Bitcoin Forum

After reading this post from wall observer, I've got an idea: The 2013 bubble was because of China (and Willy  ;D). What if 2015 bubble, next point of growth will be not Wall Street and not China again, but Japan?

Japan, just like China, has a lot of people with a lot of money they have nowhere to invest. Bank interest rates are around zero, economy in stagnation, entrance to business is controlled by big guys. So bitcoin is the solution a lot of Japanese are looking for. Is Japan the new China?

Again: Silly numbers != huge adoption


The difference is that the Chinese distrust their government and are looking to get money out of China. They also have a huge network of people outside China, that can receive that money. Neither is true for Japan.

Well, I have doubts that japanese people will really want to play, speculating on Bitcoin.
We have a big handicap here (I live in Tokyo) : MtGox. Everybody think that MtGox = Bitcoin so Bitcoin = dangerous.
Japanese people love new technologies, but without a very heavy "back up" from a very big Japanese company, Bitcoin will have a hard time being trusted. I hope Rakuten will change that !
I don't think exchanges in here has 0 fees on transactions.
I'll try Kraken later, but for the moment the BTC/JPY pair has 0￥ volume. Even if I was really disappointed on Kraken decision to delete the DOGE/EUR pair which had ~1500$/day volume.

You are assuming that major reason why chinese were purchasing bitcoins was to sell them for dollars. And they were doing it because they afraid that chinese government will print zillion of yuans and they will drop to zero.

I'm sceptical of both points.

USD isn't better than yuan and Chinese government has no reason to start inflation. IMO, the major reason why Chinese were purchasing bitcoins is absense of other ways to invest their money (low interest in banks and high business entrance barriers).

The same two reasons exist in Japan - low bank interest and hard entrance to a business.
And the third reason: there is a lot of money in Japan.

So ... new China?

I think the sentiment has been changed recently since there are some positive opinions on twitter and news.

For Twitter: #ビットコイン (https://twitter.com/search?q=ビットコイン)
People are trying to explain the technology behind Bitcoin. http://www.digitalmoney.or.jp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/20141003_BTC2.0.pdf
Some politicians (congressman) start publicly discuss about future applications of Bitcion. http://www.taro.org/2014/10/post-1543.php
 
For News: 楽天グループも導入､復活するビットコイン (http://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/51701) (Adoption of Rakuten Group, Revival of Bitcoin)

I have said not anything about dollars, you are making that assumption. I'm talking about getting money out of China. It is very difficult for them, doesn't matter where they send it to.


The Chinese mindset is different to the Japanese. The Chinese invest money in pretty much everything they can get their hands on to. The Japanese are much more reluctant to jump on "new things".


You have to look at where that money is. It is with the older generation that made their money pre-Asian financial crisis. That generation is not very tech savvy and highly skeptical of new things. The younger generation that may be a bit more open minded does not have a lot of money.


No.

Bitcoin won't thrive in developed countries. Bitcoin could be marketed well on developing countries, where there is no proper tradition, a lot of new dumb money, a big part of the economy is illegal and the officials are corrupt.
Bitcoin needs a nation from either south-America or Africa to create a new boom. Japan is the exact oposite of an place that could be potential for bitcoin marketing.

Japanese are not as conservative as you think.
If Japanese are conservative, Japan can not become the most advanced country in Asia.

And you are basing that on what? Please give an example. Also, keep in mind that the "big money" in Japan is with the older generation, so even if the younger generation may seem to be more open minded, they don't have the money to invest in new things.



Most advanced in what? What year? Please be more specific.

Rakuten Group is one of the older generation. The CEO of Rakuten is 51 years old and he is bullish on Bitcoin.

To the (Sailor) Moon!

Rakuten was only established in 1997. I'm more interested to hear about keiretsu type companies when talking big money. But, well done you found one. I can see where you're sentiment of "huge adoption" comes from.  ::) ;)

Even if Rakuten goes with bitcoin integration in Japan (their only one currently is in the US), it does not mean that bitcoin will be largely adopted by the general public. Exactly because - like you pointed out in the other thread - there are many, many options available to the Japanese already, most of which are more convenient than the use of bitcoin.

