

Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
The Singapore-based cryptocurrency fintech company Quoine announced it has become the first crypto fintech to obtain an official license from the Japan Financial Services Agency (JFSA).
Quoine is a Singaporean fintech with offices in Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. In 2014 it launched the bitcoin exchange Quoine, now known as Quoinex, which is one of the world’s largest digital currency exchanges, by transaction volume. According to company data, Quoinex’s transaction volume exceeded $12 billion in the past two years.
“As the first global crypto fintech company to be fully licensed with the JFSA, we will keep on working hand in hand with regulators and other stakeholders towards the healthy development of the cryptocurrency industry within Japan and on a global scale,” said Mike Kayamori, CEO and Co-founder of QUOINE. “Protection of customers’ assets is of the highest priority to us. With our JFSA license, this is a positive market signal that we are here to build a trusted exchange, with proper compliance measures in place to prevent security breaches and provide more asset protection for our customers.”
According to the statement, since the Payment Services Act regulating digital currencies exchanges has come into effect this April, Quoine has worked with audit and accounting companies in order to develop the procedures and systems to meet the requirements of JFSA and Kanto Financial Bureau.
Quoinex provides trading services for bitcoin and fiat currency pairs in Japanese yen, US dollar, Euro, HK dollar, Indonesian rupiah, Singapore dollar, Philippine peso, Indian rupee, Australian dollar, and Chinese Renminbi.
Last summer the company raised raised $20 million in a series A funding round, led by the Japan’s largest venture capital firm JAFCO and announced its plans to seek Japanese regulation.
Japan is the first country to take steps towards regulating and legalizing digital currencies and exchanges at a national level. Last year the country’s parliament passed a law describing the cryptocurrencies as “asset-like values” that can be used in making payments and can be transferred digitally and requiring that the digital currencies exchanges be regulated.