GMO Japan

GMO Japan Review

What is GMO Japan?

GMO Japan is an exchange based in Japan. It belongs to the large internet conglomerate GMO Internet Group. On 1 May 2020, the company owning this exchange was registered as a "First Class Financial Instruments Business Operator" in Japan.

The exchange is divided into two divisions: the cryptocurrency FX-division (leveraged trading) and the cryptocurrency spot trading-division.

Only For Japanese Residents

There is a big restriction on which users that are allowed to trade here. You can only use the GMO Japan-platform, if you live in Japan. There are also a number of other account opening requirements, namely the following:

So if you don’t satisfy all of the above criteria, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a place to trade at. Don’t be too sad though, there are many other venues that offer the type of trading this exchange does. Use our Exchange Finder to find out which alternatives you have.

Sponsors of FC Ryukyu

A fun fact that we would like to mention here is that GMO Japan is one of the main sponsors of FC Ryukyu (a professional soccer club whose home town is Okinawa City, Japan). We like to see these types of commercial relationships and they are becoming more and more as time passes.

Leveraged Trading

GMO Japan offers leveraged trading on its platform for a number of different contracts.

A word of caution might be useful for someone contemplating leveraged trading. Leveraged trading can lead to massive returns but – on the contrary – also to equally massive losses. For instance, let’s say that you have 10,000 USD on your trading account and bet 100 USD on BTC going long (i.e., increasing in value). You do so with 100x leverage. If BTC then increases in value with 10%, if you had only bet 100 USD, you would have earned 10 USD. As you bet 100 USD with 100x leverage, you have instead earned an additional 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). On the other hand, if BTC decreases in value with 10%, you have lost 1,000 USD (990 USD more than if you had not leveraged your deal). So, as you might imagine, there is potential for huge upside but also for huge downside…

GMO Japan Trading View

Different exchanges have different trading views. And there is no “this overview is the best”-view. You should yourself determine which trading view that suits you the best. What the trading views normally have in common is that they all show the order book or at least part of the order book. They alsn normally show a price chart of the chosen cryptocurrency and order history. Buy and sell-boxes are also quite common. Before you choose an exchange, try to have a look at the trading view so that you can ascertain that it feels right to you. Unfortunately, due to us not having a Japanese phone number, we have not been able to access the exchanges trading view. Accordingly, we have no trading view to provide here. We will update this review as soon as we manage to obtain a picture of the trading view.

GMO Japan Fees

GMO Japan Trading fees

This trading platform’s trading fees for takers are 0.05%. This fee is slightly below the industry average for crypto contracts trading. 

If you were impressed by the taker fee, wait until you hear about the maker fees here. Makers (i.e., the parties in a trade that doesn’t take the offer that is already on the order book) don’t pay any fees at all – they get paid. The maker fees here are -0.01%, meaning that makers are rewarded for providing liquidity to the trading platform. This is substantially below the industry average crypto contracts maker fees, which are arguably around 0.025%.

GMO Japan Withdrawal fees

This exchange does not charge any withdrawal fees themselves. However, as always, there are network fees involved when making a transaction. This means that the only fee you need to be concerned with when withdrawing from this platform, is the network fees paid to the miner. This withdrawal fee, or rather lack of withdrawal fee, is below the industry average and very competitive.

Overall, the fee level here is very competitive and consumer friendly

Deposit Methods

GMO Japan offers wire transfer as a deposit method, but credit cards are not a permitted deposit method. If you for any reason want to buy cryptos with your credit card, then this exchange is off boundaries for you. However, as the exchange accepts deposit of fiat currencies at all, it qualifies as an “entry-level exchange”.

If you for some reason absolutely need to find an exchange accepting credit card deposits, just use our Exchange Finder and it will filter out the available exchanges for you.