Yet another technical mishap has occurred at a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. This time, investors were allowed to buy bitcoins for free.
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Osaka-based cryptocurrency exchange Zaif, which is run by Tech Bureau Corp, revealed that a system glitch last week allowed seven traders to purchase Bitcoins without any associated yen value. Though the faulty window lasted for 20 minutes, noone was actually successful in making any profit.
The incident happened on February 16th and the exchange quickly voided the executed trades after discovering the glitch. However, Reuters reported that it is still trying to solve the issue as one person tried to withdraw the funds from the exchange.
According to the Asahi Shibun, one of the traders placed an unusually large order of Bitcoin valued at 2,200 trillion yen ($20 trillion) and then quickly attempted to sell it.
Zaif is one of the 16 registered cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan. The government has put another 16 exchanges on a waitlist, which includes Coincheck.
The role of the Japanese regulatory body came into question after the latest hack of Coincheck in which $530 million worth of cryptocurrency went missing. The authorities started scrutinizing the cryptocurrency exchanges and surprisingly Zaif cleared the rigorous test. However, the recent system glitch has put the authorities under question again.
The next step - self-Regulation ?
Authorities around the world have failed to come up with proper regulatory rules to impose on crypto exchanges. However, now crypto businesses are taking the matter into their own hands. After a trade body was successfully formed by major cryptocurrency exchanges in the UK (CryptoUK), cryptocurrency businesses in Japan are considering the same.
As reported by Reuters, the registered exchanges in the island nation are planning to self-regulate themselves from April. As, currently, there are two bodies of registered and unregistered exchanges, they are initially planning to merge both to form a single body.
