Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) is pressuring local cryptocurrency exchanges to de-list privacy-centric altcoins such as Monero, Zcash, and Dash.
Writing in Forbes, Tokyo-based journalist Jake Adelstein reports that sources close to the FSA say the regulatory agency — which has sole authority to grant licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges — is “taking all available steps” to pressure domestic trading platforms to drop support for altcoins that tout the ability for users to make anonymous transactions.
The FSA claims that these cryptocurrencies, which are generally much more difficult to track than Bitcoin (though in some cases still possible, due to user error and other factors), have become too closely linked with the criminal underworld.
Monero, for instance, is increasingly associated with “cryptojacking” attacks, where hackers infect computers with malware that hijack CPUs and use them to mine cryptocurrency.
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As CCN reported, Japan’s licensed cryptocurrency exchanges recently formed a self-regulatory body that will have enforcement power over its members. Among other things, the organization may curate a whitelist of cryptocurrencies that exchanges are allowed to list, which would provide the FSA with an easy avenue to pressure exchanges to de-list cryptoassets of which it does not approve without having to codify the prohibition into official policy.
