The cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, which is located in the United States, said on the 28th of December that it will discontinue its operations in Japan the next month, blaming the present market circumstances in the nation as well as a sluggish cryptocurrency market worldwide.

Kraken’s words were:

“Current market conditions in Japan in combination with a weak crypto market globally mean the resources needed to further grow our business in Japan aren’t justified at this time. As a result, Kraken will no longer service clients in Japan through Payward Asia.”

Kraken has said that despite this, it is dedicated to enable any customers who have been impacted to withdraw their cash from the exchange by the latest date of January 31.

The subsidiary company Payward Asia Inc. is in charge of running the branch of the exchange that caters to Japanese customers. The same subsidiary firm worked in Japan from 2014 to 2018, when it decided to stop doing business there so that it could concentrate its efforts and resources more effectively on expanding into other geographic regions.

It then  made the decision to relaunch in October of 2020, establishing its headquarters in Tokyo and providing spot trading on five key assets, with future expansion plans in mind.

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 one hundred people.

At the time, CEO Jesse Powell had said:

“We had to grow fast, more than tripling our workforce in order to provide those clients with the quality and service they expect of us. This reduction takes our team size back to where it was only 12 months ago. I remain extremely bullish on crypto and Kraken.”