There's no strong gambling culture among the Japanese. They are more rational than the Chinese.  :P

Bitcoin has one important advantage over traditional solutions: low fee.
Once Japanese understand the technology and advantages of Bitcoin, they will accept it with no doubt.

Gambling is also banned in Japan. But then there is Pachinko. So I think, if you would let them, they would.  :P

Online gambling is not strictly forbidden.
Moreover, Bitcoin is not a legally currency which means gambling on Bitcoin is not illegal.

Low fee if compared to international wire transfers, yes. Buying things, I don't think so.

Let's look at an example. In Tokyo at least I can use a PASMO/Suica card to buy a bowl of ramen. Say, 1000 yen (I know, pricey ramen). To get that money on the card I put a 1000 yen note in the machine and it loads my card. So there is 0.- fees involved for me as a user and can all be done in 5 minutes. Similarly, Edy can be charged for 0.- fees, if I'm not mistaken. And Edy I can use on Rakuten, Amazon (JP).

To get that amount in BTC, I would have to send money to the exchanges' bank (a bank fee there if it's not the same as mine), exchange it there (exchange fee applies) and, for convenience and safety, get the BTC to my wallet (another small fee there, potentially). No way that could all be done in 5 minutes. Additionally, since it does take longer, I'm exposed to the exchange risk. So what I thought I had put on my wallet to pay for the ramen, might not be enough by the time I finally make it to the shop.

So, no, I don't think the "low" fees will be the trigger for the Japanese to accept it to buy things.

Can you please provide a link to a Japanese online gambling site, run by a Japanese company? Gambling, not sports betting.

I also think you might hit a bump with your interpretation of the law there. It's like saying buying drugs and get them to Japan is legal as long as you use bitcoin. As Teramoto-san found out, it's not: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/japan-makes-first-arrest-over-alleged-drug-trafficking-using-bitcoin-1447857

I agree with you.
Adoption of Bitcoin in real-life scenarios is not as easy as online scenarios.
BitCash is widely used in online/mobile games in Japan which has a percentage fee for game developers.
If Japanese game developers find the advantage of Bitcoin and start adopt it, people will accept it just like they accept BitCash, which has 4 billion yen annual turnover.

By the look of things seem like there are going to be.
This can be good but can be bad ass well.

Dont know how will this influence in the market cap or market exchanges, but let hope for the best.

You are mistaken. Many do, including myself. It's referred to as "horizontal spending". And no, no illegal stuff either.

Today was a very important day in Japan.  The Bank of Japan showed it is willing to do absolutely anything to stoke inflation and print money to pay debt.  If the average Japanese citizen is paying attention they should be looking to get out of any commodity or asset stored locally and denominated in yen.

A quarter of the country is over 65 right now.  In 2050 it will be around half.  It's literally a dying nation that will continue to punish anyone under 65 who is silly enough to throw their life away working 12 hours a day.  I don't know if bitcoin is the answer as it's extremely volatile, but surely it should be part of the mix for the proverbial Ms Watanabe.

I'm surprised no-one had cited the single biggest, in your face, elephant in the room reason that Bitcoin might take off in Japan.

In 2009 there were around 80 Trillion Yen in existence in the whole wide world.

The bank of Japan have just announced that they're now going to be printing that amount EVERY YEAR. So they're going to squirting the ENTIRE 2009 Yen monetary base into the financial system every ** year **.

Never mind arguments about Bitcoin vs Gold - by comparison with the Yen, Bitcoin IS gold and a whole lot more attractive because you can actually buy stuff with it (unless you want to turn up at Amazon's clearing centre with a scraping off the gold bar you stashed under your floorboards).

