@Lorne-Kates
Time to wrap up the year with one last look at how those "top 4 Japan Crypto exchanges" closed out.
Original post: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1310295
First revisit: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1345724
Second revisit: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1415370
And last revisit begins...... now!
Number 4: SBI Virtual Currencies
As of Sept 20th, this "first ever bank-backed, exclusively XPR (Ripple)" currency hadn't yet started operations, because they failed their government security checkup. And were months overdue fixing it.
But then Japan officials got bribed enoughdecided all on their own that cryptocurrency companies are ok regulating themselves, so we never heard from that again. Any mention of SBI failing their security checkup has been scrubbed from it's own website, so presumably they never did fix it.
They still haven't opened their exchange yet, but near the end of December they made an announcement that they have an undisclosed magical way "to enable the three cryptocurrencies to be received from other exchange wallets." The technology doesn't exist yet, and hasn't been rolled out to anyone. Upon that announcement, XPR (Ripple) dropped from $0.36 USD to $0.35USD (which is still down from the expected $3 USD).
I can't find any information as to if they are still "bank-backed", or which bank is backing them. So I have to assume that everything that put them in the top 4 has gone down in flames. Bank-backed? Nope. Secure? Nope. Exclusively Ripple? Nope.
Resounding success!
Number 3: Zaif
After many, many, MANY fuckups and hacks, Zaif is basically dead.
Five days after our last checkup, when Zaif lost $60M in coins for some stupid reason, the FSA (Japan's SEC) gave them a third warning, telling them their response to the back was not sufficient.
The FSA says they (paraphrase) "regret ever letting Zaif continue doing business after it's second warning, and should have suspended it immediately."
Zaif claims a "hacked employee PC" was responsible for the loss. How? Why? We'll never know, because they literally didn't tell anyone.
They were immediately bought out by another exchange, who will spend $40M to compensate users fro the $60M in losses.
As of Nov. 22nd, Zaif is gone. People had until Dec 31st to do shit with their wallets. Poof.
Number 2: bitFlyer
They never complied with the FSA's "stop business" order. Like all exchanges, they effectively died. But like all good scamscorporations, they avoided all responsibility whatsoever.
BitFlyer was acquired by Bitflyer Holdings Inc. The directory of BitFlyer was forced to resign for his fuckups and is out of work. Lol just kidding he just stepped down then instantly became CEO of Bitflyer Holdings.
BitFlyer Holdings, BTW, is just a shell company BitFlyer made up so they could sell BitFlyer to themselves and sidestep the law.
So, this wonderful, totally legitimate and scrupulous new company will be opening an exchange soon under Japan's new "let them self-regulate" laws. I suspect we'll hear from them again in this thread. But of all intestine purses, the exchange is dead.
Number 1: Coincheck
Somehow-- mindbafflingly somehow-- these assholes are still around. Sort of.
Last we checked, after multiple hacks, including losing $500M, they were acquired by Monex. Some users would get compensated pennies on the dollar.
And then, again quite coincidentally, after the FSA suddenly became crypto-friendly for no bribe-related reasons, Coincheck was GRANTED AN OPERATING LICENSE!
And they are planning on re-opening the exchange!!
And despite all those red flags, there is yet another nugget of redflag buried in there when the company says...
The operator, which was acquired by Monex Group for $33.5 million, warns customers that trading services may be temporarily suspended if the platform experiences a significant increase in the volume of transactions or sudden price fluctuations.
Which translated means: "We are literally operating without any money backing things. As long as everything goes 100% perfectly and we make a profit, we're good. If ANYTHING goes wrong, we don't have the funds to cover you, and you, idiot, will be out all your monies."
Anyone who signs up with them deserves what they get.
So, in conclusion, in the span of 11 months, the top 4 Japan exchanges managed to
- get hacked multiple times
- crash a currency (or be attached to a currency that crashed, six of one really...)
- lose nearly a billion dollars of their users money
- operate so shittily that the government had to invent an entirely new regulatory body!
- Somehow bribed enough politicians to then get that regulatory body neutered
- All four of them were effectively shut down or bankrupted
- Anyone left alive was because of shell-company bullshit that will allow everyone to dodge responsibility and squeeze blood from the zombie of what was.
2018 Crypto, everyone!