A notice from Binance has been published on binance.zendesk.com for its Japanese users announcing the termination of services to Japan residents.
The company also points out that they plan to gradually restrict transactions for Japanese residents and that they will be contacted shortly with details of these restrictions.
These restrictions have not yet been introduced and it is not even known in detail how they will be implemented.
It is possible that the reason for this decision is related to the country’s specific rules for the financial markets and in particular for the crypto markets, though there is still no certainty on this matter. Binance simply apologizes to users for any inconvenience and asks for understanding and cooperation.
Something similar had already happened in the past for US users, so much so that a new portal, Binance US, was opened specifically for them.
The fact is that some countries have very strict rules on financial markets, to the point that they are not compatible with Binance’s global platform.
In some cases, the company simply prevents the use of the platform by residents of countries where they are not compliant, while in other cases, such as the US, a new ad hoc platform has been created, designed specifically to be compliant with the laws of the country.
It is not known whether Binance will create a new dedicated platform for Japan as well, but it is plausible that this could happen, even though Binance US appears not to have been very successful to date: only $134.5 million in trading volumes in December, compared to the $22.3 billion on the original global platform.
However, Binance US was only launched recently, so it is still too early to judge its success. Surely the competition in the US is very high due to the presence on the territory of a giant like Coinbase, and same could be true for Japan which also has several well known and used exchanges.
