Why Chairman of Japan's Second Biggest Bank Believes Crypto Will Lead the Nation's Economy

SBI Holdings chairman and SBI Group CEO Yoshitaka Kitao, who oversee the second largest financial institution in Japan behind Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, said that crypto and blockchain technology will accelerate the country's economy in the long run.

"We want to take blockchain beyond financial. There's a lot of speculative demand around cryptocurrencies, which is why the price is going up so quickly, but people need to think about how these technologies are being used in real life and how they can improve people's businesses".

In a column, Lewis emphasized that in early 2016, Mori realized that Japan was falling behind its neighboring countries China and South Korea in technology, fintech, and blockchain development due to the lack of practical regulations.

With strict capital controls and rigid regulatory frameworks, Japan has always been best recognized as one of the most conservative nations in Asia in regards to financial regulation.

With the lead of Mori, Japan started to embrace startups in the finance, blockchain, and technology sector and eventually, with the imposition of practical regulations like the national licensing program for crypto exchanges, Japan became the largest cryptocurrency exchange market in the world.

"Mr. Mori knew, intimately, that Japan's financial sector had fallen behind in IT, fintech, blockchain and its general embrace of the digital. Faced with an exciting, emerging genre that had already captured the imagination of the Japanese public, it must have been tempting to overlay on to crypto a load of pre-existing national ambitions centered on tech start-ups, fintech and encouraging more retail cash to flow around the system."

The forward-thinking approach of the FSA combined with the support of the Japanese government and the country's largest banks including MUFG and SBI Group, both of which are actively contributing to the global cryptocurrency sector and blockchain ecosystem, ultimately allowed Japan to evolve into a major cryptocurrency and blockchain hub alongside the US, Switzerland, and South Korea.

The key factor that has led Japan to become the biggest cryptocurrency market in recent years is its national cryptocurrency exchange licensing program and the willingness of the Japanese authorities to implement regulatory frameworks that are created specifically for cryptocurrency exchanges.

The efforts of the Japanese government to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges in a different manner to banks and strictly regulated financial institutions created an efficient and safe ecosystem for cryptocurrency exchanges to thrive within.

In order for the blockchain and crypto to have a drastic impact on the economy of Japan in the long-term as emphasized by SBI Group CEO Yoshitaka Kitao, the Japanese government must maintain its positive and optimistic stance towards the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector.