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WazirX’s WRX Plunges 60% After Binance Delisting, Dampening Hopes of a ‘Fresh Start’

Delisting a token from major exchanges is often perceived as a lack of confidence in its viability or future, triggering negative market sentiment around the affected token.

A Binance delisting decision sent prices of defunct crypto exchange WazirX’s WRX tokens down 60% in an hour, even as the exchange hopes for a “fresh start” of its platform.

Binance said Wednesday that it was delisting WazirX’s WRX, along with Kaon (AKRO) and Bluzelle (BLZ), as part of a regular review of tokens that no longer meet its offering standards.

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Delisting a token from major exchanges is often perceived as a lack of confidence in the token’s viability or future, triggering a negative market sentiment around the affected token. Prices of AKRO and BLZ fell as much as 40% after the announcement, but WRX was the hardest hit.

WRX token exchange hands at 10 cents as of Wednesday, down 98% from a 2021 peak above $5.

The delisting is another blow for the once-darling Indian exchange WazirX. It was the biggest exchange in India by volumes and popularity before a $230 million hack in July, accounting for over 45% of the total user assets reserves cited by the exchange in a June report. The exchange has since filed for a restructuring process in Singapore to clear its liabilities.

The hacker laundered all the stolen funds to various addresses using Tornado Cash to obscure the transactions, as CoinDesk reported in September, further dampening hopes of a full recovery.

WazirX, still reeling from the financial and reputational damage, has worked to recover the funds with limited success. It has faced criticism for its handling of the crisis, especially concerning user communication and fund recovery processes.

https://twitter.com/WazirXIndia/status/1869278034769146040

The exchange is making various efforts to restart operations. The company said in a Wednesday post it plans to restart the business and launch a decentralized exchange, intending to keep the brand alive.

“We are gearing up for a fresh start with enhanced services and a recovery-driven approach for Scheme Creditors,” the company said on X. “Following Scheme approval (subject to legal and regulatory requirements), we plan to reopen the WazirX platform and launch a decentralized exchange (DEX) with innovative features to enhance user experience and provide a more robust platform.

That came a day after WazirX floated the concept of recovery tokens (RTs), which are proposed as a mechanism to compensate users for losses the hack.

These tokens will be airdropped to creditors based on their platform balances, offering recovery through future platform profits, potential buybacks, and trading on open markets, per a post.

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Luuk Strijers: Pioneering Bitcoin Options

The CEO at Deribit, has shown years of transformative leadership in the crypto derivatives space.

In Prague, where Kafka once dreamed of metamorphosis, another transformation is taking shape. The city’s ancient stones whisper of bureaucratic labyrinths transcended, just as cryptocurrency now defies traditional financial boundaries.

Meeting Luuk Strijers in the VIP lounge of the Prague Congress Center, during The Block’s recent Emergence event, feels like stepping into this intersection of rebellion — where Kafka’s struggle against systemic constraints echoes in today’s digital asset revolution.

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Below, a city that birthed both surreal literature and crypto pioneers like SatoshiLabs stretches toward a horizon where Gothic spires mirror the ascending graphs of Bitcoin options. Hours earlier, the Czech Republic had passed legislation exempting digital asset profits from income tax if held over three years — another wall between old and new finance crumbling.

With two decades of experience in listed products, ETFs, warrants, equities, and derivatives, Strijers brought deep traditional finance expertise when he joined Deribit as Chief Commercial Officer in 2019. His previous role at the Singapore Exchange (SGX), where he oversaw listed products, gave him insight into both the limitations of traditional exchanges and the potential for innovation in crypto derivatives.

For his leadership in the crypto derivatives space, Strijers has earned a spot on CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 list.

Under Strijers, Deribit has solidified its position as the dominant force in crypto derivatives, commanding 80% of the global crypto options market. Daily volumes exceed $1.3 billion, dwarfing competitors like Binance, OKX and CME. Now, with Bitcoin touching $100,000 and institutional adoption surging, the platform’s specialization in options trading has proven prescient.

“Our infrastructure isn’t just about processing trades,” Strijers said. “When bitcoin moves, we’re updating hundreds of strikes across multiple expiries simultaneously. Traditional exchanges might update two quotes — we’re managing thousands of instruments in real-time.”

This complexity has kept many competitors at bay. Having worked at SGX since 2014, Strijers understands firsthand why traditional exchanges struggle to adapt. “In traditional finance, you have layers of intermediaries — brokers, clearing members, central counterparties. Changing that system to accommodate crypto assets isn’t just difficult; it’s nearly impossible without starting from scratch.”

2024 has been a watershed year for Deribit, with total trading volumes surpassing $1 trillion. The platform has expanded its collateral options, now accepting everything from Bitcoin to tokenized gold. This innovation in collateralization sets them apart from traditional venues that only accept fiat currency.

Looking ahead to 2025, Strijers is focused on regulatory expansion. With a VARA license in Dubai becoming active and MiFID approval pending in Europe, Deribit is building what he calls a “hub-and-spoke” model. “We’re creating a global network where clients can onboard locally but execute through regulated hubs,” he said. “It’s about making institutional access as seamless as possible.”

The return of Donald Trump to the White House could accelerate institutional adoption. “There’s a strong belief that the first 100 days of a Trump administration would bring crypto-friendly regulations,” Strijers says. “While this would primarily benefit the U.S. market, it would likely create a domino effect globally.”

New products are on the horizon too. While bitcoin and ethereum options dominate current volumes, Strijers hints at expansion into other assets. “We’re seeing growing interest in Solana and XRP derivatives. But we’re selective — we need to ensure sustainable liquidity, not just today but months into the future when those options mature.”

Drawing on his extensive background in exchange trading and corporate finance, Strijers has helped transform Deribit into an institutional cornerstone of the digital asset ecosystem. As trading volumes continue to surge and new institutional players enter the market, his vision of a mature, regulated crypto derivatives market is becoming reality.

Under his leadership, Deribit looks set to maintain its dominance in the crypto options space, continuing to bridge the gap between traditional finance and digital assets while fostering deeper liquidity and institutional participation in the years ahead.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.

As BitMEX Turns 10, the Market Is Still Thankful for the Perpetual Swap

BitMEX’s CEO says he’s OK with everyone copying the exchange’s most important invention.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal,” was a favorite saying of Apple’s Steve Jobs to explain his company’s blatant copying of technology from Xerox.

Fast forward to the Web3 era, and BitMEX CEO Stephan Lutz, who was appointed to the role in late 2022, says he’s fine with competitors copying the crypto exchange’s invention of the perpetual swap, the financial instrument that underpins the crypto derivatives market. The more traders access the tool, the healthier the market, the logic goes.

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“It was copied by everyone, because that’s just open-source know-how,” Lutz said in an interview with CoinDesk. The whole world works on it, which is like the best form of flattery we can wish for in the end.”

Unlike futures — which are contracts to buy or sell an asset at a specific price on a specific date — the perpetual swap eliminates expiration and mirrors the feel of margin trading. Perpetuals act as a rolling series of short-term futures contracts using a funding rate, or payment exchanged between long and short positions, to maintain price alignment with the underlying asset.

Lutz argues that the perpetual swap was a cornerstone innovation in crypto trading because it addressed a fundamental challenge in building derivatives in the early crypto market structure.

“You faced counterparty credit risk, and there was no real structure for bringing longs and shorts together,” he said. “The perpetual swap with the funding mechanism and the insurance fund in the background sparked the whole [futures] trading industry.”

It also allows traders to react with the hyperdrive speed required in crypto.

“If you say it’s a seven-year cycle [some investors believe the market functions in this pattern] in TradFi, this cycle is six months in crypto,” Lutz, a veteran of Deutsche Börse, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, said. “You need to react to new developments very quickly.”

While BitMEX is nowhere near the largest derivatives exchange by volume anymore – that’s what happens when larger centralized exchanges, like Binance, adopt the perp and get into the derivatives business – it still has a loyal cadre of traders.

One reason for that is because BitMEX does not have its own market-making desk. It doesn’t trade against its own customers, Lutz said.

“Our funding rates can sometimes differ because we ensure completely independent price discovery, which is important for maintaining fairness,” he said. “It’s a matter of neutrality.”

During periods of high volatility, particularly market downturns, BitMEX often sees its market share spike — sometimes double — Lutz explains because of the exchange’s loyal cadre of derivatives traders.

Another 10 years

Sometimes it’s tough to imagine where a crypto company will be in 10 years, given the speed at which the industry operates.

Compare the liquidation and winding up of Lehman Brothers, to the relatively rapid resolution of FTX’s bankruptcy.

As for BitMEX, Lutz foresees the exchange maintaining its niche in bitcoin-based derivatives while selectively expanding its offerings.

And maybe sometime during this next decade, BitMEX will invent something new — and be flattered when the entire industry copies it.

