Coinbase Gives Japan Customers 4 Weeks To Withdraw Funds, Confirms Halting Operations In The Country

Coinbase, the publicly traded company that operates a centralized cryptocurrency exchange platform, announced this week that it would terminate its operations in Japan and instructed its customers to withdraw their funds in four-weeks time.

The company said Wednesday that the move was a "difficult decision" but was a part of a larger operational review that resulted in the shutdown of its operations in the region.

"Due to market conditions, our company has made the difficult decision to halt operations in Japan and to conduct a complete review of our business in the country. However, we are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible for our valued customers," Coinbase said in its latest blog post.

The company, however, assured its customers that they can smoothly withdraw their funds from the platform "at their earliest convenience" until Feb. 16, after which remaining cryptocurrency holdings of the platform will be converted to Japanese yen and will be sent to a Guaranty Account at the Legal Affairs Bureau in compliance with the legal requisites of the country.

"All Coinbase Japan customers will have until February 16th, 2023 JST to withdraw their fiat and crypto holdings from Coinbase. Customers can choose to withdraw their crypto holdings to any other Virtual Assets Service Provider, Coinbase Wallet or any other self-hosted wallet of their choice. Alternatively, customers can choose to liquidate their portfolio and withdraw their JPY to a domestic bank account," it said.

According to Coinbase, customers who are not able to withdraw their funds on Feb. 16 will have to coordinate with the "Legal Affairs Bureau to retrieve their JPY balance."

Bitcoin, the world's largest crypto asset by market capitalization, alongside other major cryptocurrencies, surged since the start of the year, but this was not enough to prevent the ongoing contagion that plagued the market post-FTX collapse.

Last week, Coinbase announced it would reduce its global workforce by 20% or around 950 employees, making its total staff cuts to more than 2,000 since June of last year. The decision, according to the company, is expected to cut its operating expenses by 25%.

Coinbase is currently facing a class action lawsuit filed by Dallas Woody for its alleged failure to issue two airdrops, namely, Flare Network's native token FLR and Songbird (SGB) token, a court filing showed.

"Unlike the largest digital asset exchanges that likewise participated in the Flare Airdrop and lawfully distributed SGB and FLR to its users (such as cryptocurrency exchanges Uphold and Kraken), Coinbase refuses to distribute Plaintiff's SGB and FLR tokens, despite having received them from Flare Network at the time of the SGB and FLR distributions," the plaintiff alleged in the complaint.

Coinbase began its expansion in Japan in 2018.