Japan Officially Recognizes Bitcoin and Digital Currencies as Money
Japanese banks are set for embracing Bitcoin after proposed new laws. Has Bitcoin finally come of age in the land of the rising sun? On March 4, 2016, The Japan Times reported that the Cabinet in Japan had approved a series of bills which would help the banking sector expand their reach when it comes to Information Technology businesses. This intertwining of banking and IT are called ‘FinTech’ in emerging parlance. Interestingly, the cabinet also takes into stock the rising importance of virtual currencies and the new bills will recognize them as a means of making payments and having the....
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A proposed plan to end sales-tax collection on purchases of virtual currencies in Japan will likely propel the growth of Bitcoin and other digital currencies as alternatives to fiat according to a report by Nikkei. After the news, more exchange traders were reported joining the Bitcoin’s bandwagon. The market research firm, Seed Planning, estimating the Bitcoin's annual trading volume will soar to 2 trln yen this year. This move could slash costs for buyers and will be another incentive that would motivate existing Bitcoin users in the country that has been described as one of the first to....
What makes a currency “real?” Is it any given government or just the imagination of the people who chose which currency they want to use? In Japan, the Cabinet has recognized that virtual currencies, including but not limited to Bitcoin are in fact similar to real money and the implications for Japan and the countries around the world it does business with could be huge. The set of bills that the Japanese bill set forth to recognize virtual currencies was meant as a measure to help banks expand their information technology capabilities to both cope with the growth of digital currencies and....
The National Diet in Japan (the legislature consisting of the Lower House and the Upper House) is currently deliberating over bills to regulate bitcoin and other virtual currencies and a keenly contested bitcoin industry in Japan is watching closely. Following the debacle of the now-defunct bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox which collapsed in 2014, bitcoin as a currency had a PR problem, particularly in Japan. The government stepped in and sought to establish certain guidelines to regulate the cryptocurrency. Before regulation comes recognition and bitcoin is set to be seen as a currency, similar....
As a Japanese Cabinet-signed law recognizing virtual currencies like bitcoin as a legal method of payment goes into effect on April 1, bitcoin companies and adopters are short on answers about accounting standards specific to cryptocurrencies. In February 2016, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA), the country’s financial regulator, looked into proposals to consider legislative revisions that would recognize bitcoin and digital currencies as equivalents to conventional currencies. The revision, if approved, would see bitcoin as “fulfilling the functions of [a] currency.” Come March, the....
Financial regulators in Japan proposed the recognition of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as legitimate methods of payment on par with fiat money. Exchanges will need to register.. On the 23rd of February the Financial Services Agency of Japan submitted legislative revisions that would see Bitcoin and other virtual currencies recognised as legitimate currencies. This has come about as a result of realizing that virtual currencies essentially fulfil the nation’s definition of the functions of a currency. “There is a long way to go...But we have discussed reform and believe it is the right way....