Japanese Financial Giant Adds BCH To its New Exchange, Mulls ETH

Japan’s newest cryptocurrency exchange, SBI Virtual Currencies, has begun offering trading in a second cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash, to its pre-order customers.

As previously reported on Cryptonews.com, the new exchange, the brainchild of financial giant SBI Group, began trading Ripple (XRP) as of June 4.

The company has since announced that it is currently only operating services for some 20,000 pre-order customers, and says it intends to enable Bitcoin trading in the near future – although it is yet to set a firm date for this.

SBI is also yet to announce when it will begin accepting applications for regular accounts, but has repeatedly stated that it anticipates enormous demand for its services, and claims that its fees for sales will be the lowest on the Japanese market.

SBI says it will continue adding cryptocurrencies to its platform, with Ethereum also mentioned by name.

Meanwhile, police in Yokohama have hit the developer of a music site with a fine of over USD 900 for running Coinhive’s Monero mining software on his site. Police labeled the Coinhive program – which uses site visitors to mine Monero (distributing 30% to developers and 70% to the site publisher) – as a “virus.” The developer said, per Yoimuri Online, “I certainly didn’t think I was doing anything illegal by running the program on my site.”

Police in other Japanese cities and provinces are looking into five other similar cases, but say they will not comment on active investigations.