BitFlyer

Last updated
bitFlyer
Company typePrivate
Industry Cryptocurrency
FoundedJanuary 9, 2014
FounderYuzo Kano
Headquarters
Tokyo
,
Japan
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Kuniyoshi Hayashi, Chief Executive Officer
Website bitflyer.com

bitFlyer is a private company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and founded in 2014. It operates one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges with 2.5 million users [1] and develops other crypto-related technology.

Contents

History

bitFlyer was founded in 2014 by Yuzo Kano, a former derivatives and bonds trader from Goldman Sachs. [2] bitFlyer's cryptocurrency exchange was launched in April 2014, a few months before the once market-dominant bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, went out of business. [3] In 2018 the exchange stopped taking new customers after Japanese regulators accused the exchange of not taking actions to stop money laundering and terrorist financing. [4] Regulators stated that most directors were friends of the CEO Yuzo Kano, a former Goldman Sachs trader. [4] By February 2016, it had 100,000 users and was processing about 7 billion yen ($64 million USD) in monthly cryptocurrency transactions, making it the largest Bitcoin exchange in Japan. [5] It raised about $36 million USD in venture capital over three funding rounds. [6] The company established partnerships with retailers, mobile app companies, and payment processors to facilitate smartphone-based cryptocurrency payments at retail locations. [7] bitFlyer also secured regulatory approval to sell cryptocurrency to institutional investors. [8]

bitFlyer expanded internationally to the United States in November 2017 and to Europe in January 2018. [6] By 2018, the company was processing 80 percent of bitcoin transactions in Japan and had grown to 150 employees. [6] [9] In 2018, bitFlyer was one of six exchanges ordered to improve their procedures against money laundering, causing bitFlyer to temporarily suspend services while it implemented new systems. [10]

In 2019, bitFlyer created a subsidiary focused on blockchain technology and services. [11]

In May 2023, BitFlyer was fined by the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) for failing to meet state cybersecurity requirements. [12] [13] The company was fined $1.2 million. [12]

Services

Users of the bitFlyer exchange can buy/sell cryptocurrency with each other, or buy/sell directly with bitFlyer itself. [3]

bitFlyer's first service was its cryptocurrency exchange, which was initially focused on bitcoin. [9] The company later added futures contracts and bitcoin derivatives to the exchange. [1] [6] As of 2017, 75 percent of transactions on bitFlyer are for derivatives, where users make investments based on their prediction of future bitcoin prices. [14]

bitFlyer first introduced its blockchain technology, called Miyabi, in 2016. [15] In 2019, bitFlyer added other cryptocurrencies to its exchange, such as Ethereum and Litecoin.[ citation needed ] The company also added features to pay for goods at retailers using cryptocurrency and to buy cryptocurrency using credit cards or points from loyalty programs. [16] In June 2020, bitFlyer introduced a blockchain-based voting service called bvote. [17] The company also introduced a blockchain consulting arm. [18]

Related Research Articles

A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bitcoin</span> Decentralized digital currency

Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that requires increasing quantities of electricity and guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cryptocurrency</span> Digital currency not reliant on a central authority

A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mt. Gox</span> Defunct Bitcoin exchange based in Japan

Mt. Gox was a bitcoin exchange based in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Launched in 2010, it was handling over 70% of all bitcoin (BTC) buys/sells worldwide by early 2014, when it abruptly ceased operations amid revelations of its involvement in the loss/theft of hundreds of thousands of bitcoins, then worth hundreds of millions in US dollars.

Coinbase Global, Inc., branded Coinbase, is an American publicly traded company that operates a cryptocurrency exchange platform. Coinbase is a distributed company; all employees operate via remote work. It is the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States in terms of trading volume. The company was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. In May 2020, Coinbase announced it would shut its San Francisco, California, headquarters and change operations to remote-first, part of a wave of several major tech companies closing headquarters in San Francisco in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of bitcoin</span> Cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, a digital asset that uses cryptography to control its creation and management rather than relying on central authorities. Originally designed as a medium of exchange, Bitcoin is now primarily regarded as a store of value. The history of bitcoin started with its invention and implementation by Satoshi Nakamoto, who integrated many existing ideas from the cryptography community. Over the course of bitcoin's history, it has undergone rapid growth to become a significant store of value both on- and offline. From the mid-2010s, some businesses began accepting bitcoin in addition to traditional currencies.

Blockchain.com is a cryptocurrency financial services company. The company began as the first Bitcoin blockchain explorer in 2011 and later created a cryptocurrency wallet that accounted for 28% of bitcoin transactions between 2012 and 2020. It also operates a cryptocurrency exchange and provides institutional markets lending business and data, charts, and analytics.

Circle is a peer-to-peer payments technology company that now manages stablecoin USDC, a cryptocurrency the value of which is pegged to the U.S. dollar. It was founded by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in October 2013. Circle is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. USDC, the second largest stablecoin worldwide, is designed to hold at or near a stable price of $1. The majority of its stablecoin collateral is held in short-term U.S. government securities.

CoinDesk is a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies. Founded by Shakil Khan, the firm also provides guides to bitcoin for those new to digital currencies.

Monero is a cryptocurrency which uses a blockchain with privacy-enhancing technologies to obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses trading Monero, transaction amounts, address balances, or transaction histories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Blockstream</span> Blockchain technology company

Blockstream is a blockchain technology company led by co-founder Adam Back, headquartered in Victoria, Canada, with offices and staff worldwide. The company develops a range of products and services for the storage and transfer of Bitcoin and other digital assets.

Kraken is a United States–based cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2011. It was one of the first bitcoin exchanges to be listed on Bloomberg Terminal and was valued at US$10.8 billion in mid-2022. The company has been the subject of several regulatory investigations since 2018, and has agreed to cumulative fines of over $30 million.

