On June 4, Coinbase — one of the largest wallets and cryptocurrency exchanges in the US — revealed its plans to enter the Japanese crypto market[1]. While Japan is renowned for its rather progressive views toward crypto (it was one of the first countries to officially recognize Bitcoin[2], after all), entering arguably the world’s hottest crypto market is no easy task. At the very least, Coinbase will have to please the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) — the country’s major watchdog that has been noticeably nervous ever since January’s infamous Coincheck hack.
“A regulated, compliant crypto company”
Currently, the San Francisco-based Coinbase Inc. operates in 32 countries. Now that the company is expanding to Japan, Nao Kitazawa, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, will be named CEO of the new branch, according to Bloomberg[3].
In a blog post[4] announcing the Japanese branch, Coinbase referred to itself as “a regulated, compliant crypto company in the US” that “will focus on building that same level trust [sic] with new customers in Japan.”
Indeed, Coinbase has been obedient with US regulatory bodies. For instance, in January 2017, the company obtained a BitLicense[5] to operate legally in New York, and notified approximately 13,000 of its customers that it was turning their information over to the IRS[6] in February. However, Coinbase has also been critical of US regulation. In March, the company voiced its concerns[7] regarding the patchy state of regulation in the US and how it is “chilling” the market.
Thus, Coinbase has now assured that they will cooperate with Japanese watchdogs as well:
“As in other markets, we plan to take a deliberate approach to our roll out in Japan,
