Huobi Pro Suspends Its Cryptocurrency Services in Japan

Huobi Pro, the cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2013 by Leon Li, will suspend its financial operations in Japan starting July 2.

The company decided to announce the investors personally by e-mail on Wednesday. According to media Coinpost, the cryptocurrency trading platform will cease trading services to Japanese from 2 July 2018.

Huobi Pro’s decision was influenced by the regulatory framework

Asked by CoinDesk, Huobi Pro has confirmed the news, following to reveal new details about users’ funds. The decision to stop operating in Japan was influenced by the strict regulatory framework, given that the company is not registered under the standards of the Financial Services Agency (FSA). It isn’t known whether the crypto exchange received any notification from the regulatory agency or not.

In the first quarter of 2018, Huobi Pro announced its collaboration with SBI Virtual Currency, a subsidiary of Japanese giant SBI Holdings. This partnership was meant to allow the Singaporean exchange to have equal rights as national companies. Everything seemed promising until SBI Virtual Currency quit the collaboration in March 2018.

Over 13% of visitors come from Japan

Currently, more than 13% of visitors on Huobi Pro originate from – Japan, according to Alexa. The company did not reveal whether it would want to clarify the legislative part with the FSA in order to reopen its doors in the future or not.

Huobi Pro isn’t the first cryptocurrency exchange that made the decision to leave Japan. As previously reported by Coindoo, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by 24-hour trading volume, received in March a notification from the FSA under the pretext of providing unlicensed services. As a result, the company chose to move to other crypto-friendly locations such as Malta and Bermuda.

According to CoinMarketCap, Huobi is the third largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, with a 24-hour traded volume of $ 566,353,036. The best-selling crypto asset is EOS (EOS), followed by Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Huobi Token (HT), and more.