Japan approves set of banking bills that recognizes digital currencies similar to real money

During the last couple of months, the Bitcoin situation in Japan has been uneasy, due to a couple of government bills that could have had the digital currency eradicated.

Instead, reports indicate that The Cabinet has recently approved a set of bills meant to allow banking groups to recognize digital currencies as having functions similar to those of fiat, while also allowing them to further expand their information technology businesses.

With this in mind, the revised banking bills will now allow banks and other financial institutions to acquire IT ventures, thus promoting the evolution of fintech, and allowing banks to try out new settlement systems and services promoted by fintech companies. This will lead to banking groups better consolidating their fund management systems, while also improving their overall efficiency.

As Bitcoin and other digital currencies are now considered asset-like values, they can be used for sending and receiving payments via the internet.

To keep things safe, the Government has decided to ask exchanges to officially register, while also designating the Financial Services Agency as the official regulator. In exchange, this will likely prevent money laundering, while also enhancing the protection that users of these exchanges get.

The situation in Japan needs to be regulated accordingly, especially considering the fact that the Tokyo-based Mt Gox, one of the world’s largest exchanges (which controlled over 70% of all bitcoin transactions), crashed in 2014.

Based on everything that has been outlined so far, what do you personally think about Japan’s new set of bills? Will this improve the bitcoin situation in the region? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.

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