Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange located in the United States, said on Wednesday that it will halt its operations in Japan the next month, blaming the existing market circumstances in the state as well as a sluggish market for cryptocurrencies worldwide.
According to a statement released by the company, Kraken will deregister with the Financial Services Agency (JFSA) as of January 31, 2023, at which point customers will be required to remove their fiat and cryptocurrency assets.
Kraken has said that it has sufficient funds available to guarantee that all of its customers who were impacted may withdraw their holdings in a timely way.
Because of the challenging market circumstances, Kraken announced one month ago that it will cut its employment by thirty percent, which is equivalent to around one thousand individuals.
The value of Bitcoin, the most prominent cryptocurrency, has decreased by sixty percent so far in 2022, while the total value of the cryptocurrency market as a whole has decreased by one and a half trillion dollars. This decline was caused by the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire, Celsius, and the stablecoins terraUSD and Luna.