Binance Boosts Compliance Staff By 34% Year-Over-Year, Citing Industry’s ‘Rapid Maturation’

The world’s largest crypto exchange is in the process of overhauling its approach to regulatory compliance.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, says it expects to have 645 full-time compliance employees on staff by the end of the year — a 34% increase from last November — as it continues to rapidly build out its compliance department.

Including contractors, the crypto exchange already has over 1,000 employees focused on compliance, according to a Friday press statement from Binance.

Binance’s intense focus on regulatory compliance is relatively new for the crypto exchange, which just one year ago, agreed to pay a massive $4.3 billion fine to various U.S. regulators for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and knowingly allowing users to skirt international sanctions. As part of Binance’s settlement, founder and then-CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao agreed to step down as CEO and was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the BSA.

Richard Teng, a former regulator in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, took the helm at Binance after Zhao’s departure. He’s since been very vocal about turning the exchange into a model of regulatory compliance — something he sees as necessary to ensure the company is sustainable for the long term.

Though Teng’s short tenure as CEO has certainly accelerated Binance’s compliance efforts, the exchange began making an effort to be more compliant with regulators well before Zhao stepped down in November 2023. Tigran Gambaryan, Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, left the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2021 to join the exchange. Noah Perlman, Binance’s chief compliance officer, started in January 2023. In 2023, Binance increased its compliance spend by 36%.

“Our industry has entered a paradigm shift and new phase of maturation where regulatory compliance is an essential standard to user experience and protection, business success, and responsible growth,” Perlman said. “Binance has matured alongside regulators and other players throughout the years, and the continued growth of our compliance team and program are a testament to that and this shift in our industry which is set for strong sustainable growth.”

Some of Binance’s recent compliance hires include people with long careers in traditional finance and government.

Todd McElduff, Binance’s new enterprise compliance director, who will spearhead the exchange’s relationships with global law enforcement agencies, previously led the global financial crimes oversight division at PayPal. Before that, he was head of a financial crime division at Morgan Stanley.

Binance has also hired two special investigations specialists, Céline Inial for France and Caner Akyürek for Turkey, who both previously spent nearly 20 years in law enforcement in their respective countries.

“We are actively hiring for top compliance talent to strengthen our already industry-leading compliance program and team to match the demands of our rapidly maturing sector while global crypto adoption also grows rapidly,” Perlman said. “We are proud of leading the industry’s standards in protecting users and the growth of our compliance team ensures we continue to protect our global user base of over 240 million.”

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Phantom, a crypto wallet with a steeper learning curve, is ahead of exchange giant Coinbase in the Apple App Store rankings.

It’s long been a cryptocurrency maxim that Coinbase’s (COIN) ranking in app store downloads signals how much retail traders are participating in a bull market. Well, the bull run’s here, and Coinbase isn’t climbing charts like it used to.

Instead, Phantom, a harder-to-use crypto wallet, has leapfrogged the better-known centralized exchange. At press time, Phantom was in seventh place among free applications — between Temu and Google — on Apple’s U.S. App Store, well ahead of Coinbase at 27th.

The flip is challenging expectations of what mainstream traders can tolerate during their first days in crypto. While the bitcoin community in particular has always emphasized “being your own bank,” other parts of the cryptoverse, like Coinbase, have bet on a more accessible experience.

Memecoin mania is blowing that up. Coinbase and other established exchanges don’t list the bottom-of-the-barrel, hours-old, exceptionally risky yet sometimes tremendously lucrative (if you don’t lose your shirt, as most do) joke tokens that new traders want to bet on. To get those, they gotta go on-chain with something like Phantom.

“Traditional centralized exchanges can’t keep up with all of the new on-chain paradigms fast enough,” said Phantom CEO Brandon Millman in an email.

Chill Guy, TikTok

In the past week, one memecoin in particular, Chill Guy, caught plenty of attention on TikTok and even more bids on-chain. Bolstered by a coordinated social media marketing campaign, CHILLGUY — whose mascot is, well, a chill-looking dog — soared in days from a market cap of basically nothing to as high as $500 million.

Buying CHILLGUY and other fresh memecoins requires a bit more effort than, say, buying bitcoin (BTC) on Coinbase. Traders must navigate decentralized exchanges and learn to futz with finicky order settings just to get the prices they want. It’s a clunky setup with a high learning curve compared to the exchanges.

