San Francisco-based Kraken Exchange has announced that it will cease operations in Japan due to the crippling crypto market and the current market conditions in the country.
Kraken gave the announcement in a blog post and added that it will also deregister from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA) from January 31, 2023. Kraken highlighted that its decision to quit the Japanese territory was motivated by its efforts to focus its attention and resources on initiatives that are consistent with its strategy and drive to attain long-term success.
In addition, Kraken stated that it has the appropriate capital to ensure that all its affected customers can withdraw their digital assets when the time is due. The firm promised to minimize the impact on those impacted while continuing to ensure that users are able to perform seamless transactions.
As regards the closure of operations in the Japanese market and guidelines set by the JFSA, all impacted customers were advised to withdraw their funds and crypto assets in Kraken’s platform on or before January 31, 2023.
The trading platform also hinted that users can withdraw their crypto holdings to an external wallet or liquidate their portfolio and transfer their JPY to a domestic bank account.
The deposit function will be removed from Kraken’s platform on January 9th while the trading function will be retained to allow users to convert their balances to the assets of their choice. Furthermore, withdrawal limits have been lifted for the month of January to ensure that users withdraw their assets from Kraken.
Kraken’s Previous Exit from the Japanese Market
In 2018, Kraken announced that it was exiting the Japanese territory due to the high cost of doing business in the country. The exchange however didn’t rule out the possibility of re-entering the market.
At the time of exit, CoinMarketCap reported that Kraken was ranked number 10 on the top crypto exchanges by daily trading volumes with around $188 million in trades at the time.
Kraken’s exit from Japan at the time was shortly after the JSFA began investigating the country’s 15 unregistered exchanges in 2018. This move follows the hacking of Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, which lost $534 million in NEM blockchain that was reportedly stored on a hot wallet.
Like Kraken, many exchanges are also reevaluating their operations in some countries with a stiff regulatory approach to cryptocurrencies.
