Crypto player Kraken to exit Japan amid sector’s annus horribilis | Business and Economy

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US-based cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange’s announce­ment comes amid plum­met­ing asset val­ues and sec­tor-wide reck­on­ing over FTX.

Unit­ed States-based cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange Krak­en has announced it will exit Japan, becom­ing the lat­est play­er to scale back oper­a­tions after a hor­ror year for dig­i­tal assets.

Krak­en will cease oper­a­tions in the East Asian coun­try by dereg­is­ter­ing from the Finan­cial Ser­vices Agency on Jan­u­ary 31, the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment on Wednesday.

Krak­en said cus­tomers should with­draw their fiat and cryp­to hold­ings before that date, with the exchange “ful­ly fund­ed to ensure all affect­ed clients can with­draw their assets in a time­ly manner”.

“Cur­rent mar­ket con­di­tions in Japan in com­bi­na­tion with a weak cryp­to mar­ket glob­al­ly mean the resources need­ed to fur­ther grow our busi­ness in Japan aren’t jus­ti­fied at this time. As a result, Krak­en will no longer ser­vice clients in Japan through Pay­ward Asia,” Krak­en said.

“We val­ue the trust our clients put in us and we will do what we can to min­imise the impact of our deci­sion for you. That’s why we are com­mit­ted to ensure a seam­less tran­si­tion and we hope the infor­ma­tion in this email will help you decide what is the best option for you.”

Kraken’s announce­ment comes days after it unveiled plans to lay off 1,100 employ­ees, or near­ly one-third of the total work­force, amid a sec­tor-wide reck­on­ing fol­low­ing the spec­tac­u­lar fall from grace of FTX and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

FTX’s bank­rupt­cy and Bankman-Fried’s sub­se­quent arrest on mul­ti­ple charges of fraud sent shock­waves through the indus­try, prompt­ing calls for tighter reg­u­la­tion and pre­dic­tions of long-term decline for the sector.

Cryp­to prices have plum­met­ed in 2022, with flag­ship asset Bit­coin los­ing near­ly two-thirds of its val­ue since the start of the year.

Krak­en, oper­at­ing through its sub­sidiary Pay­ward Asia, pre­vi­ous­ly ceased oper­a­tions in Japan in 2018, cit­ing the ris­ing cost of doing busi­ness in the coun­try, before relaunch­ing with a Tokyo office two years later.

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