Japan’s Regulators Are Putting Bitcoin Exchanges Under Heavy Surveillance

[alyssa85]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

[mk4]

I'm pretty sure the US feds are doing the same, if not making cryptocurrency surveillance more seriously; they probably just didn't announce it to the public. People buying bitcoin usually has their bank account affiliated with their exchange's account so it would be easy for the feds. If only it was easy to buy bitcoin via peer-to-peer. Unfortunately buying on sites like localbitcoins aint cheap. There's always a huge markup on prices.

[Rahar02]

There will be always another way to transact bitcoin without third party, exchanges just make sure you're not a scammer or get scammed by another. Regulators could easily trace every bitcoin transaction which linked to exchanges, unless you want more privacy. Japan government just make sure there's no fraudulent activity occurs in exchanges that cause citizens feels being protected by government which will attract more adopters to join into bitcoin environment. There's nothing to hide when you are doing just fine.

[Wipro]

You doesn't need to worry about it right until you are being involved in illegal activities with the bitcoin. Most of the people doing banking transaction with the trading exchanges with the IMPS transaction henceforth it is a legal way of transaction and you will not be stuck in any place without any issue. It won't impact anyhow to us.

[HeRetiK]

So what happens next in Japan, which explicitly legalized bitcoin in April, is important. Exchanges there have until the end of this month to register with the FSA, which has set up a team of 30 people to examine their security practices and the required separation of customer assets from their own.

I know regulation is not very liked here on these boards, but I find it actually very positive that the Japanese Government is taking steps to protect its citizens from fraudulent exchanges. They probably took a lesson from the whole MtGox debacle.

If you want to retain your privacy there's still p2p trading. But if you're just a regular Joe that simply wants to securely invest in Bitcoin without having to navigate around potential scams then that's a very reassuring move.

[nikisev]

Its a good thing. Support of the country like Japan is very positive.
They are very self sufficient economy. Nobody really influence them politically or economically.
So it will be pragmatic decision, hopefully.

[pixie85]

Its a good thing. Support of the country like Japan is very positive.
They are very self sufficient economy. Nobody really influence them politically or economically.
So it will be pragmatic decision, hopefully.

I think so too. If their protection is weak, it's better if the government agencies find it first and order them to shut down. Otherwise they'd sooner or later be targeted and exploited by hackers and people would lose their coins like they did on Mt.Gox.

[Slark]

Are you really surprised that Japanese government will closely monitor crypto trading from now on?
We are dealing with big money here, and when Chinese yuan to BTC trading will cease by the Octobers' end where do you think some Chinese traders will migrate?
People should realize that we cannot have adoption without legalization or control - either crypto will forever remain in grey area or will reach mainstream only with quite a concession on our part.

[jossiel]

I'm not surprised that Japan's  financial services agency will be giving bitcoin / cryptocurrency a big attention.

They have the biggest volume of transactions so they are aware that everyone in their country is well aware of bitcoin and other alt coins.

This will happen to each country that are not expecting with this type of volume of transactions.

As big money is coming to their country and they don't have an idea if where on this Earth that money came from.

[JanpriX]

Not surprised at all with this news. As stated by the OP, Japan just became the largest Bitcoin exchange market in the world after China closes its doors to BTC trading. Any financial institution/governing body wouldn't let this just slip by as they see so much potential for profit from these exchanges. They will start to tighten their grips on these exchanges and see if they can intervene in it to get some money from them.

Others may think that this will be bad for BTC but we can also see the good side of it. If they provide more law that will help strengthen the position of BTC in their community, many people will feel assured that BTC can be trusted. More people will get interested in it and will start using it more in their daily lives. Well, I'm just hoping that it will provide a positive outcome for us. 

[cafucafucafu]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

This was bound to happen because trading volumes were just so high in both japan and Korea recently because of the fact that Chinese exchanges are shutting down soon. So I can see what the Japanese government is coming from.

As long as this "scrutinization" does not turn into full scale shutting down exchanges and implementing very strict KYC and AML, i really don't mind seeing the Japanese government do this.

But i do have a feeling that maybe this will turn into something like China, first scrutinization of exchanges and then just banning them completely.

[magneto]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

It is still too early to tell what the japanese government's real intentions are.

"pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges" could literally mean anything if you know what i mean. However it seems like maybe they are trying to prevent money laundering be done with bitcoin, and potentially tighten up its regulations accordingly.

Just hopefully they won't follow the tracks of the Chinese government of banning the bitcoin exchanges outright. And i'm 90% sure it's not since Japan has only recently announced they will legalize btc.

[1Referee]

People should realize that we cannot have adoption without legalization or control - either crypto will forever remain in grey area or will reach mainstream only with quite a concession on our part.

Correct. Proper regulations are a necessity, and at the same time needed in order to keep track of this market. It's impossible for this market to keep in its 2012/2014 state where you could basically do anything you want - this market has evolved, everything has become a whole lot serious now. I remember how this market went nuts at the time China was planning to put certain regulation in place for the first time - the market tanked big time while it wasn't bad news at all. We just have to admit that crypto in general can be easily abused by the individual, and for that reason we should expect even more regulations in the coming years, this is just the beginning.

