Japan FSA Warns of Four Unregistered Crypto Exchanges

On Friday, the Japan Financial Services Agency (Japan FSA) warned four unregistered crypto exchanges - Bitget, BitForex, MEXC Global and Bybit - in a warning letter.

The regulator confirmed that the four crypto exchanges were engaged in the business of trading crypto assets without being registered and in violation of Article 63-2 of the Act on Settlement of Funds.

Under Japanese law, all companies operating crypto exchanges must be registered with the Financial Services Agency and the Finance Bureau. However, the fact that a company is on the unregistered warning list does not mean that the current status of the company is also unregistered.

Binance, the large crypto exchange recently under investigation by U.S. regulators, was also warned by Japan Financial Services Agency in 2018 and June 2021. At the end of 2022,Binance legally entered the Japanese market through the acquisition of the regulated Sakura Exchange BitCoin a/k/a SEBC.

Regulation of cryptocurrencies in Japan is relatively strict. FTX Japan, the Japanese branch of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX, was the first FTX subsidiary in the world to process withdrawals after the bankruptcy.