Japan leads Asia in Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Acceptance

[Ozark]

Japan is still the undisputed leader in blockchain and cryptocurrency acceptance in Asian, a new study suggests.

A study by digital marketing group Cyberius claims that Japan is one of the leading Asian nations in terms of accepting cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In particular, Cyberius point to the government’s passage of a bill in May 2016 acknowledging digital currency as money.

In its latest research called Blockchain Implementation In Asia, the researchers cited data released by Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) showing that more than 3.5 million individuals in the country trade in cryptocurrencies and consider digital assets as current assets. The data was taken from the 17 cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, which shows the size of the domestic cryptocurrency trade there.

Midori Kanemitsu, the chief financial officer of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchange operator, bitFlyer Inc. was quoted by the researchers as saying about Japan’s blockchain economy:

“Effectively, Japan is the first and only country that has a proper legal system regulating cryptocurrency trading. That’s a big deal. Before the law regulating cryptocurrencies, people worried what would happen to their money if an exchange was to go bust.”

The annual trading volumes of Bitcoin itself in the country grew from $22 million in 2014 to $97 billion in 2017. Moreover, the FSA revealed that trading on margins, credit, and futures of Bitcoin had gone up from $2 million in 2014 to $543 billion in 2017.

In addition, the country’s biggest bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), brought a new blockchain to life to reduce the cost of payments and primarily to increase speed. The main focus of the partnership between MUFG and Akamai (a U.S. tech company) has been to create a large blockchain. It could be responsible for one million transactions per second at latencies of less than two seconds.

Only recently, the Japanese tax agency, the NTA, has released a new strategic policy encouraging individuals and companies to declare their digital currency income tax returns effortlessly.

Early this month, the FSA said it would introduce a new initial coin offering (ICO) regulatory framework and require any company planning to launch a token sale to register with the agency first in a bid to provide further investor protection.

The FSA said the new rule is in response to cases of fraudulent ICOs overseas. The regulations will aim to “limit individuals’ investment in ICOs for better protecting them.”

SOURCE