Japan’s megabanks to lead experiment with digital yen
Could a new, coordinated effort to digitalize the Japanese economy be strong enough to compete with residents’ persistent use of cash? Japan’s three largest banks, as part of a group of 30 private sector actors, are set to collaborate on an experiment with a digital yen. The group consists of banks, various Japanese brokerages, utility and telecom firms and retailers, according to a Reuters report published on Nov. 19.For the purposes of the experiment, the private banks will be responsible for issuing the currency, although the prospect of other actors becoming involved in issuance has....
Related News
Less than a year after raising ¥3 billion ($27 million) in a record funding round by a bitcoin and Fintech company in Japan, Tokyo-based bitFlyer now sees all three of Japan’s ‘mega-banks’ as investors in the bitcoin exchange. In an announcement today, bitFlyer, Japan’s largest bitcoin exchange and blockchain services company, revealed fresh funding from Mizuho Capital and SMBC Venture Capital, both of which are the investment arms of the Mizuho Banking Corporation and the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation respectively. The two banking corporations join Mitsubishi UFJ as investors in....
Three of the biggest banking corporations in Japan have partnered bitFlyer, Japan’s biggest bitcoin exchange to test the viability of domestic money transfers over blockchain technology. The banks discovered that money transfers over a blockchain were just as fast, if not faster compared to traditional money systems. In a report today by regional publication Nikkei, few details have been revealed, about the banks-led blockchain tests including the crucial snipper of whether or not the distributed ledger used was, in fact, the bitcoin blockchain. It’s merely speculative, due to the....
Following the controversial bank bailouts and Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008, reports show in late 2019 and 2020, the U.S. Federal Reserve participated in providing trillions of dollars in secret repo loans to megabanks. At the end of March, investigative journalists, Pam and Russ Martens from Wall Street on Parade, uncovered $3.84 trillion in stealth repo loans from the Fed to the French financial institution, BNP Paribas in Q1 2020. Additional data indicates that the U.S. central bank leveraged secret repo loans to provide a whopping $48 trillion to megabanks in late 2019....
A two-day conference will see notable Asian banking giants along with other participants and developers of blockchain technology outline their use cases for the innovation. Singapore will host the ‘Blockchain for Finance Conference, Asia Pacific’ with a number of significant financial institutions participating in the event. The conference, held on June 20-21, will see banks, credit unions and building societies, among other companies from various industries to discuss and evaluate the use-cases and proof-of-concept prototypes of blockchain-based applications. Hosted by the FinTech....
Self-reg entity JVCEA has reportedly received stern warnings to get its act together, as Japan’s Financial Services Agency pushes for the organization to speed up its AML regulation rollout. Japan’s self-regulation “experiment” for the crypto industry is reportedly not working as well as intended, according to local government and industry experts. Since 2018, the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA), a self-regulation entity, has been tasked with creating guidelines for the country’s crypto industry, with arguments at the time that the entity could be better placed to cope....