The Japanese Financial Services Agency has added four more cryptocurrency exchanges to the list of companies authorized to operate digital currency business in the country, Bitcoin.com reported.
The latest companies to get the approval include Tokyo Bitcoin Exchange Co. Ltd, Bit Arg Exchange Tokyo Co. Ltd, FTT Corporation, and Xtheta Corporation. This follows the September announcement in which the agency approved 11 exchanges.
The fund settlement law, effective April 1, 2017, legalized bitcoin as payment method in Japan and requires registration of cryptocurrency exchanges. Only those exchanges that are registered with the FSA are permitted to conduct virtual currency exchange in Japan.
More recently, the FSA published a document clarifying its financial administrative policies, which includes its policy on fintech and virtual currencies.
The FSA has approved Xtheta Corporation to trade a number of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH), ripple (XRP), litecoin (LTC), ethereum classic (ETC), NEM (XEM), monacoin (MONA), and counterparty tokens (XCP). However, the other three companies have been approved to only trade bitcoin.
The agency is also reviewing applications from other cryptocurrency exchanges. Twelve companies have already shut their exchange operations after they failed to meet the FSA’s registration requirements.
In an update on its application with the FSA, CoinCheck said that the FSA is still reviewing its application to register as “virtual currency exchange trader” after two months of submission. The exchange assured its customers that it is “still able to provide the service as usual.”
