Rakuten Wallet launched spot trading in bitcoin, ether and bitcoin cash against the Japanese yen on August 19, 2019, moving the Japanese commerce and financial-services group from planning and registration into an operating retail crypto service.
The launch mattered because it placed a regulated cryptocurrency exchange inside Rakuten’s broader financial network. Customers with Rakuten Bank accounts could use a shortened account-opening process, while the dedicated Android application handled purchases, sales, deposits and withdrawals. That offered a more direct bridge between conventional yen banking and crypto trading than a stand-alone exchange could provide.
The development was narrower than full cryptocurrency integration across Rakuten. The August 19 record did not establish that customers could pay merchants with crypto, spend digital assets throughout Rakuten’s commerce businesses or convert Rakuten loyalty points into tokens. It documented the opening of a custodial spot-trading service.
What launched on August 19
Rakuten Wallet’s initial lineup consisted of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash, identified by the company as BTC, ETH and BCH. The service debuted through an Android smartphone application; Rakuten said an iOS release would be announced later. The company described account access and asset-transfer functions as available around the clock except during maintenance periods.
Rakuten listed no charge for opening or maintaining an account, purchasing or selling crypto assets, depositing yen, or depositing crypto. It set a 300-yen fee for yen withdrawals and separate asset-denominated fees for crypto withdrawals. Those were Rakuten’s published launch terms, not a comparison of spreads or total execution costs. The announcement disclosed no launch-day trading volume, customer count, order-book depth or realized transaction price.
Same-day reporting by ITmedia independently confirmed that the Android exchange had opened with the same three assets. ITmedia also reported that trading ran from 7:00 a.m. until 6:55 a.m. the following day, a more specific operating window than Rakuten’s general availability language.
Registration preceded the product
Rakuten did not build the regulated entity from nothing. On August 31, 2018, the group announced an agreement to acquire Everybody’s Bitcoin, an existing operator that was then awaiting full registration and had received a business-improvement order from the Kanto Local Finance Bureau on April 25, 2018.
The renamed Rakuten Wallet completed registration under Japan’s Payment Services Act on March 25, 2019 as Kanto Local Finance Bureau registration No. 00015. Japan’s Financial Services Agency register preserves that registration date. The current register also lists additional assets added after 2019, so only BTC, ETH and BCH can be treated as the verified August 19 launch lineup.
That sequence is institutionally important. The August 19 service was the result of acquisition, remediation, registration and product rollout—not merely an announcement that Rakuten intended to enter crypto at some future point.
Custody claims and their limits
Rakuten said customer yen was separated from company funds and placed in Rakuten Trust accounts, with Rakuten Trust managing the money through Rakuten Bank savings accounts. It also said customer crypto was separated from company holdings, kept in cold wallets and protected through multisignature private-key controls. Two-step authentication was required for login and withdrawals.
These controls described the company’s launch configuration. The cited records do not provide an independent security audit, proof-of-reserves measurement or on-chain verification of customer balances. Cold storage, multisignature controls and segregation can reduce particular operational risks, but their announcement did not eliminate custody, cybersecurity, liquidity or price risk.
What the event-day record supports
The defensible conclusion for August 19, 2019 is that a registered Rakuten subsidiary began offering yen-based spot trading in three crypto assets through a mobile application. The launch expanded institutional participation in Japan’s regulated exchange sector, but the surviving record supplies no basis for attributing a bitcoin price move, market-share change or adoption rate to the service.
Whether Rakuten would integrate the wallet with commerce, payments or loyalty products remained unresolved on August 19. Those potential extensions should be assessed from later dated records rather than projected backward into the launch.
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