Showcasing the use of cryptocurrency in monetary transfers, Ripple has become a known partner for traditional institutions that wish to revamp their cross-border remittance services. Taking this vision further, Ripple announced a new partnership with Japan’s SBI Remit to transform remittance payments from Japan to the Philippines. Ripple’s latest partnership will see the involvement of mobile payments service Coins.ph and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade to provide a cheaper remittance option to its customers. This will be made possible by using XRP to eliminate the pre-funding costs. According to the official statement, Japan’s first On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service …

Major Japanese internet company Yahoo Japan has partnered with messaging giant Line to launch nonfungible token (NFT) trading. Line officially announced on Tuesday that its cryptocurrency-focused subsidiary, LVC Corporation, would collaborate with Yahoo Japan to enable the secondary trading of NFTs issued on Line’s proprietary blockchain. As part of the partnership, Yahoo! Japan would place Line blockchain-based NFTs on its online auction service Yahoo! Auctions, a service set up by the company back in 1998 to compete with the e-commerce giant eBay. To enable NFT trading on the platform, the two partners would integrate Yahoo Auctions with the Line Bitmax …

Japan is strengthening its efforts to regulate digital currencies on a global scale, with related government authorities reportedly looking to expand staff to impose stricter rules. Japanese regulators have expressed fresh concerns over the massive growth of the cryptocurrency market, particularly cautioning against stablecoins, Reuters reported on Friday. Tokyo is willing to engage with global financial regulators to develop stricter rules for private digital currencies, three Japanese officials reportedly said, adding that G7 and G20 group regulators have called for greater regulations for fiat-pegged stablecoins. “Japan can no longer leave things unattended with global developments over digital currencies moving so …

Four men have reportedly been arrested in Japan's Aichi Prefecture for running an allegedly fraudulent crypto investment scheme that persuaded investors they could reap returns on the basis of an artificial intelligence (AI)-led trading system. Roughly 20,000 Japanese investors nationwide are thought to have been drawn into the scheme, which raised an estimated total of 6 billion yen ($55 million). The four suspects: Shoji Ishida, Yukihiro Yamashita, Takuya Hashiyada, and Masamichi Toshima, were arrested on July 12, according to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun. The alleged scam, dubbed the "Oz Project" promised that the automated, AI-based system would result in investors …

Is Binance crypto’s new whipping boy? Regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Thailand and the Cayman Islands have all recently issued warnings and even criminal complaints against the cryptocurrency exchange. Even Poland entered the fray as its financial regulator warned citizens to exert “special caution” when using Binance’s trading services. Some have opined that the firm has only itself to blame for this recent burst of regulatory heat, but others fear the exchange is being held as a scapegoat for the entire crypto sector — which has grown too large too fast in the eyes of …

Japan will have more clarity on the design of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) no earlier than late 2022, according to a ruling party official. Hideki Murai, head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan’s panel on digital currencies, said that the Bank of Japan (BoJ) is still working on sorting out the key functions of the digital yen, such as defining what entities would serve as intermediaries between the central bank and its deposit holders. “By around the end of next year, we’ll have a clearer view of what Japan's CBDC would look like,” Murai said in …

The world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform, Binance, has faced regulatory upheaval over the past week as jurisdictions clamped down on the use of unauthorized exchanges and warned citizens against accessing them. For Binance, adopting the moniker of “global exchange” has done very little to appease regulators that require specific licenses to offer financial services to their citizens. Below is a brief recap of recent regulatory actions surrounding Binance. Japan On June 25, Japan’s Financial Services Agency, or FSA, accused Binance of operating in the country without proper registration – potentially setting the stage for a protracted legal battle with regulators. …

On the tails of a warning from Japanese regulators on Friday, Binance has announced in a short statement yesterday that it will cease providing services to users located in Ontario. “As part of our continuing compliance efforts, Binance has updated its Terms of Use to provide that Ontario (Canada) has become a restricted jurisdiction, effective 2021-06-26 at 3:59:59 AM (UTC). Regrettably, Binance can no longer continue to service Ontario-based users. Ontario-based users are advised to take immediate measures to close out all active positions by December 31, 2021,” a statement on their website reads. Binance did not return a request …

Crypto trading platform Binance may once again be heading for a standoff with financial regulators in Japan. On Friday, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) issued a warning to Binance, accusing the company of offering crypto exchange services in the country without registration. The agency also served a similar warning to crypto derivatives trading platform Bybit back in May. After China banned crypto trading back in 2017, Binance, along with many other Chinese exchanges, moved to Japan. Soon after, the FSA made Japan become the first jurisdiction to develop clear-cut crypto exchange rules, which, among other requirements, mandated compulsory national registration …

At a meeting in London earlier this month, the finance ministers from the G7 — the United States, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada — unanimously agreed to begin creating the framework for a global corporate tax rate. The framework laid out a “two pillar” principle. The first pillar ensures that companies that make a 10% profit margin would be subject to the tax rate. The second pillar ensures that countries will charge a 15% minimum tax rate. Under all of this, the new rules will focus on where the profit was made and not where the company is …

Singapore-based Bybit, the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency derivatives exchange by trading volume, has allegedly been running unregistered crypto services in Japan, according to an official warning. The Japan Financial Services Agency issued a formal warning letter to Bybit stating that the firm is not registered to operate crypto services in the country. The warning comes in response to Bybit’s marketing campaign that reportedly targeted Japanese investors, according to Norbert Gehrke, founder and representative director of tech hub Tokyo FinTech. “Such public reprimand for running an unregistered business has not occurred for a while, so one is to assume that the FSA …

Coincheck’s goal of conducting the first-ever initial exchange offering in Japan is moving closer to becoming a reality. According to a release issued on Monday, the Japanese crypto exchange announced that the Hashpalette (HPT) initial exchange offering will take place in the summer. IEOs are a modified form of initial coin offering, where a crypto exchange platform acts as an intermediary between token issuers and investors. Coincheck partnered with Hashpalette back in August 2020, with plans for HPT to become the first IEO-issued utility token in the Japanese crypto market. At the time, the plan was coming on the heels …