[Kyraishi]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

Yeah definitely. Currently, Bitflyer japan based currently has over 56 million USD per day in JPY/BTC trading volume and i'm guessing that the rgulators are concerned about exchanges not performing the AML and KYC procedures out.

That is totally okay, and since japan only recently legalized bitcoin i don't think that they have any malicious intents.

But thing is, you never know if they are secretly looking into who is buying bitcoin and who is not. They can easily get hold of these types of info if they wanted to through this investigation.

[audaciousbeing]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

I dont expect any thing different from what the Japanese government are doing because of the fact that living some things without control will lead to abuse and at the end of the day, they might want to take the route the Chinese government are considering the best option in all this.

Putting a tighter leash on activities of exchange sites will come with its own disadvantage such as the threat to anonymity which bitcoin solely rest, and this could cause a mild crash but looking at the big picture means that, there is control even before the boom and thats what the Chinese failed to do in that if they had put the control in place, then big bag money holders who are very much interested in money laundering would by no means have it easy until it could not be controlled.

The Japanese government should even be commended for seeing the future even as at today immediately they attain the first position in the crypto market.

[darthmaul]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

I'm sure that is very good thing for the Japanese investors as they have specifically stated that they are doing this for the protection of customers assets and investment. It's such goof thing to be undertaken by the nations government. With that said they will also be doing surveillance of fraud companies so that they don't just take money and run away because that is loss of government as well. In Japan as the bitcoin is official announced currency which can be used in daily trades, they might be making everything assured with ICO as well. Making something regulated that way adds up the value and we might just good results out of these regulations.

[alyssa85]

So what happens next in Japan, which explicitly legalized bitcoin in April, is important. Exchanges there have until the end of this month to register with the FSA, which has set up a team of 30 people to examine their security practices and the required separation of customer assets from their own.

I know regulation is not very liked here on these boards, but I find it actually very positive that the Japanese Government is taking steps to protect its citizens from fraudulent exchanges. They probably took a lesson from the whole MtGox debacle.

If you want to retain your privacy there's still p2p trading. But if you're just a regular Joe that simply wants to securely invest in Bitcoin without having to navigate around potential scams then that's a very reassuring move.

I think what is worrying the Japanese regulators is the sudden influx of traders from China to the Japanese exchanges. They don't want to be party to any capital flight from China, they just want the Japanese exchanges to be doing legit trade for Japanese customers.

[azguard]

So what happens next in Japan, which explicitly legalized bitcoin in April, is important. Exchanges there have until the end of this month to register with the FSA, which has set up a team of 30 people to examine their security practices and the required separation of customer assets from their own.

I know regulation is not very liked here on these boards, but I find it actually very positive that the Japanese Government is taking steps to protect its citizens from fraudulent exchanges. They probably took a lesson from the whole MtGox debacle.

If you want to retain your privacy there's still p2p trading. But if you're just a regular Joe that simply wants to securely invest in Bitcoin without having to navigate around potential scams then that's a very reassuring move.

I think what is worrying the Japanese regulators is the sudden influx of traders from China to the Japanese exchanges. They don't want to be party to any capital flight from China, they just want the Japanese exchanges to be doing legit trade for Japanese customers.

My thinking the same. China already announce that they ban all with crypto so Japan is possible alternative for all from China to go there and made exchange. This might be bad and will influence another drop in price cuz this in my opinion will only produce massive sell, unless US and Europe dont make some major moves and prevent this.

[HeRetiK]

So what happens next in Japan, which explicitly legalized bitcoin in April, is important. Exchanges there have until the end of this month to register with the FSA, which has set up a team of 30 people to examine their security practices and the required separation of customer assets from their own.

I know regulation is not very liked here on these boards, but I find it actually very positive that the Japanese Government is taking steps to protect its citizens from fraudulent exchanges. They probably took a lesson from the whole MtGox debacle.

If you want to retain your privacy there's still p2p trading. But if you're just a regular Joe that simply wants to securely invest in Bitcoin without having to navigate around potential scams then that's a very reassuring move.

I think what is worrying the Japanese regulators is the sudden influx of traders from China to the Japanese exchanges. They don't want to be party to any capital flight from China, they just want the Japanese exchanges to be doing legit trade for Japanese customers.

Good thinking! Nonetheless I'd expect Japanese authorities and exchanges to announce trading restriction for Chinese citizens if that were the main concern. But who knows, maybe that will come up sooner or later.

[BigBoy89]

http://fortune.com/2017/09/25/japan-bitcoin-exchanges-fsa-financial-regulation/

Japan's financial watchdog will soon pay very close attention to the internal systems of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin.

The country's Financial Services Agency (FSA) said Sunday that it would be putting exchanges under what The Japan Times called "full surveillance" from next month.

That means monitoring internal systems, such as those used for protecting customers' assets, and possibly on-site inspections.

The scrutiny is a big deal because—thanks to the Chinese authorities cracking down on bitcoin trading in that country—Japan has recently become the largest bitcoin exchange market in the world.

This is not good... South Korea, US and EU could follow Japan and this will lead to serious price drop.
They are just trying to ruin all alt-coins and collect taxes under the 'protecting customers'. I guess I will transfer all my coins to Monero and DeepOnion.