Japan: FSA Declares War On Crypto Speculators

Financial Services Agency of Japan plans to toughen regulations which use virtual currency. One of the reasons is a case of the massive theft at Coincheck Inc., a Tokyo-based virtual currency exchange operator, that happened in January. Besides, the government noted the increasing usage of crypto for speculative investment.

In April 2017 the country revised the Payment Services Act. As the result, a registration system for dealers who exchange crypto with national currency was introduced. This step has contributed to the wider use of cryptocurrency for payments and remittances.

But speculative investment in cryptocurrency has increased sharply due to the increase in its value, which forced the FSA to talk about updating the cryptocurrency legislation.

“Crypto market is controversial at this moment from regulatory level, but Japanese FSA attempts to take balances to stimulate and protect market entails. Crypto and blockchain technology are viewing differently even if they are essentially similar things. There is no clue to find out governance navigation, however, we have to look at market creation as well”.

Some "suspension" of the crypto sector in the legal field of the country is also noted in the FSA’s official statement:

“As virtual currencies are outside of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which sets out anti-insider trading and other regulations, trading in them is “unchecked”.

The problem of legislative regulation of the crypto industry arises in most countries. And most often legislators choose one of the two extremes — a total ban or a friendly welcome. However, in the case of Japan (where the crypto seemed to be given the green light), the steps of the state remain unpredictable, which deprives even experts of guesses and makes them wait for words to turn into deeds.