Rakuten Wallet, the crypto wallet and exchange platform of the Japanese financial services giant, has decided to provide digital asset margin trading services to its client base.
Announced on Monday, the platform is aiming to roll out the new services as soon as the coming spring. Rakuten Wallet, however, has already started the registration process for the upcoming services.
Rakuten entered the crypto trading market with Rakuten Wallet, assuming services in August 2019.
Initially, the exchange supported spot trading services with only three major digital currencies - Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash. However, with the upcoming margin services, the exchange will feature two new Cryptocurrencies - Litecoin and Ripple - meaning traders can take short or long positions for five pairs - BTC/JPY, ETH/JPY, BCH/JPY, LTC/JPY, and XRP/JPY.
The announcement also detailed that the exchange platform will offer leverage of up to 2x to the traders taking margin calls. This is according to the latest decision of the Financial Services Agency (FSA), Japan’s financial market regulator, to limit the leverage of crypto margin trading from 4x to 2x.
Japan - a progressive market for crypto
Despite multiple major crypto exchange hacks, including Mt. Gox and Coincheck, Japan is still the largest crypto market in terms of trade volumes. To maintain a grip on the market, the FSA also mandated the licensing of digital asset exchanges offering services in the country.
Formerly known as Everybody’s Bitcoin, Rakuten rebranded the entity after its acquisition in 2018 for 265 million yen ($2.4 million).
To attract more clients to its Trading Platform in a crowded market, Rakuten Wallet enabled the conversion of Rakuten loyalty points to digital assets.
“As the Rakuten Group’s virtual currency exchange business, Rakuten Wallet will continue to provide transaction services that customers can use safely and securely, and further expand its services by leveraging Group synergy,” the announcement added.
