Why is Bitcoin not popular in Japan?

[Shawshank]

No one has mentioned that Japan hasn't seen any inflation for 20 years. Broad money supply has essentially been fixed for a long long time. That takes away a pretty big selling point of bitcoin don't you think?

Yes, I do feel the same. Japan has been living with very low inflation, even deflation for many years, so they feel they didn't need Bitcoin that much. Things are currently changing, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abenomics
http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-jpy.en.html

And keep in mind that public debt in Japan is higher than in Greece...

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[cypherdoc]

with Abe's new program of printing to infinity, its clear they are determined to spark inflation.  Japan has the highest debt:GDP ratio of any country in the world; approximately 250%.  they are in trouble.

there are several high profile investors betting on the Japanese economy imploding within 2 yrs as a result; Kyle Bass, Hugh Hendry, Nassim Taleb.

[tvbcof]

japanese people tend to be more willing to trust authority than probably any other group of people on the planet. The legitimacy of ridgedly defined hierarchy is deeply engrained in their culture.

Japanese children are more harshly punished for questioning authority than probably any other group of people on the planet.

I suspect that this is a strongish hypothesis.  Most people I know in the US feel an innate sense of subversiveness when I describe Bitcoin to them.  Same with using mega.co.nz cloud storage.  I would expect both to be pretty fringe for a long time in societies that have either a cultural aversion or legitimate (or imagined) fear in being associated with subversive activities (read 'China'.)

Of course the leadership of Japan has just turned a city of 35x10^6 into what can only be described as a radioactive waste dump.  How much that will strain the Japaneses cultural affinity toward the trust in authority will be an interesting question.  I suspect perhaps not much...the leadership's management decisions ended up getting Tokyo firebombed once and the cultural affinities remained fairly strong.

[edmundedgar]

Of course the leadership of Japan has just turned a city of 35x10^6 into what can only be described as a radioactive waste dump.

Going off topic, but: No, it hasn't.

[Anon136]

Of course the leadership of Japan has just turned a city of 35x10^6 into what can only be described as a radioactive waste dump.

Going off topic, but: No, it hasn't.

what part of this statement do you take issue with? the size of the city? the claim that it is a radioactive waste dump? or the claim that Japanese leadership caused the disaster?

[tvbcof]

Of course the leadership of Japan has just turned a city of 35x10^6 into what can only be described as a radioactive waste dump.

Going off topic, but: No, it hasn't.

what part of this statement do you take issue with? the size of the city? the claim that it is a radioactive waste dump? or the claim that Japanese leadership caused the disaster?

FTR:

 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo  :  I used the 'metro' figure.

 - http://enenews.com/ap-headline-gundersen-tokyo-soil-be-nuclear-waste - http://vimeo.com/38995781

 -  Although a bit of a philosophical issue, a function of governments of states which are not 'failed' is one of managing regulatory bodies.  When the regulatory bodies fail, the buck stops with the government.  The regulatory bodies with oversight of nuclear technology have probably failed as badly in the US as they had in Japan.  It was just a role of the dice about who got hit first.

[CurbsideProphet]

with Abe's new program of printing to infinity, its clear they are determined to spark inflation.  Japan has the highest debt:GDP ratio of any country in the world; approximately 250%.  they are in trouble.

there are several high profile investors betting on the Japanese economy imploding within 2 yrs as a result; Kyle Bass, Hugh Hendry, Nassim Taleb.

The rapidly aging demographic is another very big concern for Japan.  I don't know if it would implode in 2 years, the yen is still relatively strong and thus can be devalued rather significantly but the writing certainly looks like its on the wall.

[edmundedgar]

Apologies in advance for the off-topic-ness:

- http://enenews.com/ap-headline-gundersen-tokyo-soil-be-nuclear-waste - http://vimeo.com/38995781

I was following the Gundersen reports- until he did that video I'd thought of him as a good point of view at the most alarming end of the non-bonkers scale, but there he's clearly trying to mislead people. Firstly he's talking like he's getting soil samples from anywhere, but really he's getting them from the edges of gutters and drains, where the little bit of radioactive cesium that rained on Tokyo would accumulate. Secondly instead of talking about how radioactive his samples actually are and saying there's a health risk, he's come up with this elaborate thing about what would happen if you produced that at a nuclear power station, where they have very strict rules about how you dispose of your rubbish.

Tokyo is not a "radioactive waste dump". Radioactivity in Tokyo is being independently measured by the government, universities, independent groups like Safecast and thousands of concerned mums who bought their own geiger counters. It's fine.

