Kraken, a Bitcoin exchange, has announced its launching in Japan, aiming itself at the nation’s large number of finance professionals and active traders.
Kraken, a Bitcoin exchange, has announced its launching in Japan, aiming itself at the nation’s large number of finance professionals and active traders.
In the announcement Kraken brought attention to the strength of its engineering and security team, as well as its high trade volumes and reputation for compliance.
Gaining public trust is a top priority for any bitcoin business planning to form a Japanese base, given the local media’s tendency to emphasize the digital currency’s association with Mt Gox and Silk Road.
“That’s what we can do better than the smaller exchanges,” – said Ayako Miyaguchi, the new managing director of Kraken in Japan.
Besides, Miyaguchi said that Krakens’s capacity to handle larger volumes will be the primary drawing card for Japanese users, especially for professional traders who have not experimented with bitcoin yet.
Kraken has always been concentrated on setting up shop in Japan. The length of time it took to realise the ambition means that forming a bitcoin exchange in a new market is not an easy process.
Kraken’s proven history operating from the US also gave it confidence when providing crucial relationships with banks and local regulators such as the FSA (Financial Services Authority).
“We have a proven history in places like Europe, so we’re not just saying we’re good, we actually have been successful … We can be a model, we can lead the industry.” – said Ayako Miyaguchi.
Now it is high time to open a new exchange in Japan, since businesses are in need of an exchange they can count on, besides, regulators simply want to avoid another Mt Gox-like situation, she added.
The Kraken team, especially Miyaguchi, have been instrumental in establishing Japan’s new bitcoin industry group, the JADA (Japan Authority of Digital Asset), and have met with government representatives on several affairs.
On the whole, Bitcoin improvement in Japan is going normal inspite of the early image obstacles, with a number of companies opening for business in the past few months.
Present bitcoin exchanges in the Japanese market comprise the simple brokerages such as BitFlyer, BtcBox and Pay-Bit, the pan-Asian trader-focused exchange Quoine, that runs a Japanese language site, payment processors Bitbank and Coincheck. They all enable deposits and withdrawals for Japanese banks.
Miyaguchi said that it is essential to provide customer support and the exchange’s online services in the native Japanese language since Japanese customers can be conservative and have high customer service expectations.
Kraken has always been concentrated on setting up shop in Japan. The length of time it took to realise the ambition means that forming a bitcoin exchange in a new market is not an easy process.
With availability in the UK and the new Japanese operation, the company Kraken will concentrate on two potentially lucrative markets. The US remains uncertain for bitcoin exchanges. Even though based in San Francisco, Kraken considers the US a low priority and has concentrated on overseas markets, particularly the Eurozone, where its trade volumes are the highest.
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