Masaaki Taira, a politician for the country’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the leader of its Web 3.0 project team, stated in an interview with Bloomberg that Japan needs to further ease regulations for its cryptocurrency industry.
It was announced last month that the time-consuming screening procedure for crypto token listings on exchanges would be streamlined by Japan’s Virtual and Crypto assets Exchange Association, the self-regulatory group that regulates local crypto exchanges.
“This is still not enough,” said Taira, who is seen as the brains behind the country’s crypto policy. “I don’t think we can stop here.”
Taira published a white paper in April on the use of Web 3.0 and non-fungible tokens (NFT) as a growth catalyst. “The arrival of the Web 3.0 era is a great opportunity for Japan. But if we continue as we are now, we will surely miss the boat,” said the white paper.
According to Bloomberg, Taira is commended for convincing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to incorporate Web 3.0 development in Japan’s yearly policy guidelines.
Japan tightened regulations on the country’s cryptocurrency market by mandating that the Financial Services Agency (FSA) assess and register crypto trading platforms and charging a maximum tax of 55% on cryptocurrency gains.
While Hong Kong’s Finance Secretary Paul Chan stated at the recent FinTech Week 2022 that Hong Kong will prioritize digital transformation of its financial industry, Singapore’s monetary authority revealed last week that it aspires to become a crypto hub focused on asset tokenization.