Whether TikTok is primarily responsible for driving newcomers on-chain is an open question. The video app’s exceptionally niche crypto scene doesn’t have any truly standout videos racking up millions of views, as those de rigueur dance routines often do. More common are the oodles of low-viewership crypto bros crowing about their gazillionaire designs. A handful also teach their followers how to download Phantom.

Coinbase is onboarding memecoins, to be sure. In the past week, it greenlit FLOKI and PEPE, as well as WIF for German traders. Those tokens have been around a relatively long time and accrued market caps in the billions of dollars, making them more stable (relatively speaking) than, say, DIDDYOIL, a memecoin only accessible to traders who operate on-chain.

“Our mission is to increase economic freedom in the world, and we know we can’t do it alone,” a spokesperson for Coinbase said. “We believe a rising tide raises all boats, and we are thrilled to see more people engaging on-chain and with crypto over the last few weeks.”

While the Coinbase exchange itself is only tiptoeing into the memecoin space, the company at large is attempting to foster — and capture — such activity with its layer-2 network, Base. Base’s memecoin scene isn’t at the level of Solana (SOL), but it still sees millions of dollars worth of volume each day.

“We’re focused on making on-chain faster (transactions anywhere across the globe in seconds), cheaper (with typical Base fees of less than 1 cent) and easier to use, so on-chain technology is accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world,” the spokesperson said.

“We’re looking forward to bringing a billion people on-chain.”

Crypto.com Overtakes Coinbase to Dominate North American Crypto Trading, Data Shows

The crypto exchange’s volume has nearly quadrupled between mid-year and September.

Digital asset trading on Crypto.com has exploded this year, pushing the crypto exchange’s volumes in North America well ahead of Coinbase (COIN).

Crypto.com’s monthly spot trading volume soared to $134 billion in September from $34 billion in July, according to data from The Block. Overall trading volumes on North American crypto exchanges was $183 billion in September, in which Coinbase handled $46 billion.

Crypto.com first overtook Coinbase in July and continues to lead so far in October. So far this month, the exchange saw $112 billion trading volume out of the overall $173 billion traded on exchanges in the region, The Block data shows. Kraken, the third-largest exchange, way behind in October with just under $10 billion in trading activity.

A key reason for Crypto.com’s popularity could be the wide range of tokens on offer. It lists over 378, ranging from mainstays bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) to memecoins, such as book of meme (BOME), to ecosystem tokens such as Jupiter’s JUP and deBridge. Coinbase and Kraken, in contrast, are more selective, offering fewer than 290 tokens each.

BTC and ETH trading dominate Crypto.com, accounting for more than 85% of all trading activity across Tether’s USDT stablecoin and U.S. dollar pairs, CoinGecko data shows.

Some 26% of the exchange’s web traffic comes from the U.S., Kaiko Research said earlier this month, with most users active during U.S. trading hours.

A Citigroup report earlier this month partly attributed this dominance to the crypto ETFs that have been extremely successful in 2024.

Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, said in an X post in September that Crypto.com’s “average BTC trade size on Crypto dot com has 3x YTD” coinciding with Cboe Global Markets, a U.S.-based exchange, closing its spot crypto division.

“Liquidity has kept pace with trade volumes, suggesting market makers are also more active on the platform,” Sigel said at the time.

Meanwhile, the bump in volumes comes amid ongoing legal drama for Crypto.com. Earlier this month, the exchange filed suit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to “protect the future of the crypto industry in the U.S.,” shortly after it received a Wells notice from SEC staff.

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said the firm brought the case to limit the SEC’s “unauthorized overreach and unlawful rulemaking,” as CoinDesk reported.

Binance’s Crypto Market Share Sinks to 4-Year Low

While Binance remains a giant in crypto trading, its volumes dropped over 20% in September versus the previous month, while rival Crypto.com’s surged over 40%.

Crypto exchange giant Binance’s lead over rivals melted to its narrowest in four years as rivals grabbed market share, CCData said in a Thursday report.

Binance handled 36.6% of overall spot and derivatives trading volume on centralized crypto exchanges, the exchange’s worst result since September 2020.

Its spot trading dropped by nearly 23% from August, driving its spot market share down to 27%, the lowest reading since January 2021, the report said. The platform’s derivatives trading also declined 21%, representing a 40.7% market share among centralized exchanges, the lowest level since September 2020.

Binance representatives haven’t returned a request for comment by publishing time.

One of the beneficiaries of Binance’s decline was Crypto.com, which grew its spot and derivatives trading volume by more than 40% on a month-to-month basis, CCData pointed out. Year-to-date, the exchange booked the largest gain in spot trading, increasing its market share to 10.5%.

