Owner of popular Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, Monex Group, has now announced it will reward shareholders in the company with crypto. Shareholders are to receive a BTC dividend provided they have a Coincheck account. With Japan viewed as one of the top crypto adoption hotspots globally, and the country’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) proclaiming a purposeful aim to promote Bitcoin, big businesses are quickly latching on to the country’s solid regulatory framework to make profits.
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Shareholders Rewarded With BTC and Monex Points
After Coincheck’s infamous NEM hack of January 2018, the group would be audited, acquired by Monex Group, and revived. The $534 million security breach now in the past, Coincheck finds itself somewhat back on track and back in crypto headlines for happier news: a new incentivization for registration involving shareholders of parent company, Monex Group, Inc.
In a September 24 press release Monex announced “it has decided to grant a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (“BTC”), as mid-term shareholder benefit for fiscal year 2019 to its shareholders who hold the Company’s shares as of September 30, 2019 in addition to the existing shareholder benefits.” Citing an increased interest in cryptocurrency, the company will pay a “benefit of 500-yen equivalent cryptocurrency BTC … to all shareholders regardless of the number of shares they are holding.”
Also detailed in the press release was a Monex Points system which will reward shareholders for cash trading activity and be issued in proportion to shares held in the company. Stipulations for receiving the BTC dividends include being “recorded in the shareholder list as of September 30, 2019” and having completed Coincheck account registration and pertinent applications by the end of March 2020.
Corporate Adoption Rising Dramatically
As news.Bitcoin.com has recently reported, crypto adoption activity in Japan is entering unprecedented realms with online retail and communications giants like Rakuten and Line getting in on the action. Rakuten’s new wallet app is easy to use even for crypto neophytes, and serves as a Bitcoin on-ramp run by one of the most trusted and ubiquitous e-commerce companies in the nation. Similarly, Japan’s Line messaging app is used by 187 million global users monthly as of June, and now has its own app-connected Bitmax crypto exchange supporting BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC and XRP trading. As more and more corporations jump into the space, it’s likely that even the presently uninitiated will soon be familiar with the basics of Bitcoin.
Rakuten Bank and the Rakuten Wallet app are now facilitating crypto-to-fiat and fiat-to-crypto exchange 24/7, and quick ATM withdrawal capability via the Rakuten cash card, so it’s understandable some are pointing even more to the Land of the Rising Sun as the decided crypto Mecca. Even the FSA is getting behind the idea, but there’s a big caveat, with an official from the group reported in August as saying:
We promote bitcoin but only with controls.
This proclamation, in conjunction with Japan’s yet unclear tax regulations (though they’re much more clearly defined than U.S. requirements) and a regrettably meager selection of crypto-savvy tax assistance groups, makes for a strange brew in the Japanese crypto space. On one hand, corporate and major bank adoption is beginning to happen in huge fashion. On the other, the space is extremely regulated, pushing out smaller players and leaving some wary of jumping in. None of this is to mention that the vision of the Japanese-aliased Bitcoin creator himself, Satoshi Nakamoto, is hardly talked about in all the hubbub. In a sense, big time, centrally regulated adoption could be said to come at the expense of peer-to-peer, permissionless cash.
What are your thoughts on Monex’s incentive and adoption in Japan? Let us know in the comments section below.
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