- 31 regulated Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges will be given the green light to list 18 cryptocurrencies, including Ripple (XRP).
Japan’s crypto exchanges are trying to simplify the process of approving new cryptocurrency listings to increase the number of cryptocurrencies traded in the country and catch up with the rest of the world, an industry body said on Tuesday.
The Japan Virtual and Crypto Asset Exchange Association (JVCEA), a group of 31 exchanges, announced plans to release a “green list” of 18 popular cryptocurrencies in late March.
Members of the community previously had to go through the screening process of the association to list any currency, however, the regulator observed that it lags behind in the number of supported cryptocurrencies compared to what is observed on other trading platforms outside of Japan, to speed up this process, those on the green list will no longer need to go through the screening process.
US exchange Coinbase, which is listed on Nastaq, has listed 139 cryptocurrencies for trading at the end of 2021. By comparison, the number of cryptos listed on Japanese exchanges is just 40. The 1.18 trillion yen ($9.8 billion) held by Japanese exchange users as of January also accounts for a small fraction of Coinbase users’ $278 billion investment in December.
Some industry executives said Japanese traders are flocking to exchanges that are not licensed in Japan, such as Binance, partly because options are limited.
The green list includes cryptocurrencies considered “widely used in Japan” such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP and Litecoin (LTC). For a cryptocurrency to be listed, it must have been listed on three or more exchanges for at least six months. These 18 cryptocurrencies on the list will be listed on various crypto exchanges in Japan.
According to a report published in Nikkei Asia, a JVCEA official said that the Japanese exchange currently listing the most cryptocurrencies is GMO Coin, with 20 listed cryptocurrencies.
“Since cryptocurrencies take so long to be approved, only a few cryptocurrency exchanges are able to make a profit. Users also flock to international exchanges. The goal is to eliminate the time it takes to list a token and bring the industry closer to global standards.”
Surprisingly, this development comes at a time when Ripple, which was at the top of the green list due to the company’s legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), was removed from US-based cryptocurrency exchanges.
JVCEA was established as a self-regulatory agency in 2018 after a series of hacking incidents came under intense scrutiny by regulators. But the slowness of token approval has always been a major hurdle in boosting the popularity of the cryptocurrency in Japan.
Every exchange had to go through a lengthy screening process, even for widely used tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum, resulting in a huge backlog of applications. In October alone, more than 80 applications had accumulated pending approval.
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