the FSA issued new orders in order to correct the situation, but this did not help much and the hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges in the Asian market has become more frequent. In addition, the hacking of the Japanese exchange Coincheck in early 2018 became the largest in the history of cryptocurrency trading platforms.

Yesterday, the Japanese Parliament approved amendments to the law “On financial instruments and exchanges”, as well as to the law “On financial settlements”, approving the norms of regulation of cryptocurrencies. The amendments expand the scope of regulation, affecting also margin trading.