Overall, trading activity on crypto exchanges waned last month with derivatives and spot trading volumes both falling 17%, the report noted. September historically marks the end of a weak mid-year season in trading, giving way to a busier last quarter, CCData analysts said. “With catalysts such as increased market liquidity following the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut and the upcoming U.S. election, trading activity on centralized exchanges is expected to rise in the coming months,” the authors wrote.

Binance’s waning dominance coincided with increasing regulatory pressure on the exchange.

Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a proposed amended complaint against Binance, scrutinizing the exchange’s token listing practice. It was a follow-up on the regulator’s June 2023 lawsuit, which alleged Binance operated as an unregistered broker, clearinghouse and trading venue, and offered unregistered securities. The exchange agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine to various U.S. regulators to settle those charges.

The company’s founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by failing to set up adequate know-your-customer (KYC) systems at the trading venue. He was released last week.

Coinbase Shares Rise After Q2 Revenue Beats Wall Street Estimates Amid Falling Trading Volume

The crypto exchange posted better-than-expected revenue mostly due to its sales diversification strategy.

Coinbase (COIN) second-quarter revenuebeat the Wall Street analysts’ estimates slightly as the industry continues to recover from the crypto winter, sending the crypto exchange’s shares higher.

The crypto exchange said its second quarter total revenue was $1.45 billion versus average estimate of about $1.4 billion, according to FactSet. However, the second quarter adjusted Ebitda of $596 million came in lower than the consensus of $607.7 million.

Coinbase’s biggest source of income comes from transaction fees, which slipped 27%from the previous quarter as trading volume fell 28%. One of the bright spots for the exchange in the second quarter was the subscription and services revenue which grew 17% from previous quarter.

“On a Q/Q basis, subscription and services revenue benefited from higher average USDC on-platform balances and USDC market capitalization, as well as higher average crypto asset prices – notably SOL and ETH,” the firm said in a shareholders letter.

The exchange has been trying to diversify its revenue streams by becoming a crucial part of the spot bitcoin and ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) business, listing some of them and also acting as custodian.

Most recently, CoinDesk reported that the exchange is tapping into real-world assets (RWA) by planning on creating a tokenized money-market fund, a corner of finance that has become popular for asset managers.

Asset management giants BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have both tokenized one of their funds earlier this year. BlackRock’s BUIDL token surpassed $500 million in market value in less than four months of existence.

The stock rallied about 2% in the minutes following the report. It has gained 48% since the beginning of the year and has traded little changed over the past month.

Myanmar Shadow Government to Start Neobank With Crypto Rails to Fund Fight Against Military Junta

The National Unity Government (NUG) bank is set to run on Polygon and do currency swaps via Uniswap v3 pools and USDT stablecoins.

Myanmar’s shadow government, the National Unity Government (NUG), is set to start a neobank, which will run on Polygon and do currency swaps via Uniswap v3 pools and USDT stablecoins.

The bank plans to offer users currency swap, fixed deposits and prize-linked savings account services. Its web-based app will have a beta launch on July 22, and be available on Google Play and Apple’s App Store, a spokesperson for the bank said at a virtual press conference held on Thursday.

Led by supporters of the ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the Spring Development Bank (SDB), will target Suu Kyi supporters as customers, including the Burmese diaspora, the spokesperson said. The NUG’s stance is that it is the legitimate sovereign and government of Myanmar, not the military junta.

SDB’s stated objectives are to disrupt the country’s financial system, controlled by the military government, the State Administration Council (SAC). In addition to accessing banking services, users will be able to donate directly to the revolutionary effort via SDB. It plans to deploy funds via the most efficient routes and help rebuild post-revolution Myanmar.

Myanmar has been sanctioned by various governing bodies including the U.S. and the EU over the February 2021 military coup that overthrew the civilian government, and ensuing human rights violations.

The NUG has been raising funds to challenge the SAC since 2021. Its efforts include issuing revolutionary bonds and auctioning off a villa held by army general Min Aung Hlaing. The NUG’s hope is that when it regains power, it will confiscate the house and give the sale proceeds to buyers.

The bank

The NUG’s Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment is the sole shareholder of the bank. SDB’s shares will be offered to the public in two phases, the spokesperson said.

A pre-initial coin offering (ICO) round with the bank’s own token will be exclusively for SDB account holders and the first ICO round will be offered to institutional investors. The bank said that it will also raise funds via remittance, currency exchange, loans, and other monetary products.

