Crypto Exchanges
By Steven Anderson
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Who Else Is Watching This Space. SBI and Rakuten aren't alone. A survey cited in reporting on the sector found that Nomura and…
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What This Means for Retail Investors. For regular Japanese investors, the pitch is pretty simple.
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Japan's Regulatory Shift in Context. Japan has been one of the more active regulatory environments for crypto globally, going back years.
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SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities are rolling out in-house investment trusts for Bitcoin and Ethereum.
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The products are structured funds, basically a wrapper that gives customers exposure to $BTC and $ETH without actually holding the coins.
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SBI and Rakuten aren't alone. A survey cited in reporting on the sector found that Nomura and Daiwa are among the major traditional finance firms considering similar products —…
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The FSA is reportedly working on rules that would let investment trusts and exchange-traded funds hold crypto assets under the Investment Trust Act. That's a meaningful change.
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Spot crypto ETFs could follow if that framework lands. Market projections put potential inflows at around $6.4 billion if spot ETFs get the green light.
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For regular Japanese investors, the pitch is pretty simple. You don't have to learn how a crypto wallet works.
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That's genuinely useful for a lot of people. Crypto's onboarding process has always been a friction point — seed phrases, private keys, exchange verification steps.
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See also: SBI and Rakuten Push Into Crypto Trusts as 11 Japanese Firms Watch Regulations
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But there are trade-offs. These products come with management fees, which direct crypto ownership doesn't.
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The fee structure will likely determine how fast adoption moves. If SBI and Rakuten price these competitively, they could pull in a lot of investors who've been curious about…
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Japan's retail investor base is large and historically cautious. Mutual funds and brokerage accounts are familiar.
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The reclassification effort is the bigger structural move. Treating crypto as a financial instrument rather than a miscellaneous digital asset changes how firms can hold it, how…
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