Japan’s financial watchdog expects the local unit of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX will repay funds to customers starting next month, according to a senior official, Bloomberg News reported. “We have been in close communication with FTX Japan,” said Mamoru Yanase, deputy director-general of the Financial Services Agency’s Strategy Development and Management Bureau. A mid-February timeline for withdrawals announced last month by the firm is likely a product of such communication so “we are expecting that they will properly take steps based on that,” he said.
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US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc. is closing the bulk of its operations in Japan as part of a move to adjust international investment amid a slump in the digital-asset sector, Bloomberg News reported. The shift comes as the firm cuts 20% of its workforce globally, the latest layoffs at the San Francisco-headquartered firm. Coinbase is scaling back in Japan even as the nation loosens some crypto rules, which has spurred rival Binance — the largest digital-asset exchange — to seek a license to return to the country.
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The United States and Japan on Friday launched a new task force to promote human rights and international labor standards in supply chains and said they would invite other governments to join the initiative, Reuters reported. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai signed a memorandum on the initiative in Washington with Japan's Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura.
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The world’s pile of negative-yielding debt has vanished, as Japanese bonds finally joined global peers in offering zero or positive income, Bloomberg News reported. The global stock of bonds where investors received sub-zero yields peaked at $18.4 trillion in late 2020, according to Bloomberg’s Global Aggregate Index of the debt, when central banks worldwide were keeping rates at or below zero and buying bonds to ensure yields were repressed.
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Japan is the world’s largest creditor. At the end of 2021, it held roughly $3.2 trillion in foreign assets, 30 percent more than No. 2 Germany. As of October, it owned over a trillion dollars of U.S. government debt, more than China. Japanese banks are the world’s largest cross-border lenders, with nearly $4.8 trillion in claims in other countries. Late last month, the world got an unexpected reminder of how integral Japan is to the global economy, when the country’s central bank unexpectedly announced that it was adjusting its stance on bond purchases, the New York Times reported.
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FTX Japan customers will be able to withdraw their funds as of mid-February, the subsidiary of FTX Trading said in a blog post on Thursday, making them some of the first customers of the collapsed crypto exchange to get their money back, CoinDesk.com reported. FTX Japan said that it was previously able to confirm with the company's bankruptcy lawyers in the U.S.
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Digital currency exchange Kraken will close down its operations in Japan next month, in another sign of consolidation in the battered crypto industry, CNBC reported. In a blogpost on Wednesday, Kraken said it would cease crypto trading services through its Japanese subsidiary, Payward Asia, and deregister from Japan’s Financial Services Agency on Jan. 31, 2023. It is the second time Kraken has left the Japanese market. The first was in 2018, when it closed four years after initially establishing operations in 2014.
Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday dismissed his fourth minister in two months to patch a scandal-tainted Cabinet that has raised questions over his judgment of staff credentials, the Washington Post reported. Kenya Akiba, minister in charge of reconstruction of Fukushima and other disaster-hit areas, has faced allegations of mishandling political and election funds and of ties to the Unification Church, whose practices and huge donations have raised controversy.
Japan's government revised up on Thursday its growth forecast for the next fiscal year on prospects for higher business expenditure and substantial wage hikes that are seen underpinning consumption, Reuters reported. The upgraded projections, which provide a basis for the government's annual budget plan due on Friday, underscore how Japan is set to buck a global growth slowdown thanks to robust domestic demand supported by inbound tourism reopening.
The Bank of Japan said Tuesday that it would tweak its bond buying policies and step up asset purchases — a surprise move as Japan faces economic pressure from rising inflation and a weak yen, the New York Times reported. The change was seen as a sign that Japan might relax its adherence to ultralow interest rates. That commitment has made the country a global outlier as other central banks around the world have pushed up their rates in an effort to battle inflation.
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