SDB aims to onboard 100,000 active users in six months’ time.

It is set to support four currencies: the Myanmar kyat (MMK), U.S. dollar, Singaporean dollar and Thai baht.

“MMK will be swapped to USDT stablecoin,” an SDB spokesperson told CoinDesk. “The rest will be kept in the original or native currency to minimize currency and exchange risk.”

The NUG recognized stablecoin Tether (USDT) as legal tender at the end of last year.

Using SDB, there is a 2% spread on exchange swap, a more appealing rate than other options on the market. (At the time of this article’s publication, the reference exchange rate was 1 Singapore dollar to 2320 MMK on SDB, compared to 2164 on Western Union.) The bank also plans to launch an e-lottery program on the platform where tickets will be issued to customers as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Security

The bank will comply with the Basel Accords and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulations, the spokesperson said.

“Normal savings account balances will not be loaned out,” the spokesperson said.

The SDB spokesperson also explained that the bank has various layers of segregation of data, funds and different ‘vaults’ to separate customer funds.

“Our cyber security team (including red team and internal hackers) are working extra hard to protect users’ data security,” the spokesperson said.

For currency swaps, users will be able to deposit foreign currency into the bank and receive stablecoin in return. When the exchange rate is to their liking, they can exchange their foreign currency stablecoin for kyat stablecoin and use a local agent to swap that into cash within Myanmar.

On how they would protect local agents, the spokesperson said that they would draw on two and a half years’ worth of experience in protecting the safety and security of revolutionary forces.

Myanmar has a population of 55 million, many of them young, tech-savvy, and well-versed in VPN use to access content on the internet. QR code payments are more prevalent in Yangon than Singapore. While a predominantly cash-based society, it has extensive and fast 5G coverage with most of its network communications provided by Huawei.

Bitcoin Trading in Japan Rises as Yen Turns Volatile

The share of bitcoin trade volume on Japanese exchanges rose from 69% to 80% in the first six months of the year, data tracked by Kaiko show.

Since the Federal Reserve (Fed) started its aggressive interest rate hike campaign in March 2022, the Japanese yen has depreciated sharply, registering one of the most severe exchange rate turbulence on record.

The volatility has traders from Japan-focused digital assets exchanges turning to bitcoin (BTC), the world’s leading cryptocurrency by market value, widely touted as a hedge against traditional finance.

The share of bitcoin trade volume on Japanese exchanges rose from 69% to 80% in the first six months of the year, according to data tracked by Paris-based Kaiko. The total trading volume on Japanese exchanges was $4 billion in June, amounting to a 60% year-to-date surge.

The share of the bitcoin-Japanese yen (BTC/JPY) pair in total volume in bitcoin-fiat trading pairs has also increased from 4% to 11% this year.

“It signals rising appetite on Japanese markets,” Dessislava Aubert, research analyst at Kaiko, said in an email. Kaiko’s aggregate figures for Japan represent data from Bitflyer, Coincheck, Bitbank, Quoine, and Zaif.

Bitcoin is widely considered a digital gold and a hedge against traditional finance and fiat currencies, which are said to lack intrinsic or fixed value and are not backed by any tangible asset. Citizens from countries ridden with inflation and fiat currency volatility have previously embraced digital assets.

Bitcoin has surged 84% to over $30,000 this year while trading at a premium on Japanese exchanges.

“On average, BTC traded at a premium ranging between 0.5% and 1.25% on Japanese markets this year,” Dessislava Aubert, research analyst at Kaiko, said in an email.

The yen has depreciated 6.3% against the U.S. dollar this year, extending the past year’s near 14% slide. The divergent monetary policy paths adopted by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan, which has maintained its pro-easing stance amid global tightening, have been primarily responsible for the yen’s decline.

The chart shows trading activity on Japan-focused exchanges has picked up faster than Korean markets and the Nasdaq-listed Coinbase exchange.

The trend might continue considering Japan already has a regulatory framework, unlike the U.S. where authorities still rely on enforcement to oversee the industry. Last month, Japan passed a landmark stablecoin bill for investor protection.

The yen volatility will likely persist as speculation is simmering that the Bank of Japan could announce a hawkish tweak to its policy next week.

Lastly, the unthinkable is happening – inflation is rising in Japan and a key gauge that excludes energy component recently hit a four-decade high. Higher inflation after decades of chronic deflation may see more robust demand for perceived alternatives like bitcoin.