Category: Japan

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Crypto News Japan Metaverse

Japan’s Ministry of Economy Launches Web3 Policy Office

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has established a Web3 policy office within the Minister’s Secretariat in a bid to boost the importance of digital assets in the country.

According to an official announcement, the new Web3 office will help create better frameworks for Web3-related businesses by gathering information from key players in the industry and working with relevant parties toward developing a proper environment for Web3:

As metaverses become new personal interfaces, especially among younger generations such as Generation Z, digital spaces and assets could become much more important, and their business value could also increase dramatically.

METI blog post

Moreover, the Web3 office will bring together several departments responsible for industrial finance, taxation and corporate systems, as well as those responsible for media, digital content, sports, fashion and other industries.

Companies Betting Big on the Metaverse

Japan is one of the latest countries to enter the metaverse with its push to expand Web3 businesses and technology. Not so long ago, one of North America’s ‘Big Four’ accounting firms, KPMG, opened its first metaverse collaboration hub to examine potential use cases in several industries.

Despite a current bearish scenario for digital assets in general, companies and firms across different industries are still betting big on Web3. A week ago, Crypto News Australia reported that auction house Christie’s had established Christie’s Ventures, an investment fund for fintech companies looking to tap into the digital art market.

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Crypto News Japan Regulation Stablecoins

Japan to Regulate Stablecoins to Protect Citizens Following UST Implosion

The Japanese government has agreed to pass a law that will regulate stablecoins, defining them as digital money and protecting Japanese citizens from potential losses on their crypto investments.

This follows last month’s implosion of Terra’s UST and LUNA:

Safety Net for Investors

In 2021, Japan’s Financial Services Agency prepared a bill to clarify the legal status of stablecoins. This week, that bill successfully passed through the upper house of Japan’s parliament and will come into effect in 2023. Under the legislation, stablecoins must be linked to either the yen or another legal tender, with holders guaranteed the right to redeem their stablecoins at face value.

The move will mean a safety net for investors who are currently on edge or recovering from large losses after the TerraUSD (UST) crash that saw LUNA tank. The legislation also means that stablecoins can only be issued by a licensed bank, trust company, or registered money transfer agent:

Currently, Japanese exchanges do not list stablecoins, and it is worth noting that this newly passed law will not address overseas asset-backed stablecoins and their algorithmic equivalents. The law also takes aim at money laundering.

Controversies Surround Stablecoins

Following last month’s fall of Terra, a South Korean LUNA investor attempted to take matters into his own hands after losing US$2.4 million in the collapse. The investor literally knocked on the front door of Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs, to speak with him about the loss. While the act was not technically deemed to be trespassing, the investor was arrested and is likely to face a fine.

Last week, the Bank of England (BoE) agreed to “rescue” collapsed stablecoins to protect holders. The announcement came from HM Treasury and suggested that the BoE is eager to amend financial legislation to pull crypto under its jurisdiction.

Closer to home, the Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) announced plans to extend the usage of A$DC – its cash-backed stablecoin – to meet demands from institutional customers.

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Blockchain Crypto Exchange Crypto News Hackers Japan

Japan’s Liquid Exchange Hacked for Almost $100 Million

Close to US$100 million has been stolen by hackers from Japan’s Liquid Global exchange, which has since suspended deposits and withdrawals while also moving its assets into offline storage.

According to an August 19 tweet, Liquid exchange confirmed that it had been breached and its hot wallet compromised. The exact amount still needs to be verified, but estimates place it upward of US$90 million.


With such a large amount of crypto compromised, the exchange has moved its digital assets into cold storage. According to Eddie Wang, senior researcher at OKLink, hackers made off with BTC, ETH, TRX, XRP and other ERC-20 tokens.

The cold wallet used for segregation management is safe, and no impact on the assets entrusted to us by our customers has been confirmed.

Liquid (via Quoine)

Blockchain analytics company Elliptic says US$45 million in tokens were being converted to Ethereum through decentralised exchanges – blockchain-based platforms that require no intermediaries – such as Uniswap.

Destination Wallets Blacklisted by KuCoin

In the meantime, the wallets that received the stolen tokens have been blacklisted by KuCoin and other exchanges are expected to soon follow suit.

Liquid exchange also announced that “under these circumstances, we will suspend the warehousing and withdrawal of cryptographic assets until the security of all wallets is confirmed”.

