The CEO of Daiwa Securities believes that Japan should allow crypto exchange-traded funds to enter the local market. Daiwa is one of the many companies pushing for Japan to approve crypto ETFs.
According to a Bloomberg report published on December 24, Akihiko Ogino, CEO of the second-largest brokerage firm in Japan, said in an interview that Japan should allow “crypto ETFs to debut in the country.”
At the time of writing, Daiwa itself has an index-based exchange-traded fund in the Japanese market called the Daiwa ETF Nikkei 225. However, Ogino did not disclose any plans for Daiwa to begin filing its own crypto-backed ETF.
Daiwa isn’t the only company pushing crypto ETFs. Last October, major Japanese financial firms such as Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui and Nomura Securities all backed a proposal that called on the Japanese government to prioritize Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) for crypto-backed ETFs.
However, many believe that Japan is still finding it difficult to accept cryptocurrency-backed ETFs due to its “regulatory restrictions” and negative perception of cryptocurrencies due to past incidents such as Mt. Gox and DMM.
Additionally, Ogino predicted that Japan’s central bank appears determined to tighten monetary policy even further as corporate profits begin to rise and signs of inflation begin to emerge.
Daiwa expects the Bank of Japan to raise the country’s key interest rate by 25 basis points from 0.25% to 0.5% in January next year. The brokerage firm also assumes that the central bank will raise the key interest rate again to 0.75% by the end of 2025.
Based on the BOJ’s reduction in Japanese interest rates…
