Japan’s FSA gauges interest in potential cryptocurrency ETFs

Summary:

• Japan may adopt cryptocurrency ETFs after efforts to implement futures contracts failed

• Only a third of Korean cryptocurrency exchanges passed government security audit

• Bitcoin pulls back towards previous swing level at $3500 handle

Cryptocurrency once again headed lower yesterday Bitcoin pulling back beneath the $4000 mark. The declines were broad based and most of the major coins suffered significant losses. The capitalization of the whole market moved back below $125 billion mark. However, despite moods on the cryptocurrency market being sour at the moment some upbeat news concerning virtual currencies surfaced in Japan recently.

After struggling for a few days around $3700 handle BITCOIN bulls once again tried to break above the $4000 mark. Nevertheless, bears’ resistance turned out to be to firm to overcome. In turn we observed coin’s price to drop towards its previous local low around $3500 handle. Source: xStation5

Financial Services Agency (FSA), the Japanese financial watchdog, is said to have made an unexpected U-turn when it comes to cryptocurrencies. In that second half of 2018 there was a vivid discussion on whether FSA should revamp the Japanese securities law or not. Revision would allow debut of cryptocurrency derivatives, like futures or options, on the Japanese exchanges. However, FSA suddenly dropped efforts to change the law last month and it looked like virtual assets would not make its way into Japan’s financial mainstream anytime soon. According to the Bloomberg report, FSA is now trying to gauge investors’ interest in another innovative financial instrument based on cryptocurrencies - crypto ETF. The outcome of the research will most likely serve as a backbone for the bill that will be later on put under vote by the parliament. Source cited by Bloomberg said that if all goes well the draft may become law as soon as in 2020. Bigger interest from the regulators may help cryptocurrencies regain trust of Japanese retail investors after it was lost last year due to the $571 million Coincheck hack.

RIPPLE took a dive recently along with other major cryptocurrencies. The coin left its trading range of $0.3400-0.3780 and tested low from 25 November at $0.322 handle. Long lower wicks of recent candlesticks suggest that bulls may be gearing up for a move higher. Source: xStation5

Speaking of cryptocurrency exchanges and security, it is worth to mention outcome of the security audit performed by Korean authorities. The MInistry of Science, Ministry of Economy and Finance and Korean Internet & Security Agency inspected 21 cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country. The inspection were held between September and December 2018. Only seven venues from the group managed to pass all security tests. Ministry of Economy and Finance said that 14 other cryptocurrency exchanges are all “vulnerable to hacking attacks at all times because of poor security”. Administrative, network, system and operational security was tested as a part of inspection as well as wallet management and database backup. Half year ago, the Korean Financial Services Commission called government to implement regulations for domestic cryptocurrency exchanges due to numerous hacks all around the World but no such regulation has been passed yet.