FTX Japan customers will be able to withdraw their funds as of mid-February, the subsidiary of FTX Trading said in a blog post on Thursday, making them some of the first customers of the collapsed crypto exchange to get their money back, CoinDesk.com reported. FTX Japan said that it was previously able to confirm with the company's bankruptcy lawyers in the U.S.
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Digital currency exchange Kraken will close down its operations in Japan next month, in another sign of consolidation in the battered crypto industry, CNBC reported. In a blogpost on Wednesday, Kraken said it would cease crypto trading services through its Japanese subsidiary, Payward Asia, and deregister from Japan’s Financial Services Agency on Jan. 31, 2023. It is the second time Kraken has left the Japanese market. The first was in 2018, when it closed four years after initially establishing operations in 2014.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday dismissed his fourth minister in two months to patch a scandal-tainted Cabinet that has raised questions over his judgment of staff credentials, the Washington Post reported. Kenya Akiba, minister in charge of reconstruction of Fukushima and other disaster-hit areas, has faced allegations of mishandling political and election funds and of ties to the Unification Church, whose practices and huge donations have raised controversy.
Japan's government revised up on Thursday its growth forecast for the next fiscal year on prospects for higher business expenditure and substantial wage hikes that are seen underpinning consumption, Reuters reported. The upgraded projections, which provide a basis for the government's annual budget plan due on Friday, underscore how Japan is set to buck a global growth slowdown thanks to robust domestic demand supported by inbound tourism reopening.
The Bank of Japan said Tuesday that it would tweak its bond buying policies and step up asset purchases — a surprise move as Japan faces economic pressure from rising inflation and a weak yen, the New York Times reported. The change was seen as a sign that Japan might relax its adherence to ultralow interest rates. That commitment has made the country a global outlier as other central banks around the world have pushed up their rates in an effort to battle inflation.
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Japan has kept interest rates below zero this year, where they have been since 2016, even as other major central banks sharply raise their own, the Wall Street Journal reported. The country now finds itself in a dilemma. Inflation is rising, the yen plummeting, and some economists and corporate executives blame the negative rate policy for eroded competitiveness and undisciplined government spending. All that has put pressure on the Bank of Japan to finally raise rates.
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Japan's imports surged in November, outpacing exports and resulting in the 16th straight month of trade deficits, as the spectre of a global slowdown added to the country's worsening terms of trade, Reuters reported. Imports rose 30.3% year-on-year in November, versus the 27.0% increase expected by economists and a 53.5% jump in October, Ministry of Finance (MOF) data showed on Thursday. The surge was a record for the month of November and led by crude oil, coal and liquefied natural gas.
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The Bank of Japan may abandon its 10-year bond yield cap as early as next year on growing prospects that inflation and wages will overshoot expectations, said Takeo Hoshi, an academic with close ties to incumbent central bank policymakers, Reuters reported. The BOJ must maintain an ultraloose policy for the time being to convince the public that it is serious about reflating the economy long enough to generate sustained inflation, said Hoshi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo.
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The Japanese subsidiary of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX has put together a draft plan for clients to withdraw funds, in what would be one of the rare cases of investors getting money back from the collapsed exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal, which has yet to be finalized, centers on using a platform called Liquid to facilitate the return of assets starting in January. Bankman-Fried’s sprawling tangle of FTX group companies slid into a chaotic bankruptcy on Nov.
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User assets at the Japanese arm of FTX Trading have stayed safely apart from the rest of the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange group, and "we're working toward returning them as our top priority," FTX Japan Chief Operations Officer Seth Melamed told Nikkei on Tuesday. Withdrawals at FTX Japan remain halted amid the turmoil engulfing Bahamas-based parent FTX Trading, which is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. The Japanese company has roughly 19 billion yen ($134 million) in user assets, including dormant accounts.
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