financial security
Haruhiko Kuroda, the Bank of Japan governor, stated on 13 January 2020 that crypto assets, cyber risks, anti-money laundering, anti-financial terrorism are all challenges that need to deal with, to achieve full financial security.
The Governor has a valid point stating that a lot of things that threaten financial security in the present age, including cybersecurity, since millions of transactions today are processed through the internet and computers. Anti-money laundering as crime rates increase, illegal money needs to put in check, financial terrorism to prevent money from falling into the hands of terrorists, and crypto assets, a new and changing form of currency that needs to addressed to push for the future of finance.
Cryptocurrencies especially have an interesting history with the Bank of Japan. The Kuroda had stated a few months back in an interview with Reuters that the bank had been researching digital currencies, but had no plans to release one of its own nevertheless, it could if it wanted to.
The Governor stated his concerns on stablecoins and that lack of a stable framework to back it and provide active supervision while managing the level of risk involved. Kuroda said, “If stablecoins backed by companies with a huge customer base are issued globally, that could have a huge impact on monetary policies and the financial system stability.”
The Bank of Japan’s Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya also said back in April 2018 that digital currencies did not have enough stability, and issuing them from a central bank would result in damaging the two-tiered currency system in Japan. Amamiya later followed up on his position on the mater recently stating digital currency issuance is not something that’s concerning Japan mostly due to the impact it can have on commercial banking. He believed that digital currencies could replace private deposits, that could degrade the credit channels of commercial banks and have an offsetting effect on the economy.
Other Asian countries like China are already on their path to unveil an RMB-based digital currency set to be released later in 2020. Seeing the opinion of the Bank of Japan change and take efforts to understand the benefits of digital currencies and hopefully eventually choose to implement one is a positive change that’s interesting to see.