Those promoting the adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of payment in Japan will be hoping that next year’s Games of the XXXII Olympiad (Tokyo Olympics) will bring out the crypto spenders.
The Japanese are traditionally a nation of cash spenders, unlike China and South Korea who have taken more to credit and debit cards for their daily needs. Consequently, ATMs abound in Japan, some 20,000 of them at last count, all dispensing Japanese yen, although local crypto advocates would love to boast such numbers dispersing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to the general public.
Next year’s summer Olympics has been seen as an opportunity to decrease the cash imprint, in line with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aim for 40% of payments to be cashless in the county by 2025. The hundreds of thousands of visitors attending the summer Olympics in 2020 has become a tantalizing prospect for some in Japan’s crypto space.
One of these is American internet company Akamai who has teamed up with Japan’s largest bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) to build a blockchain-based consumer payment network to be used during the main event next year. Tests, according to the companies, have yielded speedy results with more than a million transactions per second, with each transaction confirmed in two seconds or less.
MUFG is moving towards closer towards cryptocurrency, albeit having taken some time to consider the step, and along with other Japanese companies has been experimenting with DLT for some time. Two other companies, Mizuho Financial Group, and SBI Holdings are both in the process of producing their own digital coins.
With Ripple lining up to become the official cryptocurrency of 2020 Olympic Games after last year’s petition which gained 14, 115 supporters, the summer Olympics is proving that it could become a crypto battleground for some of the major tokens as 2020 approaches.
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