Politicians making big crypto promises — Donald Trump and Yuichiro Tamaki — are trending in Japan as the economy struggles and holders of cryptocurrency are taxed without mercy. Below the cacophony of election hubbub, however, a fresh movement of peer-to-peer (P2P) adoption and usage has begun in Asia, based on bitcoin cash.
In a tweet posted on Halloween (JST), Japan’s self-regulatory and state-certified crypto asset group known as the JVCEA delivered a request for crypto tax reform to Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP).
“As the representative director of the JVCEA, a certified self-regulatory organization for crypto assets, I delivered a request for tax reform regarding crypto assets to Mr. Tamaki, the leader of the Democratic Party for the People, today,” Genki Oda’s post to social media site X stated.
The JVCEA’s Oda lamented: “In April 2017, over 50% of the world’s bitcoin transactions were in Japanese yen. This has now fallen to around 1%,” indicating a harsh environment for crypto enthusiasts in the country.
Genki Oda, representative director of the Japan Virtual and Crypto assets Exchange Association (JVCEA).
Tamaki and Trump cause crypto social media buzz
Yuichiro Tamaki has stirred things up before when it comes to making pledges about crypto tax reform in the country, where holders can be taxed up to 55% on their gains in the most extreme cases. The member of the Japanese House of Representatives posted a 4-point crypto pledge to X on Oct. 20, requesting votes for his party.
Tamaki mentioned a separate 20% tax for crypto, NFT usage in government, and the digitization of the yen, raising alarm bells in some about the potentially destructive force of a central bank digital currency.
Across the pond, the polarized political atmosphere in the U.S. appears to be driving Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to make bold claims about bitcoin’s future being “MADE IN THE USA! VOTE TRUMP!”
The former Democrat (who never locked up Hillary Clinton as he promised in his first election, and in fact, showered her with high praise immediately after he won) will hopefully at least follow through on stated plans to free Silk Road marketplace creator Ross Ulbricht.
Those who know how politics inevitably works, however, have little choice but to hope for a lucky bureaucratic fluke, more or less, so Ross might actually get his life back. Japanese users of social media are similarly hoping for a miracle when it comes to Tamaki and Trump, but in their case, it’s for the same system that cruelly imprisoned Ulbricht to grant crypto tax breaks.
In addition to recent attention given from the founder and CEO of leading Japanese exchange Bitflyer, Yuzo Kano, everyday X users in the land of the rising sun are also reacting to Trump’s blustery bitcoin bravado in 2024.
“Shouldn’t the Japanese government also be buying up Bitcoin?” tweeted one account in response to Trump’s bitcoin promises.
But crypto was never about depending on political wind-blowing. In fact, if the message encoded in the bitcoin genesis block is to really mean anything, bitcoin has always been about just the opposite: use without the permission of banks and corrupt governments.
If there is to be a crypto solution for the economic struggle Japan is currently experiencing, it must be found peer-to-peer.
Paytaca wallet’s map of businesses in Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan accepting bitcoin cash.
P2P crypto usage advances in Asia
With the advent of decentralized, permissionless, and non-custodial trading and hedging platforms such as BCHBull, based on the AnyHedge protocol, and UTXO (unspent transaction output)-based smart contracts now being enabled onchain on BCH, the oft-mocked fork of BTC continues making inroads toward adoption without needing to pray to sketchy politicians.
Wallet creators such as Paytaca are bombarding brick-and-mortar businesses at a high rate in the Philippines and elsewhere in the region by focusing on quick transactions and practicality.
Left to right: Aaron Almadro, Cindy Wang, and Joemar Taganna.
Paytaca CEO Joemar Taganna told Cryptopolitan: “I believe the key to driving crypto adoption in the Philippines—and Asia more broadly—is to make it practical and advantageous for everyday payments, surpassing the utility of fiat currencies.” He noted that “This requires enabling direct, peer-to-peer crypto transactions rather than merely embedding crypto within intermediated fiat payment systems.”
Taganna believes a new breed of crypto companies should “capitalize on cost savings, leveraging the efficiencies of direct peer-to-peer payments to create sustainable margins.”
Statistically, transactions are also growing in recent years with the introduction of smart contracts, NFT trading onchain, and local adoption such as can be seen in Philippines.
Of course, there are many other crypto assets that can still be used P2P to protect oneself from financial abuse, and BCH is just one of these options, none of which are without their detractors.
However, focusing on uncensorable money and truly permissionless networks as Taganna and others in the region are doing, can eventually make it so that no matter which political clown is vying for power, the free market can still transact, choosing projects, people, and systems for social governance to support and value voluntarily, and not by forced elections.
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