Japan’s crypto regulatory landscape is considered strict, but at the same time relatively open to fintech innovations. To this end, the SBI group in the country [Strategic Business Innovator Group] announced the launch of a crypto fund for investors.

No “matcha” talk about nothing

The SBI press release states:

“This time, the SBI Group will start processing the ‘SBI Crypto Asset Fund (Tokumei Kumiai No. 1)’, the first fund in Japan to invest directly in crypto assets for investors in general.”

According to a detailed announcement by the company, the seven cryptocurrencies on offer are Bitcoin, XRP, Ether, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Chainlink and Polkadot.

So how is it going to work? SBI states that the maximum number of owners is 499 and notes

“This product is an investment of 5 million yen or more in units of 1 million yen.”

One million yen is approximately $ 8,795.08 at press time.

The subscription period runs from December 17, 2021 to January 31, 2022. The contract period now runs from February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023. The composition of a crypto fund can be rebalanced if an asset becomes extremely dominant.

The translation of the same document is noted,

“Additionally, in order to facilitate the sale of crypto-assets, we may temporarily lend crypto-assets to the crypto-exchange company for sale to the crypto-exchange-company for a short period of time, but this is a technical measure and not a profit target.”

What is interesting, however, is that the SBI group pointed out the launch of a Bitcoin futures ETF in the US and the popularity of NFTs as blockchain use cases in the press release.

Now only one minute of “Udon”

A crypto fund is good and good. On the other hand, however, Japan is under pressure to encourage the development of its own CBDC. This is due to the fact that China’s digital yuan is widely used across the country and international brands are participating ahead of its planned launch for the Summer Olympics in winter 2022.

Indeed, Japan’s Minister of Economic Security Takayuki Kobayashi also recognized the need for further action on CBDCs. The minister named national security as one of the reasons. At the beginning of December he noticed

“We need to think about what could happen to Japan’s national security if other countries move towards CBDC.”

He added,

“Japan has to step on the gas so that it is ready to spend a digital yen at any time.”