When Japan hosts 2019’s Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy, or G20 Summit, in Osaka, the nation plans to propose cyptocurrency regulations to global leaders. Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and finance minister Tarō Asō are keen to have an international consensus on regulation and taxation.
In the United States, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has his own proposals for regulating cryptocurrencies. He highlights the fact that different states have different regulations; the U.S. does not even have national regulations. While Chang aims for national regulations and Japan strives for international regulations, both have the same goals; to encourage economic growth through crypto currency.
Japan is developing a guidebook to support a fair trading environment, protect customer crypto assets, along with preventing terrorism funding and cyber attacks. Japan has experience with cyber attacks, suffering two cyber attacks in 2018 resulting in legislative changes in Japan; the Coincheck hack and the Zaif hack. Cyber criminals stole the equivalent of USD 400 million from Coincheck, a Japanese crypto exchange platform. cryptocurrency exchange Zaif lost USD 59.7 million to cyber criminals, primarily Bitcoin assets.
According to washingtonexaminer.com, after the G20 Summit in June, scams and hacks could be a thing of the past if enough countries adopt cryptocurrency regulations. Japan also hopes for worldwide acceptance of decentralization, although critics say regulation would chip away at the privacy aspect of crypto assets, and discourage their growth. Financial regulators worldwide struggle with the privacy aspect of virtual currencies and how to get each party involved to disclose their identity. Without this new lack of privacy, crypto assets can fund terrorism, enable black markets and facilitate money-laundering activities.
Both Yang and Japanese officials will have their work cut out for them as criminals using crypto assets utilize the latest technological advances, such as Dark Wallet and its competitors which ensure anonymity.
