Nomura's Laser Digital Gets Japan Crypto License After $65M Loss

Laser Digital Japan, Nomura's digital-asset arm, registered as a crypto exchange service provider with Japan's Kanto Local Finance Bureau on August 21. It is the first company to win that status since Binance Japan in October 2022. The registration falls under the Payment Services Act, the firm said in a statement.

The approval follows a period of retrenchment at Laser Digital. Nomura disclosed roughly $65 million in crypto trading losses tied to the unit in February, after October's market crash, and tightened position limits. The application predates that disclosure, so the losses did not cause the delay or the approval. Still, the same unit now being credentialed as institutional-grade infrastructure is also the one Nomura pulled back from months ago.

Laser Digital Japan said it will start by supplying liquidity to existing licensed virtual-asset providers. It plans to add institutional trading services later, once launch details are set. The scope is narrower than the word "exchange" suggests. The business it is launching in Japan, fee-based liquidity provision rather than proprietary trading, reads as a deliberate lower-risk starting point given that history.

“Completing the rigorous regulatory review process marks an important milestone in our roadmap,” said Hideaki Kudo, the unit's representative director and head of Laser Digital Japan.

Laser Digital co-founder and chief executive Jez Mohideen said Japan's digital-asset market is “entering a new phase of maturity” that calls for “trusted counterparties and infrastructure” built for institutional investors.

The approval came as Japan loosens crypto rules more broadly. Parliament passed amendments in July reclassifying crypto assets as financial instruments rather than payment instruments. The change takes effect within a year and is meant to clear the way for crypto ETFs and new tax treatment. Daiwa Securities and SMBC Nikko are also considering their own entry into crypto exchange licensing, according to local media reports.

Laser Digital has been building toward a multi-jurisdiction footprint. It holds a virtual-asset license in Dubai. In June it won conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to charter a national trust bank for digital-asset custody. “We’ve spent three years building across the UAE, Japan and the US,” executive chairman Steve Ashley said of the strategy.

What Laser Digital Japan has not yet said is when its institutional trading service actually opens or how large it plans to run. The registration is a milestone. The scale of the business will determine whether Nomura is ready to lean back into crypto risk or is content to collect fees at the edge of it for now.