Coincheck had 2.87 million verified accounts at the end of September 2026, which puts it among the largest exchanges in Japan. In August 2026 it handled about ¥217 billion of spot trading, roughly three in every ten yen traded at Japanese exchanges that month, by our comparison with industry statistics. Its app is rated 4.33 from about 110,000 reviews on the Japanese App Store.
There is an unusual bonus for English speakers: Coincheck’s parent, Coincheck Group N.V., is listed on NASDAQ and files monthly figures with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in English. You can read account numbers and customer assets yourself, which is more than most Japanese exchanges offer. The fee figures in this review come from Coincheck’s official fee page.
Coincheck at a glance
- Company
- Coincheck, Inc. (parent: Coincheck Group N.V., NASDAQ: CNCK)
- Licences
- Crypto-asset exchange, Kanto Local Finance Bureau No. 00014 (registered 11 Jan 2019); financial instruments business No. 3540; electronic payment instruments dealer No. 00002
- Head office
- Shibuya Sakura Stage, Shibuya side 27F, 1-4 Sakuragaoka-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo
- Coins
- About 37–38 (38 yen prices on the dealer desk; 37 on the FSA register)
- Ways to trade
- Dealer desk, order book (26 yen pairs), leverage
- Order-book fee
- 0% maker / 0% taker on BTC, ETH and most pairs (0.05% / 0.10% on ETC, IOST, FNCT, BRIL and FPL)
- Dealer spread
- Published as 0.1–5.0% against a reference price (1.7–7.0% on some coins; wider in fast markets)
- Minimum
- ¥500 on the dealer desk; ¥10,000 a month for auto-buy
- Yen deposits
- Bank transfer (your bank’s fee only); convenience store ¥770–¥1,018; quick deposit via Pay-easy from ¥770
- Yen withdrawal
- ¥407 flat
- BTC withdrawal
- 0.0005–0.016 BTC depending on network conditions; free between Coincheck users
- Extras
- Auto-buy, ETH staking, crypto lending up to 5.0% a year, Coincheck NFT, USDC
- App rating
- 4.33 on the Japanese App Store (about 110,000 ratings)
What works
- 0% maker and taker fees on BTC, ETH and most order-book pairs
- One of only two Japanese exchanges that publish a dealer-spread range (0.1–5.0%)
- Cash deposits at convenience stores: ¥770 under ¥30,000, ¥1,018 up to ¥300,000
- Flat ¥407 yen withdrawal, whatever the amount
- Free crypto transfers between Coincheck users
- Monthly KPIs published in English through US SEC filings
Watch out for
- Dealer spread reaches 5.0%, or 7.0% on some coins
- Convenience-store and Pay-easy deposits cost ¥770–¥1,018 each
- Bitcoin withdrawals start at 0.0005 BTC and can rise to 0.016 BTC
- Auto-buy starts at ¥10,000 a month with a 0.1–4.0% spread
- No credit-card deposits or purchases
- App can’t be downloaded or updated outside Japan
Signing up as a foreign resident
Coincheck, like every FSA-registered exchange, serves people who live in Japan. Expect to need a Japanese address, a Japanese phone number for SMS checks, a bank account in your own name, and photo ID for smartphone eKYCElectronic know-your-customer: you photograph your ID and face, or tap an IC-chip card, so the exchange can verify you online.. We could not find an official English page that lists which documents foreign residents can use at Coincheck. The residence card (zairyu card) is the standard photo ID for mid- and long-term residents and is explicitly accepted at bitFlyer and bitbank, but ask Coincheck’s help centre before you start rather than assuming.
We also could not confirm an English interface for Coincheck’s app or website. Its App Store listing names English as a supported language, but that does not tell you how much of the account flow is translated. Plan to work through Japanese screens with a translation app, and copy your name and address exactly as they appear on your ID and bank account. Bank transfers have to come from an account in your own name; if the katakana name your bank sends doesn’t match your registration, the deposit can bounce.
Since January 2026 all new accounts at Japanese exchanges include a tax-residence self-certificationA declaration of the countries where you are tax-resident and any foreign tax ID number, required under the OECD crypto reporting framework (CARF) since 2026.. Have your foreign tax ID ready if you have one. For a fuller picture of visa types, My Number and what tourists can do, read crypto for foreigners in Japan.
