Prime Minister Takes the Stage, SBI “Sweeps In to Buy,” Lawson Opens the Gates: Japan Is Rushing to Seize the Compliance Windfall in Crypto

On July 13 in Tokyo, WebX 2026 opened and drew around 15k attendees. Japan’s current prime minister appeared on stage to deliver a speech in person, reiterating that the “Startups Comprehensive Support Package” will be expanded to increase funding support. Before that, both former prime ministers Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba had also delivered speeches at the past two editions of WebX in succession. Kishida emphasized in 2024 that tax system and regulatory reforms would pave the way for Web3 startups, while Ishiba went a step further in 2025, positioning Web3 as the core of a “once-in-a-century” industrial revolution.

With one prime minister replaced after another, the act of setting the platform has not changed. Japan’s bet on Web3 is not a personal choice by a political figure, but a long-term agenda written into the system.

Also on July 13, Japan’s financial conglomerate SBI dealt an even bigger card: it jointly announced a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation to jointly build Japan’s on-chain financial markets. SBI R3 Japan will team up with the Solana Foundation as well as existing shareholders SBI and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. The company plans to rename itself to “SBI Solana Global.”

Looking further back, a few conspicuous figures appeared on SBI Holdings’ ledger: an exclusive investment in Gauntlet of $125 million, an investment in EDX Markets of $76 million, and an acquisition of Bitbank of about $289 million. By the math, over a short period, SBI poured nearly $500 million in real money into the crypto sector.

A more down-to-earth scene took place in Tokyo’s Konan-Kaido area: in early August, the convenience store chain Lawson planned to pilot POS payments for the JPYC stablecoin at that outlet. Buying a bottle of water or a rice ball and paying with a stablecoin—this was Japan’s first time putting stablecoin payments into a real retail scenario.

At first glance, these things may seem unrelated, but when you connect them, the message is clear: Japan is using national will to open a compliant fast lane for the crypto industry.

First layer: betting on the full set—licenses, capital, and scenarios

Start with the license layer. This round of investment from SBI isn’t scattered money thrown everywhere; each one precisely hits key nodes in the infrastructure.

Gauntlet is a core player in DeFi risk management and on-chain market making—investing in it is like buying influence over the “risk-control brain.” Behind EDX Markets stand Wall Street giants like Citadel and Fidelity, forming an institutional-grade crypto trading clearing channel. Bitbank is also one of Japan’s largest domestic crypto exchanges, directly securing a traffic entry point.

And with SBI Solana Global, it fills the most critical piece of the puzzle: the underlying public chain. Under the cooperation agreement, the new company will advance five major business lines around the Solana network—issuance and circulation of the yen stablecoin JPYSC; the composition and circulation of corporate bonds and tokenized RWA; cross-border payment infrastructure; on-chain financial services for institutional investors; and next-generation payment infrastructure for the AI Agent era.

Risk control, clearing, entry, and the public chain—these four links are taken in all at once. This isn’t just a financial investment; it’s an industrial-chain positioning play.

Next, look at SBI’s own yen stablecoin JPYSC, paired with a lending service offering a 3% annualized yield. In an environment where yen interest rates have long been near zero or even negative, the impact is obvious. If any portion of the cash sitting with Japanese savers is pulled into this yield, that’s a tangible migration of funds.

And Lawson’s POS pilot turns the stablecoin from “a string of numbers inside an exchange” into “money that can be tapped at the convenience store cashier counter.” This step is even more crucial than all the capital operations before it, because it touches the entry-right of the payment scenario—whoever first lays stablecoins into offline retail networks first wins the average person’s mindshare.

Finally, it’s the tax system. Japan’s parliament plans that by 2028, it will cut the crypto capital gains tax from 55% to 20%. The significance is straightforward: under a 55% tax rate, both retail and institutions tend to keep assets abroad or simply not move them; cutting to 20% largely levels it with stocks and futures. That means for the first time, Japanese domestic funds have motivation to “lock in gains” within the country.

Second layer: the higher the bar, the fuller the feast for those who get in first

On the surface, this looks like the Japanese government supporting startups, SBI doing industrial investment, and Lawson chasing trends. But the real question worth pondering is: when a country’s regulatory bar has never been low, who will be laughing at the end?

The answer is clear: the one that runs through the entire approval process first.

Japan’s crypto regulation has long been known for strictness—high license thresholds, long approval cycles, and most small and mid-sized institutions can’t even have their application materials ready. Yet precisely this high barrier keeps most potential competitors out, leaving a near “cleared field” battle for a few major players. SBI spends years assembling, all at once, the exchange, clearing channels, and risk-control systems, then intercepts yen liquidity through stablecoin business. By the time retail networks like Lawson open up payment scenarios, SBI can almost simultaneously secure both licensing advantages and traffic advantages, forming a compliance closed loop that others can hardly catch up with in the short term.

Compare it for clarity: in the United States, the stablecoin track is a free-for-all between specialized issuers like Circle and traditional financial institutions. Japan, by contrast, is taking the path of “financial group conglomerates personally stepping in.” Mitsubishi UFJ and SBI—established financial institutions—aren’t investing in crypto companies; they are embedding crypto business into their existing financial systems. This means Japan’s crypto infrastructure, from day one, carries the bloodline and regulatory endorsement of traditional finance. For small and mid-sized institutions, taking a slice is far harder than in the United States or Singapore.

The tax-rate cut works similarly. On the surface, it’s a concession to ordinary investors, but the 20% rate truly unlocks Japan’s huge stock of domestic savings. Once some of that money flows into crypto assets, the first to enjoy the liquidity dividend are still the local players that have already completed the licensing positioning and control the entry points. Policy easing isn’t just handing out money; it’s enabling those already standing inside the gate to catch the new funds rushing in from outside at the earliest moment.

Third layer: a replicable template

Zoom back out to the industry itself. This package of moves in Japan provides an observable institutional template: how a country uses “high-threshold licensing + chaebol-level capital + retail scenario pilots + tax concessions” as a set of four tools to pull the crypto industry from the gray zone into the mainstream narrative within a few months.

This has direct reference value for other jurisdictions. In past years, gray areas for stablecoins and crypto business were, to a large extent, propped up by regulatory vacuum. Japan, Hong Kong, and the UAE are now rapidly filling licensing and tax frameworks, showing that arbitrage space—“go wherever regulation is loose”—is being systematically squeezed. The industry’s survival logic is shifting from “hit-and-run” to “go抢牌照”—“抢” for licenses.

Japan’s path is steady, but also slow. SBI took several years to piece together this full licensing matrix, and Lawson’s pilot is only “a single store in Konan-Kaido.” But the direction is already unmistakable: when a conservative old-guard financial country begins laying the road themselves, it signals that this route is already set to lead to real money.

*This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market involves risks; invest cautiously.