The Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), a self-regulating organization for the digital assets (cryptocurrency) industry in Japan, released statistical information about its company members for November 2019 on January 10, including data such as spot transaction turnover and the number of digital asset accounts. The statistics were gathered using the status of trading from each of the association’s member companies. There are close to 30 companies associated with the JVCEA that offer cryptocurrency-related services within Japan, and all Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges are members of the organization.

 

According to the JVCEA’s published materials, member company spot trading in digital assets amounted to \351.8 billion (approx. $3.2 billion) and margin trading amounted to \3,470.9 billion (approx. $30.9 billion) in November 2019. For spot trading, the amount of cryptocurrency accounting per one unit of currency totaled 1.82 billion, which was lower than September (2.39 billion) and October (2.52 billion) of the same year and the lowest since January 2019.

The total user deposit balance was around \337.6 billion (approx. $3.1 billion), made up of around \255.6 billion yen (approx. $2.3 billion) in cryptocurrency and \351.9 billion (approx. $3.2 billion) in cash deposits. There were 3.19 million user accounts set up for digital assets, with approximately 1.99 million, or 62%, active. The amount of cryptocurrency in user deposit balances was the highest since January 2019, amounting to 13.26 billion units.

 

Furthermore, the cryptocurrencies with the highest spot transaction volumes in November 2019 in order were Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Monacoin (MONA). In terms of general trading, the order of popular cryptocurrencies has remained relatively unchanged from the past.

 

The Nikkei reported on January 10 that Japan’s Financial Services Agency has adopted a policy of up to two times leverage in terms of maximum leverage for margin trading of digital assets. This policy was created “with the aim of suppressing the risk of loss due to excessive speculation and price volatility” and will be implemented from spring 2020. However, how these changes to the margin rate will impact transaction volume is expected to become a topic going forward.

 

*This article was written by FISCO.