“After amazing 5 years, I resigned from the Board and Authorised Management of bitFlyer Europe and I'm moving back to Japan,” Masuda wrote on his Linkedin page.

A year after former COO Andy Bryant left for London where he created Vektor, the transition was being prepared: Ami Nagata, who arrived in September, became co-director and operational director; Edouard Kemp, who arrived in November from PolySign after working at BitStamp and J. P. Morgan in Luxembourg, became the financial director; and since Monday, Ajinkya M. Tulpule, who worked for Ferrero and Whirlpool, became compliance director.

Last April, Bitflyer became the first fintech in Luxembourg to obtain a VASP (virtual asset services provider). The company is licensed by the CSSF, the Luxembourg Financial Supervisory Commission. The Japanese fintech is also licensed in Japan for Asia and the US, a unique case in the crypto world.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of BitFlyer, the fintech generated a turnover of €12m at the end of 2020, in the context of trading seven cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. It employs 21 people.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.