The Asian country has voted to regulate operators of digital currency exchanges, as these new forms of money continue to gain interest.

Japanese lawmakers have voted to regulate operators of exchanges for virtual currencies such as bitcoin, defining such media of exchange as “asset-like values” that can be used for payments and transferred digitally, media reports said.

The bill was approved last week by the Japanese Diet, according to the Japan Times.

Virtual currency exchange operators will have to register with the Financial Services Agency, while the agency is authorised to conduct on-site inspections and issue administrative orders as needed. Ever since the arrival of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, policymakers have worried that an unregulated market could create conduits for illicit funds.

Defenders of these currencies say they provide a viable alternative to state-run fiat money systems that are in danger of inflating because of central bank quantitative easing. The blockchain technology employed in digital currencies is also seen as a valuable form of fintech in its own right. A number of jurisdictions around the world are crafting rules to deal with virtual currencies, such as the Isle of Man, the UK Crown Dependency. There is a patchwork of rules and not, as yet, a great deal of uniformity around the world.

The report noted that the law’s revision comes more than two years after Mt Gox, a Tokyo-based operator of a bitcoin exchange, went bust on 24 February 2014. Before the firm’s bankruptcy, the exchange was the largest for a virtual currency in the world.

The revised law will come into effect within a year of its promulgation.