Keisuke Kimura Japan’s crypto reform brings disclosure and trading conduct further into investment regulation while preserving a distinction between cryptoassets and securities. Discussions at three events in Spain offered a useful perspective on that choice. The Japanese evidence shows why the change goes beyond moving a set of rules from one law to another.
How discussions in Europe brought Japan’s reform into focus
I recently attended and spoke at European Blockchain Convention and ETH Spain in Barcelona, and RegSymp in Mallorca. Across the trip, I exchanged views with financial institutions, regulators and blockchain businesses. In the panels, one recurring question was how crypto services should connect with traditional finance. One discussion described how existing securities-business policies could provide a foundation for crypto services. That observation prompted me to revisit Japan’s own reform: where it draws on familiar investor protection, and where it preserves different treatment.
Japan established its cryptoasset exchange framework in 2017 and introduced its electronic payment instrument framework in 2023. The legislation passed on July 15, 2026, and promulgated on July 23 provides for another change: moving the main cryptoasset framework into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. These are separate stages in the development of Japan’s market. Sources: FSA regulatory overview; legislative history.
What evidence explains Japan’s move toward investment regulation?
The FSA’s April 2026 reform presentation cited more than 14 million domestic cryptoasset accounts. Accounts are not unique investors: a person can hold more than one account. The figure is evidence cited in that dated presentation, not a September 2026 market total. The presentation also referred to survey evidence that trading motivations were predominantly expectations of long-term appreciation. Source: FSA reform presentation, page 2.
The policy rationale is therefore connected to actual investment use. The FSA’s explanation of the working-group report identifies information gaps and market-integrity concerns as problems with an affinity to investment regulation. My reading is that Japan is adjusting the legal framework to the economic role cryptoassets have acquired, rather than relying only on their origins as a possible means of payment. Source: FSA working-group explanation.
What changes in disclosure and insider trading?
The reform’s disclosure framework allocates responsibilities according to the asset and offering. Covered issuers provide information for relevant offerings; trading businesses have publication responsibilities when they independently handle assets without issuer fundraising. The framework also addresses continuing information. Separately, dedicated insider-trading provisions address specified persons trading on non-public material facts, including certain decisions to begin or stop handling a token. Source: FSA reform presentation, pages 3 and 5.
These changes tackle two different weaknesses. Disclosure concerns what investors can know about an asset. Insider-trading rules concern the use of information that some participants obtain before others. Their combination is more informative than the broad label “stricter regulation”: it identifies the behaviour the reform is intended to change.
What the reform does not mean
Cryptoassets are positioned as financial products distinct from securities. Moving the framework into investment law does not make every token a share, give every holder a claim on an issuer, or apply every securities rule unchanged. Japan’s qualifying stablecoins also remain separate from this particular shift. Source: FSA working-group explanation.
This distinction was what made the European discussions relevant to Japan. Established principles can address familiar problems without making all products legally identical. The useful analytical question is how those principles are adapted to the rights and risks of the asset.
What remains to be implemented
Legislative passage is not the same as commencement or the completion of implementing rules. The FSA’s April explanation expressly leaves details of several requirements to subordinate legislation. This article describes the reform framework; it does not treat every provision as already operating. Sources: legislative history; FSA reform presentation.
The next substantive milestones concern how the obligations are specified and put into practice. Their scope and timing matter to the eventual effects on information quality, trading conduct and compliance costs. Those outcomes should be assessed from implementation evidence, rather than assumed from the change in legal classification alone.
What the European discussions brought into focus for Japan
The trip made the relationship between traditional finance and crypto a more concrete question for me. Japan’s reform supplies specific evidence: an investment-driven policy rationale, information obligations, and market-conduct rules, alongside continued distinctions between products. That is the perspective this episode brings back from Europe.
For global firms evaluating Japan, the implication is concentrated in the operating model: product plans and partner arrangements need to reflect the responsibilities attached to the intended activities. Wakyodo helps global digital asset firms understand the market, identify potential partners and determine the right entry approach.