The Line has announced to open a cryptocurrency exchange soon. The name of the exchange of the crypto will be BitMax. This is revealed when facebook announced to open its digital currency.
It is expecting around 75 million people in Japan can buy or exchange cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Line’s cryptocurrency called Link.
There is one thing that Line must keep in mind if they are serious about doing business in crypto in Japan then they must be able to restore public confidence in cryptocurrencies. Because Japan has a bad history with cryptocurrencies.
For your information, Mt Gox is a cryptocurrency exchange based in Japan. In 2014, they were said to handle more than 70% of bitcoin transactions worldwide, and in the same year, they were attacked by hackers and suffered a loss of USD 470 million.
However, Mt Gox is not the only place for exchanging cryptocurrencies from Japan that has problems. Coincheck was also hacked and lost USD 530 million last January.
In Japan, cryptocurrencies are often involved in money laundering cases. In 2018, there were 6000 cases of money laundering involving cryptocurrencies, to be exact only the first nine months of 2018. While in the last three months, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has received more than 1,000 cases related to cryptocurrency.
In fact, in April 2019 the FSA raided two cryptocurrency exchanges because of violations of anti-money laundering rules.