E-Commerce Firm Rakuten Readies Cryptocurrency Exchange for April Launch After Name Change

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has completed registration of its cryptocurrency exchange Rakuten Wallet, which will go live next month, the company confirmed in a press release on March 25.

Rakuten, which follows several major Japanese tech players in entering the crypto exchange market, renamed its product from Everybody’s Bitcoin earlier this month.

The company had acquired the exchange under the former name in August last year for 265 million yen (at the time $2.4 million).

Following a consolidation period during which Rakuten made changes to its structure, executives have now confirmed that Everybody’s Bitcoin in its current guise will cease operations at the end of March.

“Rakuten Wallet will contribute to the sound growth of the market as a virtual currency exchange company, and will further enhance security and provide enhanced services so that more customers can use it safely and with confidence,” the company stated in the press release.

Everybody’s Bitcoin had received a business improvement order from Japanese finance regulators last April as part of investigations which followed the half-billion-dollar hack of fellow Japanese platform Coincheck three months earlier.

Multiple exchanges had received such orders, which were based on reviews of security and data handling.

As Cointelegraph reported, Coincheck itself had secured a buyout from online broker Monex Group, which paid $33 million for the platform in April.

This week meanwhile, news came that TaoTao, the cryptocurrency exchange which is 40 percent owned by a local subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, would itself begin operations in May.

Yahoo! Japan had purchased equity in the exchange, previously called BitARG, via YJFX last March at a cost of 2 billion yen (then $19 million).