Topic: Japanese Chat App LINE To Open Crypto Exchange.. (Read 111 times)

Apart from Japan, Line is a popular app in countries such as Thailand and Taiwan. Much more popular in fact than Messenger, WhatsApp and WeChat. It is also used heavily in CIS member countries.

I think they overstate their own user numbers. I could be wrong, but Japan has only ~125M inhabitants
and Japanese is not an official language in any other country on earth as far as I know. How did they
manage to get 200M active users when there probably aren´t even that many people on earth, who speak
Japanese? Or is the LINE app popular in other countries with different languages as well?

Anyway, it is encouraging that there will be new cryptocurrency exchanges, because every newcomer forces
the incumbents to step up their game or even to lower their fees. Japan surely has to be the country
with the most cryptocurrency exchanges by now? A month ago they already had 15 officially licensed
exchanges and since then there have been a few announcements of other companies like LINE that
have plans to open their own exchange.

Major Japanese social messaging app LINE has announced today,that it is launching its own crypto exchange and in-app trading space for its 200 million active monthly users.

According to LINE’s official statement today, their application to operate a new cryptocurrency exchange is currently sitting before Japanese regulators.

Japan began operating a licensing scheme for cryptocurrency exchanges in 2017. The government has seen approved over twenty exchanges joining what become a popular industry, involving several major corporations.

In its official statement LINE said it was establishing a new company, LINE Financial Corporation, to serve as a base to “provide a variety of financial services, including a place to exchange and transact virtual currencies, loans, and insurance.”

The in-app cryptocurrency exchange will complement LINE’s existing in-app mobile payment service, LINE Pay, which to date has around 40 million registered users.

In addition, the platform aims to “promote research and development of technologies such as blockchain,” but did not specifically state how this would take shape.

Following Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck’s $530 mln heist last week, experts had warned that the image of cryptocurrency may be dented in the public eye for the medium term, something which fresh involvement of well-known brands like LINE could help alleviate.

Japan has sought to distance itself from the more restrictive stances on cryptocurrency usage taken by neighboring China and South Korea this year and last.

https://linecorp.com/en/pr/news/en/2018/2024