We are seeing the start of hyperinflation - that's why Nikkei stocks skyrocketed by nearly 5% today. Those companies didn't just suddenly increase their output or profitability by 5%, it's cash running for cover. This is an exponential game. Think russian dolls - the interest on the debt creates a new "doll" around the previous one but the smaller doll represents all the money supply in the world to date so there's no way to cover service the interest represented by the new, bigger doll. Only 2 options:

 - inflate
 - default

https://i.imgur.com/9psExjD.png

What I understood is that they were already doing that but now it will be stronger.
Therefore, the japs have further reasons to invest in metal commodities and bitcoin.

http://www.boj.or.jp/en/announcements/release_2014/k141031a.pdf

Yes. That is indeed the case.

Not quite. The difference is that China has exchange controls. Converting yuan to dollars or euros is hard. That's what drove the Bitcoin bubble in China - it was a way to convert yuan to Bitcoins to dollars.

Japan has no exchange controls. Any major bank will convert yen to dollars or euros.  Today's rate is 112.30 yen/dollar.

By that token, Japan's debt is through the roof for several years already. Have they fled to gold? Did they stockpile food and supplies in major amounts per household? No.

So, I don't think this will change anything. Look at Cyprus, Argentina, Greece - you name them. How high is bitcoin adoption there? Is it "huge"?



Thank you for making my point. Again.

Bitcoin is unknown in most of the world - for now.

It is pretty obvious there will be a flight of yen for other assets at some stage. These things have a habit of happening all of a sudden. Gold is a poor example of a commodity to invest in as the paper traded price bears no relation whatsoever to actual supply and demand in the real world. Bitcoin on the other hand...

The main factor driving the bitcoin bubble is not quite speculation, but manipulation and money laundering. In Japan, there are more than 700 thousands chinese folks. If Bitcoin is credible among the majority of Asian collaborators, it may be attractive for japanese in their daily property transactions.

Japan is already the new china in terms of bitcoin adoption. I was in Japan 2 months back , and almost everyone knows about bitcoins. However, there hasn't been a mass adoption for the shops to accept it yet. But bitcoin craze is already there.

Oh, really? Who did you talk to? What is their background? How many coins did each person you talked to hold? How much JPY do they plan to invest in it? Sure they "know" about it or have heard of it - MtGox and Teramoto-san took care of that.

I really would like to see some hard proof of the claims stated in this thread. I will give you some against in the meanwhile:

BtcBox is currently the biggest exchange of the ones that publish their numbers. They have a daily volume of 200 coins. Bitstamp does 12'000 (the whole Chinese 0 fee model makes for an obvious bot show).

There was an bitcoin ATM in a restaurant in Shibuya. It has been removed. Talking to some business owners that accept BTC, sales in BTC are not exactly stellar.

A quick look at coinmap.org shows the number of places that accept BTC is indeed growing, but not exactly at a spectacular pace. I think we had 35 in spring and we're at 43 now. But then the places that accept BTC didn't neither grow exponentially in China during the "China" bubble.

The majority of "for" arguments brought forward in this thread have been in place last year already. So why did it not happen last year already? Why would it happen this year?

Just a hint.

China did not drive the last pump. It was hype and mt.gox.

China is much bigger than japan by orders of magnitude, both in economy and strength of character.

Amazing that both your hints are actually plain wrong.

I am sure you have a wealth of personal experience and insight on both :)

Well you can fact check the first by looking at the charts and corresponding volume from that time period. Do you really need someone to tell you that China's economy is not orders of magnitude larger than Japan's?

Japan has been one of the largest buyers of btc on ripple.

When I was in Japan in august, I asked at much people if they knows something about bitcoin, and much people told me no. So, I think that China is new Japan, and not Japan is new China, because China has more knowledge about bitcoin.

Japanese unlike Chinese can simply invest into the world market including NYSE and Nasdaq. They don't face restrictions like the Chinese do. Also, the Japanese are not rolling in cash like you claim.

Less money will flow into Bitcoin as the economy does well since people will feel confident to invest in stocks and businesses. Both gold and Bitcoin will see lower flow of cash. That said it takes just one upswing and a barrage of investors will get on board Bitcoin taking it to new levels.

Now that was quite weak :)