Japan’s FSA Reportedly Investigates Huobi And Fisco Crypto Exchanges Due To Admin Changes

Japan’s Financial Services Agency Reportedly Investigated Huobi And Fisco Crypto Exchanges

The Financial Services Agency (FSA) in Japan is the country’s financial watchdog, keeping an eye on the activity of the market. A Reuters report on April 23^rd states that “two sources familiar with the matter” indicated that the FSA had been looking into two cryptocurrency exchanges last week – Huobi Japan and Fisco. The purpose of the investigation has been to see how these exchanges protect their customers and implement anti-money laundering (AML) protocols.

The exchanges in question have recently dealt with a lot of management changes, and the goal of the FSA was to make sure that these changes included proper compliance measures, even with the new management. Huobi Group only recently expanded their services to Japan last year after they acquired the BitTrade crypto exchange.

Fisco recently purchased the Zaif exchange, which was managed by Tech Bureau last year. The previous owner sold the exchange to Fisco following a substantial hack last year, putting a $44.7 million price tag on the company. During the hack, Zaif lost around $62.5 million in cryptocurrency, which included Monacoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin.

Since the hack, new members have not been able to register, and MONA has been locked, keeping users from trading, depositing, or withdrawing. Fisco only just became the owner of the Zaif exchange on Monday, and they allowed services to resume today.

In Japan, Bitcoin is permissible to use as a legal payment method. To ensure that the use of cryptocurrency was safe within Japan, the country passed legislation two years ago, covering crypto exchanges under the rules for anti-money laundering and know-your-customer protocols that cover other financial institutions. With the law, exchanges became required to be licensed to operate within Japan.

So far, reports regarding the investigation on Huobi and Fisco have yet to be confirmed, considering that the sources are entirely anonymous and neither exchange has commented on the matter yet.