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Iām Obi(Ā @obntyĀ ), the founder ofĀ NodeTokyo, the first tech-focused international blockchain conference in Japan and the dev/student blockchain communityĀ CryptoAge.
As itās been Japanās longest holiday season, there have been less activities happening since last week - so will make the later half this newsletter into the brief summary of Japanese Blockchain Landscape which I wrote recently.
**New Imperial Era in Japan from May 1 š
First, on to this weekās update covering the happenings mainly from April 30 - May 6, 2019.
āĀ StartupsĀ
Fukuoka based startup Nayuta released the mainnet version of Ptarmigan, The worldās 4th Lightning Network software - Link
šMeetups / Events
SBI Art Auction and Startbahn co-organized an art auction providing the digital certificates on blockchain on April 26th - Link(JP)
Startbahn is a Tokyo based startup developing tools and blockchain platform for art industry.
šSidenotes / Others
The founder of bitFlyer tweeted that he has talked with the new emperor about blockchain š² -Ā Link
š¾Ā Japan Blockchain Landscape - April 2019
This is the extracts from āJapan Blockchain Landscape: April 2019āāā#EDCON recapā on Medium.
Full article can be found here.
Enterprises
One unique thing about Japanese market in the last 1ā2 years is how bullish the large tech/non-tech enterprises are becoming in this space.
Exchanges
Most of the big tech enterprises like Yahoo Japan, Rakuten, LINE are launching the crypto exchanges. Monex Securities, one of the largest online brokerage acquiredĀ CoincheckĀ in 2018 after its hack and they are integrating crypto with their existing businesses.
POC
Some traditional enterprises are working on POC using blockchain; MUFG, the largest bank in Japan has announced the plan to launch JPY-pegged stable coin later this year.
Microsoft Japan has been very active in supporting blockchain developer community in Japan and has been supporting several large enterprises to step into blockchain.
Media
Yahoo Japan has made a partnership with CoinDesk and launchedĀ CoinDesk JapanĀ this March.Ā
Gentosha, one of the biggest traditional publishers has been running a popular crypto media calledĀ New Economy.
Nikkei, the largest financial newspaper has been covering a lot about blockchain too.
Investment
Recruit launched a $25M fund specifically focusing on blockchain startups and token investments,Ā kickedĀ offĀ withĀ theĀ investmentĀ intoĀ Beam. Nomura Securities, the largest brokerage in Japan has done several direct investments to US blockchain startups such as Quantstamp.
Startups
Since 2018, Iāve seen some developers and young entrepreneurs launching startups.
Protocol /Ā R&D
Several startups working on protocol/infrastructure layer likeĀ LayerXĀ andĀ Cryptoeconomics LabĀ are well catching up with the global developer communityāāāthey have both spoken at EDCON this year.
Co-Working
NeutrinoĀ andĀ HashHubĀ have been pioneering the blockchain co-working space in Japan, many meetups have been held there.
Media
Most of the popular crypto/blockchain focused media are run by startups.Ā CoinPostĀ is one of the first media in this space and partnering up with several international conferences.
LongHashĀ is an international team with the base in Tokyo, China, US and Europe, they publish article in Japanese and English.
CryptoTimesĀ is founded by a popular crypto twitterer and now covering Korean ecosystem too.Ā
CoinJinjaĀ provides the crypto-related news aggregator and the popular crypto investment portfolio management app.
Consulting
With the big interests from large corporations for blockchain, several companies started to offer consulting services for them.
QuantstampĀ set up the first Asian branch in Tokyo and has been active in Japanese market since last year.Ā Consensus BaseĀ is one of the very first companies fostering Ethereum adoption in Japan.Ā BUIDLĀ is a new consulting firm founded by Jun Hasegawa the founder of Omise and Global Brain.
dApps
Given the big gaming market in Japan, several game companies are working on blockchain-based games.Ā MyCryptoHeroesĀ is so far the most popular dApps in Japan, as well as the most popular Ethereum-based dApps according to dAppRadar.Ā AlisĀ carried out the first ICO in Japan and has been developing a Ethereum-based media publishing platform.Ā FinancieĀ is the most recent major dApps, a blockchain-based social crowdfunding platform.
Regulatory Environment
As you might know, Japan was the first country to legalize cryptoaseets as a payment method since April 2017 and one of the most forward-thinking countries for crypto regulations.
Although the big hacks to exchanges in 2018, Japanās FSA started giving new crypto exchange licenses to 3 companies in 2019 so far (Coincheck, Rakuten Wallet and DeCurret).
Self-regulatory organizations for crypto are very active in Japan and they are working together with the regulators to build up a new regulatory framework for different kinds of businesses around crypto, not only exchanges.
āā
ā¦.a full article can be found here.
Thatās all for now. See you next week! - Obi
You can check outĀ the past issue #1 from here.
#2 from here
#3 from here
#4 from here
#5 from here