How It Was Done

According to a blog post by Liquid, “the MPC wallet [used for warehousing/delivery management of cryptographic assets] held by our Singapore subsidiary Quoine was damaged by hacking. The impact on us is currently being confirmed.”

MPC is an advanced cryptographic technique in which the private key controlling funds is generated collectively by a set of parties, none of which can see the fragments calculated by the others. Liquid Global’s blog post did not explain how this security arrangement was circumvented. However, an investigation is under way.

This breach comes in the same week as a record-breaking DeFi hack against PolyNetwork, which siphoned off around US$600 million from the protocol.

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Crypto News Japan

Japanese Crypto Telcoin (TEL) Surges 260% In a Week, Amid Liquidity Integrations

Telcoin header
Telcoin header https://twitter.com/telcoin_team

Japanese cryptocurrency Telcoin (TEL) has made significant gains this 2021, surging over 260% in a week following recent liquidity integrations.

TEL has surged more than 4,000% since February 1, now trading at $0.054 USD at the time of writing, having recorded over $110 million USD in 24-trading volume.

Telcoin (TEL) / Tether price chart

Global Remittance Services With Telcoin

The recent surge in price follows the launch of V2, an upgrade that enables Telcoin remittance services between the Philippines and Canada, being the North American country the first of four initial sending markets for fiat remittances, with Australia, the United States and Singapore to follow.

The project has called the crypto community’s attention since its CEO, Paul Neuner, appeared before the Nebraska Legislature on February 23 to talk about how the state could benefit from making legislation geared toward turning the state into a decentralised finance hub.

A Brief Explanation of Telcoin

Telcoin is an Ethereum-based platform that bridges mobile money platforms to decentralised finance systems.

The protocol allows users to make instant transfers with their phones or PCs by leveraging blockchain technology to transfer money worldwide in seconds instead of making long lines to send remittances.

TEL can be bought on several centralised and decentralised exchanges, including Kucoin, Uniswap and Quickswap.

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Bitcoin Investing Japan

Japan’s SBI Holdings to Launch Crypto Lending Service via VCTrade

Major Japanese financial services provider SBI Holdings has announced the launch of a new cryptocurrency lending service via its crypto subsidiary VC Trade.

The new service, named simply as VC Trade Lending, will allow customers to earn interest by lending out their cryptocurrency holdings to other crypto enthusiasts for a period of 84 days. Initially the platform will support only Bitcoin (BTC) but SBI Holdings plans on adding other major coins like Ethereum (ETH) and XRP at a later date.

SBI Holdings announced the new service earlier today in a press release posted in Japanese on its official website. The release outlines the conditions related to the new service, including the level of interest users can earn set at the relatively small amount of only 1.0%. Considering the huge gains Bitcoin has been making lately, this seems like a bad choice of investment. However, for those investors with a low level of risk aversion, it promises guaranteed returns rather than the potentially huge losses one could accrue trading cryptocurrencies on the open market.

Following the news earlier this year of lending platform Cred Inc. going bankrupt and failing to pay out its customers, SBI Holdings is aware of the skepticism around crypto lending services. To this end, it has assured customers that all assets are lent to companies within the SBI Group, mitigating any risk of third-party losses. 

Other conditions include a minimum loan amount of 0.1 BTC (approximately AUD$2,600) and a maximum of 5 BTC (approximately AUD$130,000). Users of the VC Trade Lending service won’t be charged any account management or annual membership fees and won’t have to pay for cryptocurrency transfers or deposits made in Japanese Yen. However, there is a small fee charged for withdrawals in Yen.

Expanding Crypto Products

The move follows a prior expansion of its crypto offerings in August this year, when SBI Holdings launched a cryptocurrency derivatives product on its SBI FX Trade platform. The service allowed users to buy and trade CFDs (contracts for difference) with the top three major cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and XRP. 

Each coin was available for trade in pairs with both USD and Japanese Yen, with a high maximum of 500 BTC. However, CFD offerings have come under intense scrutiny lately, particularly in the UK, where local regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has called for a ban on the product.

The ease of entry the product provides makes it very attractive to amateur traders who may not know what they are buying into and fall foul to fraud. More often than not, CFDs are presented in a way that makes them difficult to understand and highly risky for the buyer, leading financial regulators to question the ethics of the product.