By 2014, Bitcoin was just about ready to hit the mainstream in Japan. Mt. Gox was a Tokyo based bitcoin exchange which boasted 70% of the global turnover of Bitcoin trading. However, in February of 2014 Mt. Gox suddenly closed its website and shut down its exchange when it was discovered that it had been hacked. Approximately 850,000 bitcoins worth about $450 million at the time was missing and presumed to be stolen. The CEO Mark Karpeles was eventually arrestedin Japan and charged with fraud and embezzlement, and the saga was widely broadcast throughout Japan. The true nature of the incident is still a mystery and due to the widely publicized saga, the word “Bitcoin” in Japan continued to have a strong association with fraud, theft, and ponzi schemes for many years to come.
Right around the same time, however, there were some new developments in Japan. Bitflyer was a bitcoin exchange that was started by a group led by an ex-Goldman Sachs trader. QUOINE was another Singapore based company that opened an exchange in Japan. As these exchanges slowly gained a quiet following, some homegrown Japanese cryptocurrencies also emerged. One of them is Monacoin, a popular virtual currency among online gamers that can also be used to buy goods online. Currently Monacoin is ranked the world's 35th largest crypto currency in terms of market cap.
2017 was a watershed year for “virtual currencies,” as the Japanese by now liked to call them. Early in the year China and Korea had cracked down on cryptocurrency exchanges and shut them down. All cryptocurrency related funding activities, called ICOs (initial coin offerings) were also prohibited. It was precisely these events, combined with a very important law amendment, that led to the explosive growth of crypto trading in Japan. On April 1st of this year, the Payment Services Act (which is a part of the Banking Act) was amended to allow “virtual currencies” as a legal form of payment.
Full story at http://bit.ly/2h0Pnw0
Source: Forbes
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