BitFlyer Halts New Accounts Amid Regulatory Crackdown

With Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) bringing business improvement orders against multiple exchanges, some crypto exchanges are limiting their operations: At least one exchange said it would stop taking on new clients and review some of its existing clients, Seeking Alpha reported.

BitFlyer, for example, said it received orders from the agency on Friday (June 22) and has voluntarily stopped accepting new clients. The exchange also clarified that the order was only directed at bitFlyer Japan — and not its entities in Europe or the U.S. — and that it seeks to tackle the issues at hand, The Financial Times reported.

“Our management and all employees are united in our understanding of how serious these issues are, as well as how serious we are in responding to them,” bitFlyer said on its website. “In order to maximize our efforts towards building a suitable service and improving on the issues identified, we have temporarily suspended account creation for new customers of our own volition.”

Following the regulatory crackdown, bitcoin’s value reached a low point this year. The price of bitcoin was $6,196.19 as of 4:02 p.m., according to CoinDesk. Earlier in the day, bitcoin was trading at just above $6,700. By comparison, another regulatory crackdown sent prices below $12,000 back in January — a four-week low at the time.

In March 2018, Japan’s FSA targeted seven cryptocurrency exchanges following the theft of $530 million in digital tokens earlier in the year, ordering two exchanges to halt their businesses for a period of time.

According to a report in Reuters at the time, which cited the FSA, the government agency contended the seven exchanges didn’t have the proper control systems in place and ordered them to bolster their risk management to prevent any criminal use of digital tokens.

The regulatory move briefly drove down the value of bitcoin, noted Reuters.