Week in Japan Crypto #1

Here’s the first edition of “Week in Japan Crypto” covering the latest news around crypto / blockchain in Japan mainly from March 23–30, 2019.

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I’m the host Yusuke Obinata(Obi), the founder of NodeTokyo, the first tech-focused international blockchain conference in Japan and CryptoAge, the blockchain community of devs and students.

⛓Startups

• US-based blockchain security company, Quantstamp officially announced its expansion to Japan with investments from Nomura Holdings and Digital Garage. — Link
• LayerX announced Zerochain, the first implementation of a privacy-preserving and account-based blockchain on Substrate. — Link

💱Exchanges

• New exchange TAOTAO, a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan is set to launch in May, started user registration. — Link
• Rakuten Wallet, a subsidiary of Rakuten received a virtual currency exchange license from Financial Services Agency (FSA). — Link
  Rakuten is the e-commerce giant and one of the biggest credit card issuers in Japan
• Another new exchange, DeCurret also got the exchange license from the FSA, expected to start operating in April. — Link
  DeCurret is a joint venture of 15+ big traditional Japanese companies like telco, banks, real estate, securities and insurance companies.

💼Enterprises

• Z Corporation, a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan launched CoinDesk Japan
• MoneyPartners and Daiwa Securities made the official business partnership and set to form a JV to start cryptocurrency exchange business including trading of digital assets. — Link
  MoneyPartners is the first company to get the virtual currency exchange license from the FSA in 2017, and Daiwa Securities is the second largest securities brokerage in Japan
• Financial service giant SBI’s money transfer app MoneyTap got investments from 13 local banks. — Link
  MoneyTap is using Ripple’s blockchain solution xCurrent.
• SBI also established a new subsidiary to manufacture mining chips, and appointed Adam Traidman, the founder of BRD wallet as the CEO — Link
• JR East, the biggest railway company and the biggest e-money(SUICA) provider in Japan confirmed they have been in early discussion to add cryptocurrencies as a payment method for SUICA. — Link
  Suica card is a pre-paid e-money card widely available in Japan at 450K+ places such as convenience stores, taxies and vending machines.

📖Regulation

• FSA has set to add new rules to tighten margin tradings on cryptocurrency exchanges — Link
• Japanese court has acquitted a man who was accused of illicitly mining cryptocurrency by using the computing power of visitors to his website with Coinhive software — Link

👋Meetups / Events

• Jack Dorsey visited Japan for Square’s press conference, and got interviewed by Japanese crypto media “New Economy” for his view on cryptocurrencies — Link
• Zcash held the first meetup in Japan with its founder Zooko — Link
• “Tokyo DOT day” will be organized by Web3 Foundation and CryptoAge on April 9th at DMMcom HQ office. — Link
  Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood from Parity / Web3 Foundation and several other core developers will gather in Tokyo.

That’s all for now. See you next week! — @obnty