(Bloomberg) — The lawmaker considered the brains behind Japan’s crypto policy said officials must do even more to relax rules on the industry, after the country’s regulator decided to make it easier for exchanges to list virtual coins.
(Bloomberg) — The lawmaker considered the brains behind Japan’s crypto policy said officials must do even more to relax rules on the industry, after the country’s regulator decided to make it easier for exchanges to list virtual coins.
“This is still not enough,” Masaaki Taira, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s web3 project team, said in an interview. “I don’t think we can stop here.”
Taira’s team drafted a white paper for the industry in March, and he’s widely acknowledged to have persuaded Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to make growing the web3 market a part of his administration’s annual policy guidelines released in June. As well as easing crypto listing regulations, the government has vowed to support blockchain-based technologies as part of efforts to boost the world’s third-largest economy.
The Japan Virtual and Crypto Assets Exchange Association, an industry group that vets token listing requests on behalf of the country’s financial regulator, plans to allow crypto bourses to list digital tokens without going through a lengthy screening process, unless the tokens are new to the nation’s market. The relaxed rules could take effect as early as next month. The body is also studying whether to scrap pre-screening for new coins.
The latest steps suggest Japan is getting more serious about rejuvenating the crypto market. Binance, the world’s biggest digital-asset exchange, is seeking a license to operate in the country four years after it retreated, partly because of this change in stance.
Japan was a hub for cryptocurrency in Bitcoin’s early years when it was home to Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest crypto exchange. But it tightened rules in the years after an almost $500 million hack on local exchange Coincheck Inc. in 2018, which was one of the biggest heists in crypto history.
Taira, 55, said his team is drafting a second white paper that will focus on improving tax, listing and accounting regulations, as well as creating a regulatory framework for so-called decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, the crypto world’s version of company-like entities. It may submit an interim report by year-end, Taira, a former state minister in the Cabinet Office, said.
“The momentum is building,” he said.
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