Japan is tightening the reins from the wrong direction.

On June 12, 2026, the amended Fund Settlement Law will come into effect. Cross-border payment service providers like bitwallet and Peska will be forced to register as money transfer businesses or cease operations.
Few companies will be able to obtain approval from the FSA. The domestic bank transfer routes that Japanese traders have used to deposit into overseas accounts will effectively disappear.
At the same time, yesterday, the CLARITY Act was passed by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee.
Genshi Oda, founder of BitPoint Japan, stated that he predicted it would take 2 to 3 years for the U.S. on-chain financial market to arrive.
In reality, it took only 8 months.
NASDAQ has already announced support for on-chain, and S&P Dow Jones has begun providing data to Hyperliquid.
The battle for dominance in financial platforms has already begun.
Here lies a structural problem Japan faces.
Japan is trying to close off off-chain fund transfer routes through regulation.
AML compliance and consumer protection are legitimate objectives.
However, while blocking off-chain exits, Japan has not sufficiently developed on-chain entry points at a comparable speed.
As a result, a gap has emerged.
Traders who can no longer deposit into overseas accounts via domestic bank transfers are seeking alternatives, but USDT is increasingly restricted by domestic exchanges from sending to offshore brokers due to AML reasons, USDC has a limit of 1 million yen per transaction, and international wire transfers take 5 to 10 business days.
Japanese individual traders are being shut out of the global financial markets.
It’s not because they are doing something wrong.
It’s because the infrastructure cannot keep up with market realities.
The internet analogy is instructive.
Thirty years ago, no one thought people would shop online.
Now, the same transformation is happening in finance.
From off-chain to on-chain.
It’s not a question of whether this shift will happen.
It’s whether Japan will lead it, follow, or be left behind.
Japan has the talent and institutional knowledge to compete.
SBI and Startale are taking action.
The government’s Next-Generation AI and On-Chain Finance Task Force has also started moving.
These are genuine signals.
However, if Japan does not accelerate on-chain infrastructure while closing off off-chain routes, it will not protect its traders.
It will only isolate them.
The direction of regulation is correct.
The issue is the sequence.
The next 12 months will determine which side of this transformation Japan stands on.
#資金決済法 #On-Chain Finance #CLARITY #Japan #KWQuant #Financial Regulation #FX #Blockchain