[tvbcof]

Apologies in advance for the off-topic-ness:

- http://enenews.com/ap-headline-gundersen-tokyo-soil-be-nuclear-waste - http://vimeo.com/38995781

I was following the Gundersen reports- until he did that video I'd thought of him as a good point of view at the most alarming end of the non-bonkers scale, but there he's clearly trying to mislead people. Firstly he's talking like he's getting soil samples from anywhere, but really he's getting them from the edges of gutters and drains, where the little bit of radioactive cesium that rained on Tokyo would accumulate. Secondly instead of talking about how radioactive his samples actually are and saying there's a health risk, he's come up with this elaborate thing about what would happen if you produced that at a nuclear power station, where they have very strict rules about how you dispose of your rubbish.

Tokyo is not a "radioactive waste dump". Radioactivity in Tokyo is being independently measured by the government, universities, independent groups like Safecast and thousands of concerned mums who bought their own geiger counters. It's fine.

Believe it or not, I don't fully dis-agree with your assessment even though I have pretty much zero confidence in any data provided by (or filtered through)  the governments of the US, Japan, or anyone under the auspices of the UNAEC all of whom are complete victims of regulatory capture.  Geiger counters are pretty limited in deducing most kinds of long-running risks.  I have several kinds of scintilation detectors to independantly verify what I wish to verify for my own purposes here on the West Coast of the US.

I do believe that the situation in Tokyo is much less than fine for the MANY people who ARE going to be victims of excess cases of cancer.  And much of Fukushima and the valuable farmland that it had need to be written off completely for the immediate good of the inhabitants.  For a country like Japan this loss is an unmitigated disaster.  The only saving grace is that they were already a dieing race so their need to feed themselves was decreasing.

Now to be fair, we really should weigh the benefits that the nation of Japan and the people of Japan have realized in their use of nuclear power.  Also, the pros and cons of their nuclear weapons program (which is, I believe, why they were fucking around with plutonium...like everyone else who does so...)  I personally do not write off the utility of MAD, nor the potential for China to decide it's time for some pay-back at some point.  All that said, if nobody with a dysfunctional regulatory system should fuck around with any form of nuclear anything no matter what the benefit.  I'm particularly unhappy about those in East Asia doing so since the fallout heads my way.  I'll bet that China melts one down within a decade.

[SgtSpike]

There are several contributing factors here.  First off, Satoshi is almost certainly not a Japanese national.  He might be ethnicly Japanese, but I would question even that.  He originally used British spelling and grammer, and did not suffer from the gramatical quirks of a native Japanese speaker.  Add to that the fact that there were zero translations of the White Paper into Japanese for at least 18 months after it's release, and it's easy to assume that Satoshi isn't a native Japanese speaker.

Furthermore, Bitcoin doesn't really offer much new to the trade culture in Japan.  As a society, they tend to be very cash & local trade biased, and even online shopping isn't (demographicly) as big in Japan as it is in the (much more geographicly diverse) United States.  Sure, they use the Internet to decide what to get, but oftentimes they can order the item online and pick it up at a store within a local travel distance for cash.  Walmart.com uses a similar model.  Even when they do trade electronicly, they actually have more advanced forms of electronic commerce than is presently available in the US or Europe, already having NFC enabled smartphones and such.  In the US, the credit card industry has been secretly resisting moving away from the plastic card model and towards the smartphone app model because they have a huge vested interest in the prior model, while companies like Google have a head start in the latter model.

On top of this, his time-of-postings pattern on this forum lead me to believe he was in the US on the East Coast.  That is what would match best.  Perhaps he had irregular sleeping patterns, but unless he consistently woke up long after dark and went to sleep in the afternoon, his posting times wouldn't match someone living in Japan.

[mokahless]

There are several contributing factors here.  First off, Satoshi is almost certainly not a Japanese national.  He might be ethnicly Japanese, but I would question even that.  He originally used British spelling and grammer, and did not suffer from the gramatical quirks of a native Japanese speaker.  Add to that the fact that there were zero translations of the White Paper into Japanese for at least 18 months after it's release, and it's easy to assume that Satoshi isn't a native Japanese speaker.

Furthermore, Bitcoin doesn't really offer much new to the trade culture in Japan.  As a society, they tend to be very cash & local trade biased, and even online shopping isn't (demographicly) as big in Japan as it is in the (much more geographicly diverse) United States.  Sure, they use the Internet to decide what to get, but oftentimes they can order the item online and pick it up at a store within a local travel distance for cash.  Walmart.com uses a similar model.  Even when they do trade electronicly, they actually have more advanced forms of electronic commerce than is presently available in the US or Europe, already having NFC enabled smartphones and such.  In the US, the credit card industry has been secretly resisting moving away from the plastic card model and towards the smartphone app model because they have a huge vested interest in the prior model, while companies like Google have a head start in the latter model.

On top of this, his time-of-postings pattern on this forum lead me to believe he was in the US on the East Coast.  That is what would match best.  Perhaps he had irregular sleeping patterns, but unless he consistently woke up long after dark and went to sleep in the afternoon, his posting times wouldn't match someone living in Japan.

Add to this the commonality of both the names "Satoshi" and "Nakamoto". Especially Satoshi. Basically, bitcoin was invented by John Smith.