Kraken has decided to stop doing business in Japan in order to lower its overall operating costs.
During the year 2022, there has been a lot of stress on the cryptocurrency market. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost more than 70% of their value since their all-time highs in 2021. Even though there have been short periods of more activity, the growth of the cryptocurrency market as a whole has been pretty flat. Crypto businesses are either going out of business or filing for bankruptcy to cut costs and get ready for the possible economic upheaval that could happen in 2023. Some of them are even firing their employees. Now, Kraken is once again a victim of this chaos. The cryptocurrency exchange has said that both Japan’s economy and the crypto market are in a very bad place right now. Because of this, it is making plans to stop doing business in Japan within the next month.
Customers of Kraken are asked to withdraw all fiat currency and cryptocurrencies by January 31, when the exchange will stop being registered with the Financial Services Agency (FSA). Also, the company said that it has fully reserved all of its resources to make sure that all of its customers can quickly get their assets. Because the company was struggling to stay in business in a market that was getting harder and harder, the exchange made the decision a month ago to let go of about 30 percent of its workers, which is close to 1,100 people.
Along with the state of the economy, the many scams and frauds that are happening on the market right now are also having a big effect on crypto businesses. The fall of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange has also made the cryptocurrency market less predictable in general. At this point, it’s hard to say when the market will start to go up again. Before jumping into the cryptocurrency market, though, investors need to be very careful and get advice from people who know about investing. Then and only then should they buy something.
The news that Kraken will stop doing business in Japan was first posted on Analytics Insight.