Coincheck is a Japanese bitcoin wallet and exchange service headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded by Koichiro Wada and Yusuke Otsuka. It operates exchanges between bitcoin, ether and fiat currencies in Japan, and bitcoin transactions and storage in some countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ShapeShift</span> Swiss digital asset trading company

ShapeShift is a cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Switzerland. As of 2018, the company was run out of Denver, Colorado. A 2018 investigation by the Wall Street Journal alleged that ShapeShift had facilitated money laundering of $90 million in funds from criminal activities over a two-year period.

A cryptocurrency wallet is a device, physical medium, program or an online service which stores the public and/or private keys for cryptocurrency transactions. In addition to this basic function of storing the keys, a cryptocurrency wallet more often offers the functionality of encrypting and/or signing information. Signing can for example result in executing a smart contract, a cryptocurrency transaction, identification, or legally signing a 'document'.

Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.

Blockchain analysis is the process of inspecting, identifying, clustering, modeling and visually representing data on a cryptographic distributed-ledger known as a blockchain. The goal of blockchain analysis is to discover useful information about different actors transacting in cryptocurrency. Analysis of public blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum is typically conducted by private companies like Chainalysis, TRM Labs, Elliptic, Nansen, CipherTrace, Elementus, Dune Analytics, CryptoQuant, and Ormi Labs.

Paxos Trust Company is a New York–based financial institution and technology company specializing in blockchain. The company's product offerings include a cryptocurrency brokerage service, asset tokenization services, and settlement services. ItBit, a bitcoin exchange run by Paxos, was the first bitcoin exchange to be licensed by the New York State Department of Financial Services, granting the company the ability to be the custodian and exchange for customers in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uniswap</span> Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange

Uniswap is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses a set of smart contracts to execute trades. It is an open source project and falls into the category of a DeFi product because it uses smart contracts to facilitate trades. The protocol facilitates automated transactions between cryptocurrency tokens on the Ethereum blockchain through the use of smart contracts. As of October 2020, Uniswap was estimated to be the largest decentralized exchange and the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange overall by daily trading volume.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Erik Voorhees</span>

Erik Tristan Voorhees is an American cryptocurrency entrepreneur and founder of the cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift. He also co-founded Satoshi Dice and was the Director of Marketing at BitInstant. He has been referred to as a crypto-libertarian and has advocated for "the separation of money and state".

References

  1. 1 2 Popper, Nathaniel (September 1, 2017). "Bitcoin Bug Bites Japan and South Korea as China Clamps Down". The New York Times. Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  2. ↑ Williams-Grut, Oscar (January 24, 2018). "Japan's biggest bitcoin exchange saw $150 billion traded in less than 2 months: 'December was certainly an interesting month'". INSIDER. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  3. 1 2 Alpeyev, Pavel (July 22, 2014). "Ex-Goldman Trader's Bitcoin Exchange to Fill Mt. Gox Void". Bloomberg. Retrieved February 6, 2020.
  4. 1 2 Fujikawa, Megumi (June 22, 2018). "Japan's Biggest Bitcoin Exchange Suspends New Business". WSJ. Retrieved March 16, 2021.
  5. ↑ "ビットコイン取引所大手bitFlyerが貫く「経営の王道」". Forbes JAPAN（フォーブス ジャパン） (in Japanese). February 25, 2016. Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 "Japan bitcoin bourse group stages Europe expansion". Financial Times. January 23, 2018. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  7. ↑ Hoshi, Akio (April 5, 2017). "ビットコイン決済が身近に、bitFlyerがビックカメラ2店、Coincheckが26万店展開のAirレジで". TechCrunch Japan (in Japanese). Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  8. ↑ Ponciano, Jonathan (November 28, 2017). "With Regulatory Approval, BitFlyer Launches U.S. Crypto Exchange Targeting Institutional Traders". Forbes. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  9. 1 2 Nakamura, Yuji; Sagiike, Hideki; Hyuga, Takahiko (May 10, 2018). "Ex-Goldman trader Yuzo Kano is hiring old rivals to build a cryptocurrency empire in Tokyo". Bloomberg. Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  10. ↑ Varshney, Neer (June 22, 2018). "Japan's biggest cryptocurrency exchange suspends new registrations amidst regulatory clampdown". Hard Fork | The Next Web. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  11. ↑ Skinner, Celeste (May 24, 2019). "bitFlyer Sets Up Blockchain Subsidiary, Names Yuzo Kano as CEO". Finance Magnates.
  12. 1 2 "NYDFS Penalizes bitFlyer $1.2 Million for Violations to Cybersecurity Regulation". JD Supra. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  13. ↑ "Cybersecurity Consent Order Against Cryptocurrency Trading Platform". guidehouse.com. Retrieved 2024-03-06.
  14. ↑ "Bitcoin feeding frenzy fuelled by 15 times leverage, says exchange". Financial Times. December 10, 2017. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  15. ↑ Hoshi, Akio (December 21, 2016). "bitFlyerがブロックチェーン技術Miyabiを発表、新アルゴリズムとスマートコントラクト搭載". TechCrunch Japan (in Japanese). Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  16. ↑ 拓史, 吉田 (October 12, 2016). "Eコマースはビットコイン普及の呼び水になるか：bitFlyer加納代表". DIGIDAY［日本版］ (in Japanese). Retrieved June 2, 2020.
  17. ↑ "ビットフライヤー、株主総会オンライン向け投票アプリ". 日本経済新聞 電子版 (in Japanese). June 9, 2020. Retrieved June 11, 2020.
  18. ↑ McIntosh, Rachel (April 27, 2020). "Japanese Crypto Exchange BitFlyer Launches Blockchain Consulting Service". Finance Magnates. Retrieved June 10, 2020.


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