I’ve written before about the recent hack of Coincheck, one of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. I’ve also written at length about how Japan walks the delicate line between constructive regulation and consumer protection in cryptocurrency (for example here, here, and here).

In this spirit it’s hard not to admire the Japanese government’s prescribed resolution of the Coincheck problem following their investigation. Recapping, on January 26 hackers broke into Coincheck’s hot wallet of NEM coins and stole nearly $500 million worth. Coincheck discovered the breach the same day and froze all transactions. Meanwhile, Japan’s Financial Services Authority launched an extensive inquiry.

Today it was announced that the 260,000 traders who lost money in the theft will be reimbursed by Coincheck at a rate of about 88 JPY per NEM coin, which represented the NEM price at the time of the hack but is more than double today’s NEM trading price of approximately 34 JPY. (Credit to Bloomberg’s Yuji Nakamura for breaking this story). In other words, customers will be made whole of all damages in the maximum possible way.

In my book Japan Bitcoin #1 I submitted that Japan’s regulators are doing everything in their power to foster a safe and predictable ecosystem in Japan for blockchain and cryptocurrency innovation. The Coincheck resolution seems to be one more proof point in how this is bearing out.

[image credit: Bloomberg]