Bitcoin Forum

so bitcoin will soon be a legal currency in japan. the only problem is that their version of the bitlicense is even more of a monster than the new york version.

https://bitconnect.co/bitcoin-news/434/japan-creates-bitlicense-and-becomes-a-legal-currency/

according to this it's gonna cost $300-500,000 per application plus millions in ongoing compliance. alts will need to be approved and on the list or they won't be permitted to be sold to the public. on top of that it also applies to non custodial businesses too.

there was never really much of a crypto scene in japan anyway, but this don't look like it's going to break out after something this onerous. thanks, mtgox.

Last time I heard about Bitcoin in Japan people were saying that it was going to be authorised to businesses, it was very popular. It seems it is not much the case here. Anyway, with such a license I think not much will be tempted by the adventure.

Kind of a sad day in Japan for bitcoin and cryptos in general.  

Why such the high compliance fees?  It seems there are lots of scams to an uneducated public and the government wants to really curb that.

And then we all know about Mt Gox.

Japan has been dominating lately in BTC volume, looks to over 50% at the moment!
https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/analysis/USD?type=Currencies

Wonder how this ties in with that ...

kinda hard to blame them for wanting to make it safe as houses. they must have been seriously annoyed to have something spectacularly blow up on their turf that they'd probably never heard of.

i wonder whether good sense will prevail, it's very hard to make the case for the bitlicense being any type of success, or whether they actively want to deter crypto's usage without outright saying it.

No information about who is on the list other than Tokens and IOU are banned - meaning definitely no MaidSafe, Iconomi, Augur and other projects which have gone in & out of the top 10 - top 20.  I can agree with this because almost all Tokens and IOUs seem to be vaporware scams.

I will be surprised if they end up permitting Monero and Dashcoin, since their use and promotion on the darknet isn't a secret anymore.

In terms of usage, XEM is actually used more than Ethereum and Litecoin but the pessimist in me assumes the bureaucrat in charge of the list will only look at exchange volume (which are often whales trading to themselves) and not any other metrics in deciding who gets on the list.

disregarding specific currencies, who's gonna be paying these types of rates to operate there? there can't be many crypto businesses with that type of spare change, especially not japanese ones.

Unless things have since changed, I can't imagine Kraken remaining in Japan because most of their user base has been European for the longest time and relocating to Japan, from California, was done for taxation reasons and the perception at the time that they were lasseiz faire (due to allowing MtGox in the first place).

Japan is still arguably "2011" in terms of local adoption and interest in blockchain.   I think it's just going to be large exchanges like BitFlyer, organizations like BCCC (if they can convince their members to gather up $500,000) and some medium sized entities who will remain in Japan.

It's really going to be interesting how this pans out and what happens to some of the japanese exchanges.  I"m sure there will be a few how jump through the hoops and comply, as it will just be a huge barrier for other businesses to enter.

Outside of BTC I too wonder about the other top alts.  

Interesting if you look at the top exchanges, ZAIF (JPY/BTC option) seems to be dominating in volume.  For some reason it is not listed under the normal exchange page.
ZAIF 24 hour volume
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/zaif/

All 24 hour volume
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/

Edit: just look under all (includes no fees)
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/volume/24-hour/all/

Thing is there isn't much information about this volume.  Japan is dominating in volume but there doesn't really seem to be a surge in local adoption or Japanese becoming more influential within the blockchain world.  This seems to be high speculation by a few people or maybe even Japanese firms doing it.

Coinmap only indicates 53 places in Tokyo are accepting Bitcoin and that doesn't mean they're doing daily transactions either.

isn't it zero fees? i don't think many western stat sites bother listing zero fee places alongside the paid ones and rightly so.

I am amazed that they didn't do this much sooner, looks like they are starting to see the potentials of crypto(bitcoin) they know what will happen 10-20 years from now, which is bitcoin with a market cap of +$500B, thus trying to get ahead of everything and to have some sort of control over the money flow.

The licensing will be based upon each country's demand. Japan as a technology developed nation is quite competing in all the sectors. Starting of the year bitcoin experienced a big potential growth providing the price to be stable $1000. This year a sudden increase of merchants accepting bitcoin has got increased.

Potential? They basically want to regulate cryptocurrency by hindering any business related projects. What company will be able to met these ridiculous requirements?
Do you know that New York is practically a blank spot on map of crypto companies? It is because they have draconian BitLicense. Japan will be black hole of cryptocurrency.

I think that bitlicense is the way Japan can earn from bitcoin. Since they can not control bitcoin hey make it legal but to apply for it the cost is too much almost the same that they tax on it. It is still the supply and demand that can dictate the bitcoin price, since bitcoin is popular in Japan, expect for bitcoin price to soar in my opinion.

Expect more to come in the next months and years. It kinda looks governments are trying to fight it back by regulating Bitcoin up to the hilt. I'm curious if this kind of "licensing" actually means prohibition of Bitcoin in Japan. What folks from Japan are saying? I think they should be more aware of and familiar with the situation in regard to real intentions of the Japanese government

What does it mean to Bitcoin in Japan?

bitcoin as a legal currency is a very awesome announcement, however, the Japanese bitlicense? i guess that kind of licence is a form of taxing, which are barely related to Mt. Gox because the transaction flow is unlikely to be tracked even for China. as well, how can they even control the bitcoin users? the location of the transaction can be made in the dark. this act might encourage people to use VPN to evade this licence.


explicitly, and the price of bitcoin is ready to skyrocket.

to be honest with you i can't believe it is a true estimate of the situation. specially about the prices. i can not agree that a bitcoin related license registration can cost 300,000 to 500,000 dollar while any other license registration would only cost somewhere around 50 to 700 dollar!

I salute Japan for doing that. There are many shitcoins these days and after selling some of their coins they just died out and their profit secured. This is possibly one reason for Japan to check if a new coin to be launched has a backed up fund and not some shitcoins that wants to eat the bitcoins of traders. This is my opinion though there is a possibility that I am wrong but I will stick to it.

how they are going to prevent monero to be used, you don't need to sell soem altcoin, you can use them in the deep web and who receive will sell in his country, they cannot regulate this in any way

they can only regulate exchange not altcoin directly, it will be fun when decentralized exchange maybe built in wallet will be all over the place....

they can never prevent any cryptocurrency from being used, and they will all be used and traded if announced illegal even which is not the case here.
what is going to happen is that they may put some restrictions on the exchanges and regulate them. and the news is always making these things bigger than they really are. one thing that I am surprised to see in this article is the numbers they are giving for the cost of the applications and possibility of more future costs which seems to be unreal.
I am not familiar with bitconnect.co to tell if it is click-baiting or not.
I always prefer reading China news from 8btc that seems to be more realistic and with less to no lies about the situations.

I did not follow this very closely or not at all to be precise, so maybe i lack some information or understanding, but consider this and correct me if i am wrong.
The coast to get a license and stay licensed seem high at first, but you are operating legally and this gives you a great form of safety. If we want Bitcoin become big, then sooner or later big companies, that can handle the licensing and still make money, would emerge anyway. Sure this is bad for smaller companies and a hindrance, but it is good for Bitcoin. Bitcoin is still new to them and has to fight for everything, which might change with time. Other countries will make cheaper licensed that are easier to obtain and then business will go there. It will just take a while till we get where we want to be.     

This sounds really demanding, how can everyone fulfill this bureaucracy of a requirement in order to get listed? It's really a tall order for some of us. They need to lessen the license rules.