Japan’s FSA warns Bitget, Bybit, MEXC Global, and BitForex, among others, for unregistered operations as it cracks down on crypto exchanges in Japan.
In a warning letter released on Friday, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) told that a number of foreign cryptocurrency exchanges, including Bybit, MEXC Global, and Bitget, have been conducting business in the country without proper registration, violating the nation’s fund settlement laws.
According to the warning letter, the FSA stated that the listed exchanges had breached Japan’s account settlement regulations by conducting crypto asset exchange business without proper registration. The regulator clarified that the current list of unregistered traders may not directly represent the current state of unregistered businesses.
The FSA’s action follows a crackdown on unregistered crypto exchanges in the East Asian nation. In 2020, the FSA introduced new regulations requiring crypto exchanges to register with the agency and obtain a license to run in Japan.
Crypto exchanges being warned by the FSA signifies the cryptocurrency industry in Japan and other nations is facing greater regulatory scrutiny. The threats associated with unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges, similar as fraud, money laundering, and market manipulation, are concerning regulators more and more
Although Japan is working on new regulations for the crypto and Web3 sectors, the country has not cracked down on the industry as hard as some other larger economies, similar to the United States.
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The FSA similarly issued a formal warning letter to Binance for operating without necessary permissions back in 2021.
(AMAKA NWAOKOCHA, Cointelegraph, 2023)