Monex CEO: Closer Crypto Exchange Oversight 'Common Sense'

The CEO of Monex Group, Japan's third-largest online brokerage, thinks Japan's cryptocurrency exchanges - including the one his firm recently decided to buy - should be regulated more strictly.

"Japan's exchanges do both matching and custodial services - they're close to a bank," Oki Matsumoto told Reuters in an interview published Friday. "To someone in the financial industry like myself, it's common sense that regulations will get stricter."

Matsumoto has had a busy month. Rumors swirled at the beginning of April that Monex would acquire Coincheck, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange that lost perhaps $530 million worth of customers' XEM (the native token of the NEM network) in a breach uncovered in January.

The theft exceeded the amount stolen in another infamous Japanese cryptocurrency exchange breach – MtGox.

Monex confirmed the acquisition on April 6, announcing that it would acquire 100 percent of Coincheck and replace its president with Monex senior executive officer Toshihiko Katsuya. The same day, reports emerged that Monex was considering an initial public offering (IPO) of Coincheck shares, a first for a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.

Competition may also be on Matsumoto's mind, following the news that Yahoo Japan invested somewhere in the range of $18.6 million to $27 million in the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange BitArg.

Yen and bitcoin image via Shutterstock.