Coincheck's Growth Reveals Surging Japanese Bitcoin Trade

Coincheck, one of the top four bitcoin exchanges in Japan by volume, has recently experienced a growth explosion in terms of new users, trading volumes, as well as the number of merchants using its payment service. Bitcoin.com caught up with Kagayaki Kawabata, Coincheck’s Business Development Lead to discuss the achievements.

Also read: Japanese Can Soon Pay Utility Bills with Bitcoin

User Base Exploded

“Our exchange’s user base has surged in past few months,” Kawabata told Bitcoin.com this week. “Last April we only had around 14,000 users,” he continued, adding that now “We have around 76,400 users and still increasing.”

A major factor contributing to the significant rise in Coincheck‘s user base that Kawabata referenced is an announcement in Nikkei at the beginning of this year stating that 2017 is the year of cryptocurrency. Since Nikkei is the most popular national newspaper, his exchange has greatly benefited resulting in an influx of the number of registered users. He noted:

More than 1000 users register to our service every day which is more than twice the registers we had before.

With over 445 percent or a 5.45x increase in users within less than a year, the exchange’s transaction volume subsequently rose significantly. “We now have over 130 million USD monthly transaction volume,” he revealed, adding that the volume spiked around November. Before the spike, the exchange had an average of between $50-100 million monthly transaction volume.

Since bitcoin’s price reached an all-time high, coupled with positive media broadcasting and growing public awareness, a wide-range of people have been registering for services at Coincheck, from college students to elderly, Kawabata described.

Last November, Coincheck launched an initiative called Coincheck Denki which allows the Japanese to pay their electric bills using bitcoin. Today there are approximately 200 subscribers for the service. The company believes that “this number will increase this year dramatically.”

4,000 More Merchants Accepting Bitcoin

The company’s bitcoin payment service is also growing. “We have able to develop Coincheck payment’s market awareness where general public identifies Coincheck as the No 1. bitcoin payment processor in Japan,” Kawabata said, adding that “99% of bitcoin payment in Japan use Coincheck payment.”

Many type of merchants use Coincheck’s payment service to accept bitcoins including restaurants, bars, pawn shop, cosmetics, nail salons, hair salons, and e-commerce sites.

Today, more than 5,000 merchants and websites accept bitcoin through Coincheck. Kawabata revealed:

In 2016 January there was only around 1,000 merchants. 4,000 merchants started to accept our bitcoin payment just in a year.

The company ensures that its payment installation process is as simple as possible allowing anyone to start accepting bitcoin just by installing an app to their device. “Our service simplicity strongly helped merchant bitcoin payment adoption,” he believes, adding that “We think the merchants adopting bitcoin will accelerate this year surpassing last year’s growth rate.”

What do you think of Coincheck’s achievements? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Coincheck, Nikkei

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