Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) has punished seven cryptocurrency exchanges, ordering two of them - Bit Station and FSHO - to suspend business, Reuters reported.
The regulator criticized the exchanges for lacking the proper internal control systems, and ordered them to make improvement in areas from risk management to preventing the criminal use of digital money.
The move comes after a $530 million theft of digital money from Tokyo-based Coincheck. The regulator said Coincheck lacked proper systems for dealing with risks such as money laundering and terrorism financing.
It gave the exchange until March 22 to submit a report on how it would improve.
Coincheck will from next week repay about 46 billion yen ($434 million) to investors who had lost digital money, the exchange said, adding it would lift curbs on the trading of some cryptocurrencies imposed after the theft.