Coincheck fees: four ways to spend ¥100,000
Inside the same app you’ll find a dealer deskDealer desk (販売所, hanbaijo): Coincheck sells to you at its own price. One tap, but the buy–sell gap is the real cost. and an order bookOrder book (取引所, torihikijo): users post buy and sell orders and trade with each other. Coincheck charges 0% on most pairs here.. On the order book, both makers and takersMaker: you place a limit order that waits on the book. Taker: you hit an existing order and trade instantly. pay nothing on BTC and ETH. On the dealer desk you pay through the spread. Here is what that means for a ¥100,000 Bitcoin buy that you sell straight back.
| Route | Trading cost | Total with deposit and withdrawal |
|---|---|---|
| Order book, funded by bank transfer | ¥0 (0% fee) | ¥407 withdrawal + your bank’s transfer fee |
| Order book, funded at a konbini | ¥0 (0% fee) | ¥1,018 deposit + ¥407 withdrawal = ¥1,425 |
| Dealer desk, 1% spread each way | About ¥2,000 | About ¥2,000 + deposit and withdrawal |
| Dealer desk, 5% spread each way (published maximum) | About ¥10,000 | About ¥10,000 + deposit and withdrawal |
The lesson is simple: trade on the order book and the only real costs are getting yen in and out. Fund by bank transfer, withdraw once, and the round trip costs ¥407 plus whatever your bank charges to send money. On the dealer desk, the spreadThe gap between the buy and sell price at the same moment. On a dealer desk this is the main cost even when the fee says zero. quickly dwarfs that. Coincheck publishes the 0.1–5.0% range and warns that it can widen when markets move fast.
Two catches. The order book covers 26 yen pairs, not the full coin list, so some coins can only be bought on the dealer desk. And five pairs (ETC, IOST, FNCT, BRIL, FPL) do carry order-book fees of 0.05% for makers and 0.10% for takers.
Measure the spread before you tap
Look at the buy and sell price for the same coin at the same moment. Divide the gap by the average of the two. If the buy price is ¥1,010,000 and the sell price ¥990,000, the gap is ¥20,000, or about 2% for a round trip. If it’s wide, switch to the order book.
Compare Coincheck with other exchanges in our fee comparison calculator, and if limit and market orders are new to you, read how to buy Bitcoin in Japan first.
Deposits and withdrawals: convenient cash, at a price
The cheapest way in is a bank transfer to Coincheck’s account. Coincheck charges nothing; you pay only your own bank’s transfer fee, which many net banks waive a few times a month. If you already have a Japanese bank account with free transfers, this is the default.
Coincheck’s distinctive option is the convenience-store deposit (コンビニ入金): ¥770 under ¥30,000, ¥1,018 from ¥30,000 to ¥300,000. Only a handful of Japanese exchanges take cash this way, so it helps if you have just arrived and online banking is still a work in progress. But a ¥770 fee on a ¥10,000 deposit is 7.7%, so deposit in larger, less frequent amounts. Quick deposit via Pay-easy costs the same up to ¥500,000 and 0.11% plus ¥495 above that. There is no card option.
Withdrawals cost a flat ¥407, which is cheaper than the ¥550–¥770 many rivals charge. Crypto withdrawals are another story: Bitcoin is tiered from 0.0005 BTC up to 0.016 BTC depending on network load, so even the minimum is about ¥6,000 if Bitcoin is at ¥12 million. Transfers between Coincheck users are free. All outgoing transfers come with Travel RuleRules requiring exchanges to pass sender and recipient details with crypto transfers. In force in Japan since June 2023. questions about who owns the receiving wallet. See ways to pay for crypto in Japan for every funding route compared, and how to cash out to yen for the other direction.
Coins, staking, NFTs and USDC
The dealer desk lists around 38 coins, from Bitcoin, Ether and XRP to meme and gaming tokens. Since June 2026, Mercari’s Mercoin also passes orders for some of Coincheck’s coins to Coincheck, so the same tokens are reachable from inside the Mercari app; our Mercoin review explains how.
Coincheck Tsumitate buys automatically every month, or daily, from ¥10,000 a month, pulled straight from your bank account. Purchase prices include a 0.1–4.0% spread. ETH stakingEarning rewards for helping secure a proof-of-stake blockchain. The exchange stakes on your behalf and shares part of the reward. passes 70% of rewards to you, and crypto lending pays up to 5.0% a year for coins you lend to Coincheck for a fixed term. Rewards count as income when you receive them; our Japan crypto tax guide shows how.
Coincheck also runs the Coincheck NFT marketplace and, since being registered as an electronic payment instruments dealer in August 2026, handles USDC. That makes it one of two places in Japan, with SBI VC Trade, where residents can hold the dollar stablecoin through a regulated domestic firm; see yen and dollar stablecoins in Japan. It also links into Saison card points (convertible to BTC, ETH or XRP since June 2026) and KDDI’s au PAY wallet.
Is Coincheck safe after its NEM hack?
