Chances are if you don’t live in Asia, the LINE messenger app might not be one that’s familiar to you, but over in Asia, especially in markets like Japan, Korea, and Thailand, the app is huge where there are actual cafes dedicated to the LINE characters that appear in the app as stickers and emoticons.
However it seems that LINE wants to be more than just a chat app and has announced their plans to launch their own cryptocurrency exchange. The company announced that they have filed an application to register a cryptocurrency exchange with Japan’s financial regulator which will ultimately allow users of the app to trade cryptocurrencies on its platform.
That being said, this is not the first time that LINE has launched financial services of its own. Previously the app had launched its own mobile payments solution called LINE Pay, and with users numbering 40 million registered, it has the potential to surpass Coinbase which is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency changes with about 13 million users.
That being said we have to wonder whether or not the company’s application will be successful. Following the hack of Japan’s CoinCheck cryptocurrency exchange in which $530 million worth of cryptocurrency was stolen, Japan’s regulator announced that they will be stricter in their regulations to prevent something like this from happening again.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Cryptocurrency, Japan and Line.