Japan’s “dormant” crypto accounts are starting to see activity as Bitcoin breached a critical price resistance level this week. According to the Japanese crypto exchange Coincheck, their trading volume this week has risen by two to three times in comparison to the previous one.
Speaking to a selected number of the Japanese outlets, Yusuke Otsuka, the co-founder of Coincheck explained that existing users who hadn’t traded for a while became active again this week: “Some of our users already have accounts so the initial velocity is high.”
If users already have accounts, they don’t have to take time to go through Know Your Customer check to open new accounts and can resume buying cryptocurrencies immediately. In contrast, those new to the trading platform had to wait for their account to become approved, so there was a time lag before they could start trading. “This time is different”, Otsuka emphasized.
According to Coincheck, the volume of the direct sale this week was twice as big as seen during the previous one, while the demand for the exchange service increased threefold. Otsuka also believes this is correlated with the Japanese Coivd-19 stimulus payments. In April, the Japanese government began distributing 100,000 yen payments — about $930 — to every household.
Moreover, Oki Matsumoto, CEO of Monex Group, a parent company of Coincheck points out the possibility that those who missed buying gold are now interested in Bitcoin. The gold price has surged recently, breaking previous highs while Bitcoin just started breaking the resistance at the beginning of this week.
Libra on the agenda
Matsumoto also commented on the recent development of central bank digital currencies:
“I think David Marcus made a mistake. He should have said it was Facebook Token. Because they said it was ‘the future currency,’ the U.S. government criticized it heavily”.
Matsumoto added that “the role of Libra might be just to open Pandora’s Box and that was it”. Meanwhile, the United States is behind the competition precisely because “they crushed Libra by themselves and could no longer say they would start developing CBDC”, Matsumoto analyzed.
Some industry insiders are worried about American reluctance to move forward with CBDC. Takaya Nakamura, an executive from Japanese crypto exchange Fisco recently claimed that Japan’s role should be to urge the United States to take CBDCs more seriously.