The agency regulating Japan’s financial markets, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), with the cooperation of the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), has called on the country’s crypto sector to make sure it is familiar with revised laws
The agency has also announced it will be further revising certain laws and increasing cooperation with overseas authorities around the regulation of the cryptocurrency sector.
According to the Japanese crypto media outlet CryptoWatch:
“On August 28, the Financial Services Agency released a (policy) document summarizing (its) policy…(regarding) crypto assets (virtual currency), (in an) efforts to familiarize (the sector with) the revised law…enacted at the end of May 2019, (a law designed to) strengthen…market trends and analysis, security audits at exchanges, and increase cooperation with overseas authorities, etc.”
The policy document also says that the FSA, “intends to strengthen verification and monitoring of…cyber security systems (at exchanges) in cooperation with JVCEA.”
Japan was recently the site of yet another cyberattack on a crypto exchange- a $32 million USD hack on the Bitpoint exchange.
New laws are also expected, CryptoWatch writes:
“Amendments to the Fund Settlement Act and the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which are scheduled to come into force by the first half of 2020, include the renaming of cryptocurrency to crypto assets and the tightening of regulations on cryptocurrency derivative transactions.”
The FSA is also reportedly, “working to revise government ordinances and administrative guidelines and build a registration review and monitoring system in order to ensure that users and businesses are aware of the revised law(s).”
To strengthen cooperation with overseas authorities, the FSA also plans to hold another “Cryptographic Asset Roundtable.”
The meeting will be a follow up to the first meeting held by the agency in September 2018.
The next “private international meeting” will be open to regulatory authorities and international organizations from “various countries.”
Japan was among the first countries to devise a regulatory framework for the country’s cryptocurrency/ “digital asset” trading sector.
The country has since been the site of the world’s largest cryptocurrency hacks, including a theft of 850 000 bitcoins from the Mt Gox exchange in 2014 (worth $450 million USD at the time and $8.18 billion now) and a hack on the Coicheck exchange in early 2018 involving $518 million USD in stolen crypto.