On 26 January 2018 attackers drained about 523 million XEM (NEM), worth about ¥58 billion at the time, from a hot wallet at Coincheck. The Kanto Local Finance Bureau issued two business improvement orders. In March 2018 Coincheck repaid about 260,000 NEM holders in yen at ¥88.549 per XEM.
In April 2018 online broker Monex Group bought the company, rebuilt its controls and, on 11 January 2019, obtained FSA registration. In December 2024 its parent, Coincheck Group N.V., listed on NASDAQ under the ticker CNCK, and in March 2026 it completed the acquisition of 3iQ, a Canadian digital-asset manager. Today Coincheck operates under the same rules as every registered exchange in Japan, including cold-walletKeeping private keys on devices that never touch the internet, which sharply reduces the risk of remote theft. custody for customer assets and two-step verification for logins and withdrawals.
The 2018 hack happened, and nothing guarantees another exchange (or Coincheck) won’t be hit; DMM Bitcoin lost about ¥48.2 billion as recently as 2024. Keep what you trade on the exchange and move long-term holdings to a wallet you control. Our wallet guide and crypto scams in Japan cover the practical side.
Travelling or leaving Japan
This is where Coincheck needs more planning than most. Its help centre says the app is provided only in Japan: it cannot be newly downloaded or updated outside the country, and you cannot use the service while staying somewhere it isn’t offered. A long trip with an outdated app, or a phone you replace abroad, can leave you locked out until you’re back.
If you are leaving for good, sell what you want in yen and withdraw it while your Japanese bank account is open, or move coins to your own wallet, then close the account. Crypto isn’t covered by Japan’s exit tax, but gains realised while you were resident still go on your Japanese return. Our guide to moving to or leaving Japan with crypto covers the timing.
Opening an account
Create the account in the app
Register with email and a password, then confirm your phone number by SMS.
Add your details and verify ID
Enter your name, address and occupation, then photograph your ID and your face. Answer the tax-residence questions.
Deposit and buy
Once approved, deposit yen. Buy BTC or ETH on the order book; use the dealer desk only for coins without an order book.
Coincheck says trading can start in as little as one day. For step-by-step help with your first purchase, see how to buy Bitcoin in Japan.
Alternatives worth a look
Coincheck’s weak spots are paid cash and Pay-easy deposits, costly crypto withdrawals and the dealer spread. These registered exchanges cover them:
- SBI VC Trade: free yen withdrawals and free crypto transfers.
- GMO Coin: free instant deposits from Japan Post Bank and PayPay Bank, free withdrawals from ¥10,000.
- bitbank: all 44 coins on an order book, with a maker rebate on most pairs.
- bitFlyer: Bitcoin from ¥1 and BTC rewards from V Points and its credit card.
All eight reviews are on the reviews hub.
Coincheck FAQ
Has Coincheck ever been hacked?
Coincheck lost about ¥58 billion in NEM in January 2018 and repaid around 260,000 holders in yen. Monex Group bought it in April 2018, it was registered by the FSA in January 2019, and its parent has been listed on NASDAQ since December 2024. No exchange is risk-free, so keep only what you trade on any platform.
What fees does Coincheck charge?
Order-book trades in BTC, ETH and most other pairs are 0% for makers and takers. The dealer desk has no fee but a published spread of 0.1–5.0%. Yen withdrawals cost ¥407, convenience-store deposits ¥770–¥1,018, and Bitcoin withdrawals start at 0.0005 BTC.
Can foreigners open a Coincheck account?
Coincheck is for people who live in Japan, so you need a Japanese address, phone number and bank account in your own name. We could not find an official English page listing which IDs foreign residents can use, so confirm with Coincheck’s help centre before applying. Short-term visitors cannot open an account.
Does Coincheck work outside Japan?
Coincheck’s help centre says its app is provided only in Japan and cannot be newly downloaded or updated abroad. You also cannot use the service while staying in a country or region where it isn’t offered. Sort out your holdings before a long trip or a move.
What is the minimum purchase on Coincheck?
The dealer desk takes orders from ¥500. Coincheck Tsumitate, the monthly auto-buy plan, starts at ¥10,000 a month. We could not confirm the order-book minimum from an official page, so check the order screen.
Can I buy USDC on Coincheck?
Yes. Coincheck was registered as an electronic payment instruments dealer in August 2026 and handles USDC, the US-dollar stablecoin. It is one of only two firms on that FSA register, alongside SBI VC Trade.
Sources
- FSA: register of crypto-asset exchange service providers
- Coincheck: fee schedule (Japanese)
- Coincheck: order-book fees (Japanese)
- Coincheck help centre: where the app is available (Japanese)
- Coincheck Group monthly KPIs (SEC Form 6-K)
- Coincheck Group press releases
- FSA: register of electronic payment instruments dealers
Keep reading
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