Bitcoin Forum

On January 7, CCN reported that the Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan is considering the approval of the country’s first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

With the final deadline of the VanEck Bitcoin ETF on the horizon, could the approval of a Bitcoin ETF in Japan have an impact on the decision of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)?

Read more:https://www.ccn.com/could-japans-approval-of-the-bitcoin-etf-affect-us-secs-decision/

Will the SEC approve a Bitcoin ETF? Any thoughts?

the most probable answer is right in the article:


anyway, the FSA is just considering it. it may not be under serious consideration and we have no idea about a timeline. given that they rejected the idea of making legal changes to allow bitcoin futures, i wouldn't get my hopes up.

if japan did approve an ETF, i could see it influencing the SEC but probably over the course of several years. it wouldn't have an immediate effect.

Japan's merely mirrorring what's happening in the US re Bitcoin ETFs. The SEC has been considering applications for a while, and FSA is only doing that now. But if FSA were to approve first... would this affect the ultimate decision? Probably not. It might drag things on, it might provide ammunition for those fighting in appeals and in providing precedent. But minds are made up about the how and the why. Influence the decision? Absolutely not.

We've seen far greater moves from Japan than a Bitcoin ETF, and that didn't do anything to make the US budge. Bitcoin legal tender? Licenced exchanges? What's the US got? Bitlicense?

Nah, I doubt that there will be correlation or something if Japan approves ETF. US are not affected by external factors and they will decide without any influence from other countries whatsoever. We have seen this before so I doubt that not just because Japan approves it, US will follow. And Japan never said it will approved at this point, although it might be in their radar but I speculate that it will take some time before FSA will give the go signal.

I think that SEC may actually take "external factors" into consideration, since they don't want US "fall behind".
However, as already stated, FSA is considering the approval, which actually doesn't mean anything to be taken into consideration.

Unfortunately it appears to be a fake news by Bloomberg on which the OP's article is based on. FSA’s representatives have denied Bloomberg’s claims:

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/japans-financial-regulator-denies-interest-in-bitcoin-etf

Also I doubt that the SEC's decision would be affected by FSA’s approval, because they(SEC) have lost their ability to think imo. I hope I'm wrong about that though.

I agree into this one. US don't want really to fall behind so we cant really say that they do 100% don't care at all on such decision had been
made by Japan towards ETF. This would still takes time though if they would considerate some points or not.

regulated futures contracts, swaps, options. the japanese government refused to consider legal changes that would have allowed domestic bitcoin futures markets. the FSA said (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bloomberg-japan-gauges-interest-in-bitcoin-etf-as-pundits-talk-down-us-approval-rumors) of futures "such products would achieve little besides stoke speculation".

also, at least one US state has begun accepting bitcoin for tax payments (https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/26/us/ohio-business-pay-taxes-with-bitcoin-trnd/index.html). can you do that in japan?

I doubt it. Japan's ETF market hovers below $400 billion while the US ETF market is just shy of a being a $4 trillion market, which also explains why people are so desperately eager to see the VanEck ETF get an approval. There is no comparison. The SEC is in a league of its own, and it will ignore everything else till it thinks there is reason to allow an ETF to come through.

If even 1% of that capital flows into the VanEck ETF, it's ~$40 billion right there. I can see why the US isn't keen on approving this ETF. Heck, even 0.1% = ~$4 billion would be a great achievement already.

The SEC has a tough decision to make. Open the flood gates or not. :)

yeah, the two aren't worth comparing. i just think the SEC wants to see the global market mature and for regulated markets to gain more prominence over the next few years. a Japanese ETF could play a small role in that department, but i wouldn't put much emphasis on it either.

There is still no high degree of certainty that Japan will soon be approving any ETF application but I am thinking that they are just expressing a possibility and knowing how Japanese works...this can take time as they are not known to make haste decision specially with something that may have far-reaching consequences. There is now this growing acceptance of the big possibility that come February SEC will eventually still say no to the ETF application pending on its hall. And I think we should be prepared for that decision.

Well, the devil is in paying precious attention to details

For example, Bitcoin is not actually legal tender in Japan, and those who claim to the contrary don't know what legal tender essentially is. Bitcoin is just like a foreign currency in this country, at least this is what I construed from available info on the matter. On the other hand, while Bitcoin is not legal tender in the US on a federal level, it looks like you can pay state taxes with Bitcoin in Ohio (according to this (https://www.wsj.com/articles/pay-taxes-with-bitcoin-ohio-says-sure-1543161720) WSJ piece). This is as close to being legal tender as it gets (on a state level, at least)