Japan's FSA Launches Register Listing 25 Unregistered Crypto Exchange Operators

FSA Rolls Out 25-Name Warning List

Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) opened a dedicated page on October 7 that consolidates the names of every operator it has formally warned for conducting crypto asset exchange business without registration. The agency announced the launch on its official X account and added a caution item to its top page headed “Beware of transactions with unregistered operators.” The register, published in the FSA's high-risk service warnings section, presents 3 domestic operators and 22 operators located overseas in table form, with each entry carrying the company name, its location, the nature of its business and the month it was placed on the list. The most recent addition is Izakaya Limited, a Hong Kong company that operates the trading service IZAKA-YA, which entered the register in September. Bybit Fintech Limited, operator of the large offshore exchange Bybit, appears three separate times, having been warned in May 2021, March 2023 and November 2024. The agency is explicit about the document's limits: entries reflect the situation at the time each warning letter was issued and do not necessarily describe an operator's present status. The legal basis is the Payment Services Act, which requires registration as a crypto asset exchange service provider for any business that sells, exchanges or manages crypto assets for Japanese residents as a trade. When the FSA identifies an unregistered operator, it issues a warning letter and then publishes the entity's name. The step targets services, not assets: Bitcoin price levels appear nowhere in the agency's disclosure, and no market data sits behind the update. For retail users, the register's value is practical. One lookup now covers warning history that previously had to be pieced together from separate announcements, and the September entry for IZAKA-YA is the freshest actionable line in the table.

IZAKA-YA and Bybit Exit Japan

Follow-through from the two most prominent names on the register shows how a warning translates into a market exit. Izakaya Limited received its warning on September 1 for carrying out crypto asset exchange business toward Japanese residents without registration, the agency's warning notice confirms. On September 17, the company announced the end of its Japan-resident services, halting new membership sign-ups and new applications to its lending program, which had advertised annual returns of 150%. A warning letter is the FSA's standard first step against unregistered activity, and naming the operator publicly is part of the same measure. Bybit followed a longer arc: after three warnings across 2021 to 2024, the exchange announced on December 22, 2025 that it would terminate services for Japanese residents and apply account restrictions in phases. The agency says users of unregistered operators have reported refused withdrawals and unusually high fees, and it directs investors to its search service to confirm registration status before depositing funds, with the Financial Services User Consultation Desk available for dispute support. The registration duty is broad. It applies to overseas-based companies whenever they solicit Japanese residents, and it covers businesses that arrange sales, exchanges and custody of crypto assets. It does not reach users who merely run a blockchain node or hold assets themselves. Nor does it treat every product category the same way: spot exchange and custody sit squarely inside the licensed perimeter, protocols without an identifiable operator in the DeFi space raise questions the Act does not settle, and derivatives offerings such as crypto futures require their own registration category. For readers choosing a venue, our guide to the best crypto exchanges explains how to verify a platform's licensing before depositing.

The pattern across both featured cases is exit rather than registration. IZAKA-YA and Bybit each chose to wind down Japanese-resident services after repeated warnings instead of applying for a license, and the new page makes that history searchable in one place. The practical shift is discoverability: a single lookup now replaces scattered individual announcements, which raises the cost of serving Japanese users without a license. The agency's own caveat still applies, since the list is a snapshot of past warnings, so current status requires a separate check before any deposit.