Line Corp., the company behind Japan’s largest messaging app, LINE, is near to receiving a license from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (JFSA) for the launching of a cryptocurrency exchange in its home nation, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
According to people familiar with the case, Line Corp could receive the highly coveted license from the financial agency as early as this month, with operations of its new exchange commencing a few weeks after the issuance.
Per the report, the new service to be called “BitMax” will enable 80 million Line users within Japan to buy and sell cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Line’s native token Link, one of the people added.
That would inevitably make the planned exchange one of the first in the industry to have such a large user base straight out the door.
The report continues by revealing that BitMax would use the same back-end technology as the Singapore-based crypto exchange, BitBox which was also launched by LINE last year.
The primary difference would be that while BitBox is off-limits to users in Japan for regulatory reasons, the newly planned exchange will cater for the Japanese audience.
Line Corp. still hopes to deepen its integration of cryptocurrencies with other services like online shopping, according to the source.
In the end, the company hopes that by scooping up these investment in new businesses, it can reduce its reliance on advertising revenue on the LINE messaging platform which has not seen a lot of new users since 2016.
Meanwhile, in another report regarding acquiring an operating license, Coinfomania reported that the crypto startup, Bakkt applied for a crypto custodian license with New York regulators, to become an approved company and qualified Custodian for digital assets.
