Japan Appoints Crypto-Friendly Leader as New Financial Services Agency Commissioner

According to Jiji Press on July 7, the Japanese government has named Ryozo Himino as the next commissioner of the country’s Financial Service Agency (FSA). The crypto-friendly leader is likely to push positive reforms in the industry. A formal announcement is expected to be made later within this month.

Currently, Himino serves as the International Financial Deputy Counselor, a position that has made him widely known on the international stage. Last year September, Himino became the first Japanese Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

Himino is regarded as being sympathetic to the cryptocurrency industry. He was largely instrumental in the Financial Services Agency’s decision to invite Bitcoin and open Blockchain advocate Adam Back to a seminar held June last year along with G20 Fukuoka in Japan.

During that time, the FSA’s aim was to offer an opportunity for various stakeholders and world leaders to gather at the G20 summit and talk about blockchain’s potential to develop decentralized financial systems. The Financial Service Agency acknowledged Adam Back as a legendary cryptographer who wants to change the world using cryptography.

Toshihide Endo, the current head of Japan’s Financial Services Agency, is also a crypto-friendly regulator. Anthony Pompliano, the founder and partner at Morgan Creek capital management, uploaded a picture he took with Endo last September and tweeted, “Japan’s Financial Services Agency is a big proponent of Bitcoin and Lightning Network.”

But the FSA seemed to have become stricter about the cryptocurrency industry during Endo’s tenure with two controversial crypto-related laws passed in this year May. The agency also has cut the leverage cap for cryptocurrency margin trading to two times.

Last year September, Himino described Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency as a wakeup call that made regulatory authorities and central banks to open their eyes and see clearly the issues they need to face sooner or in the future.  

Japan’s Central Bank Testing Its National Digital Currency

The Reserve Bank of Japan recently announced that it would start experimenting with a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to understand technical challenges before issuing a national digital currency. The Bank of Japan showed its interest in developing a centralized digital version of its national yen currency. The central banker revealed that the upcoming experiments with a CBDC could provide an alternative to the traditional Japanese Yen.

The central bank is willing to examine the concept because of the increased use of digital payments, which have been adopted at a higher rate than expected because of the COVID-19 outbreak and the shift of several businesses to card-based or contactless transactions. The central bank not only wants to get a feasible digital currency that can be utilized widely but also the one that can be accessed offline in any environment and not necessarily relying on a mobile device.