Japanese cryptocurrency trading platform Coincheck has suspended new orders for margin trading and will reduce margins on pending trades from 5X to 4X on October 31st, 2019.
The company also warns (according to an automated translation):
“The amount of margin required will change constantly, so please check the latest information at your own risk.”
The exchange states that the changes are being made, “based on the self-regulation rules and guidelines established by the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association.”
The Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association has been working very closely in recent months with Japan’s Financial Services Authority, which recently called on Japan’s crypto firms to make sure they are familiar with revised laws pertaining to the sector.
The FSA also promised further legal revisions and increased cooperation with overseas authorities around the regulation of the cryptocurrencies.
Japan recently hosted the latest round of G20 meetings where Finance Ministers from the world’s 20 most powerful economies, “…reaffirm(ed) (their) commitment to applying the recently amended FATF Standards to virtual assets and related providers for AML (anti-money laundering) and CFT (anti-terrorist finance).”
Japan financial authorities and experts also recently volunteered to spearhead an effort to create a regulated global network for cryptocurrency transfers and trades similar to SWIFT, an anonymous source from the Japanese government told Reuters.
The system will be developed in cooperation with other countries and should launch within a few years, and developments are being monitored by, “A team related to the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF).”
The FATF is a powerful intergovernmental policy-making body tasked with coordinating global efforts to combat illicit finance, terrorist finance and “other threats to the integrity of the global financial system.”
In January 2018, more than $534 million USD in crypto tokens were stolen from Coincheck by hackers.
Leveraged trading of crypto is increasingly in the crosshairs.
Hong Kong-based crypto trading platform BitMEX offers 100X leveraged trade of crypto derivatives, and a video of CEO Arthur Hayes shows him claiming that offering leveraged trades was how the business distinguished itself from other platforms early on.
He also called retail investors “degenerate gamblers” in the video.