Japan FSA issues warning letter to Bybit crypto exchange

The Japan Financial Services Agency (FSA), the financial services regulator, has issued a formal warning letter to the Bybit cryptocurrency exchange and bitcoin futures trading platform.

To the best of our knowledge, such public reprimand for running an unregistered business has not occurred for a while, so one is to assume that the FSA has witnessed aggressive marketing by Bybit to Japanese investors that goes beyond the common transgressions of presenting their website in Japanese (as shown in the title image) and not blocking Japanese IP addresses.

Although one can typically work around the latter with a VPN, regulators views this as a good faith measure to demonstrate that active marketing in a specific jurisdiction does not take place.

For comparison, leading crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, domiciled in Panama, shows the best practice. While the website allows for translation into Japanese, including the health warning, “The site has been translated from English. Any differences created in the translation have no legal effect. In case of any question, please refer to the official English version.” The subsequent attempt to register on the platform is blocked based on the IP address, a truly simple measure to take.

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