Japan’s Monex Group Wants In On Libra

The owner of the hacked Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck is looking to join Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency project.

Japan’s financial services giant Monex Group Inc. announced the company filed an application to join the Libra Association, CoinTelegraph reported on Friday (July 26). Monex is the owner of the cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck that was hacked in 2018, losing around $400 million in NEM (XEM) coins.

The firm is expected to have its application reviewed at the end of August, Monex CEO Oki Matsumoto told CoinTelegraph. Monex is the first Japanese company to consider joining Libra. The Libra Association includes PayPal, Visa and others.

Japan’s Coincheck fell into trouble when investors filed a lawsuit in Tokyo District Court on Feb. 27 seeking about $2.1 million in cryptocurrency for the 2018 hack. The company said at the time that 500 million NEM tokens were sent “illicitly” out of the exchange.

Libra is currently negotiating with other potential members, including Uber and eBay. But caution continues from the regulatory side, where cryptos, in general, have been gaining increasing scrutiny. Libra is now in limbo as U.S. lawmakers study it and hold hearings.

The Facebook crypto includes the Libra Blockchain, the currency Libra, and the Geneva-headquartered nonprofit, the Libra Association, which will act as its governing network structure and hold the Libra reserves. It will also run on its own digital wallet called Calibra, the product of a new Facebook subsidiary by the same name.

Libra members will be required to buy $10 million in Libra Tokens to confirm their membership and the voting rights associated with it. They can choose to pay additional increments of $10 million to enhance their standing in the association, although no member can gain more than 1 percent of the votes. Facebook has confirmed that it will have no more standing in the association than any other founding member.