Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) has announced a huge hike in reports of dubious cryptocurrency transactions, most which occurred between January and October of this year.
In all, 5,944 reports from cryptocurrency exchanges were recorded, possibly linked to money laundering and tax evasion. These figures represent an eight-fold increase from the 699 cases reported in 2017.
Japan has the world’s most progressive regulatory climate for cryptocurrencies with a buoyant and energetic market. Its regulator has tightened regulation om trading and exchanges over time in order to provide a secure business environment and now requires all cryptocurrency exchanges to be screened and registered by the Financial Services Agency (FSA). In 2017, this vigilance was stepped up by the FSA also requiring a form of mandatory reporting expecting exchanges to report any suspect trading activity to the regulator.
These laws appear to have done little to prevent an escalation in cases of illegal activity, although they are at least now being brought into the public light. An NPA official commented, “It’s already been some time since the reporting system began, and it has been embraced by the industry through guidance from the Financial Services Agency.”
The cost of this crime, however, is alarming, with the JPY 660 million stolen from crypto exchanges and individual wallets swelling to a huge JPY 60 billion in only the first half of 2018.
Just this week, the National Safety Commission released its latest report on the state of the industry with regards to the misuse of cryptocurrency funds, a factor that many nations’ leaders cite as being the main deterrent towards civic adoption by central governments and banking institutions.
The main areas of misuse thrown up by the report include factors such as reuse of the same face photo by several users with different names and birth dates, multiple trading accounts initiated from a single IP address, logins from overseas on accounts with Japan addresses, as well as registration of out-of-use mobile phone numbers.
But FSA registrations continue, with 16 recent exchanges passing the screening process and another three awaiting the green light to operate, highlighting that the FSA feels that it has this situation under control.
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