Japan Roundup: Bitflyer Restructuring while Zaif Halts New Customer Registrations

Japan’s most popular and one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, BitFlyer has announced a major organizational overhaul. The crypto exchange has appointed a new director to oversee the day to day operations of the crypto exchange. Meanwhile, recently hacked Japanese crypto exchange Zaif has stopped new member registration as the regulators ramp up oversight of exchange operators.

BitFlyer’s restructuring

BitFlyer the top cryptocurrency exchange of Japan has announced a change in the organizational structure of the company. In the announcement the company said that “Today marks the establishment of the holding company, Bitflyer Holdings Inc.” Now BitFlyer Inc. “has become a wholly owned subsidiary of BitFlyer Holdings Inc. by means of a stock transfer.” In the joint statement, Bitflyer Inc. and Bitflyer Holdings Inc. clarified that “everyone will be able to use our services and trade just as they always have.”

According to the crypto exchange, the reason behind creating holding company is to separate operational and administrative functions, to clarify the responsibilities and duties of each function, to strengthen corporate governance, and to create more thorough compliance structure.

BitFlyer is innovative crypto exchanges which offer several advanced tools for crypto trading including margin trading. The key feature of the platform is the binding of trading instruments to the Japanese yen. BitFlyer has also expanded its reach to the United States with approval to operate in 42 states. Because of the low commission of BitFlyer traders around the world prefer to trade on BitFlyer.

Zaif’s halt

Zaif is an Osaka based crypto exchange and one of the 16 regulated cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan. On 14th September, the exchange was hacked and the hackers stole equivalent of $60 million in cryptocurrencies. The hackers accessed the hot wallets where the exchange held funds for immediate transactions. After the hack, Financial Services Agency (FSA) issued a third business improvement order to the Zaif and was reportedly considering suspending or cancelling its license.

On Friday Zaif’s operator, Tech Bureau has announced that “We decided to temporarily stop accepting new membership registration at 21 o’clock on September 28.” The company clarified that the customers who are already in the process of identity verification by applying membership registration will register as usual as a member. On the damages, because of loss, the company said that:

“We are responsible for recovering the damage to all existing customers who were victimized by the current virtual currency outflow, but to do so we need to concentrate our internal resources.”