Reuters reported that the Japanese government’s lawmakers are pushing forward its national digital currency. The urge for Japan to create its own Digital Yen comes from the rise of Facebook’s Libra and development of the Digital Currency Electronic Payment of China (DCEP).
Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Norihiro Nakayama, further commented that both Libra and the news of the looming of Chinese digital currency pushed Japan to realize the importance and benefits of Central Bank’s issued digital currency. To keep up with the technology, the Digital Yen will be a collaboration between the government and private sectors. They aim to upgrade and modernize the financial industry to coup with changing global financial acceleration.
In the past, Japan has disagreed with the creation of National Digital Currency Program due to unfavorable factors such as technical factors and legal difficulties. However, the global trend of integrating blockchain technology with the financial industry makes it inevitable for Japan to look back and study the possibility and benefits of the technology. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) decided to join effort with the central banks from six other countries to study and research on the feasibility of the national digital currency.
Nevertheless, both China and Japan have different reasons and motivations when it comes to their national digital currency programs. For China, the goal is to increase the value of the Renminbi on the world market while Japan wants to focus on shifting the public’s behavior into a cashless society using Digital Yen.
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