Editor’s comment: please note that we have moved over the individual articles to our own platform. We will continue publishing the weekly digest on Medium. However, if you would like to subscribe to articles as they are published, we invite you to do this here.Welcome to the ninety-fifth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer.Thank you for all the well wishes. We are back, and so is Ueda-san, who is going to raise the policy rate to 0.5% this week. It simply has to happen, notwithstanding any nonsense coming out of Washington prior to the Monetary Policy Meeting.Here is what we are going to cover this week:Venture Capital & Private Markets: Komainu has raised $75 million in strategic investment from Blockstream Capital Partners; BounceBit has secured a strategic investment from Laser Digital; Startale Group launches Startale Ventures; and TSE-listed ELEMENTS consolidates the two leading personal authentication playersInsurance: justInCase, a small amount and short-term insurance provider recently acquired by Sony Financial, has begun selling “Simple Hospitalization Insurance”Banking: Money Forward rattled investors with its forecast for fiscal year 2025; AEON Financial’s acquisition of Vietnam’s PTF receives regulatory approval; SMBC has released a new finance scheme for supporting capital investment in semiconductor manufacturing equipment; Gojo & Company has become B Corp-certifiedPayments: Payments Japan published its “Cashless Roadmap 2024”; JCB International has launched a new JCB Panda Card in collaboration with Taiwan Rakuten Card; a new collaboration between GCash, Alipay+, and PayPay simplifies payments for Filipino touristsCapital Markets: The Tokyo Stock Exchange has signed an MOU with Authentic Indication to improve the execution environment for block trades; the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation plans to begin production-parallel operations of its regulatory reporting to the Financial Services Agency and the CFTC; the latest Status of Disclosure on “Action to Implement Management that is Conscious of Cost of Capital and Stock Price” sees 90% TSE Prime coverage; Apollo looks at Japanese demand for US TreasuriesDigital Assets: the Sonieum mainnet has been launched, with suspension of accounts for IP violations inviting immediate criticism; TSE-listed Remixpoint has emerged as a new player who has been actively investing in cryptocurrenciesThe Last Word: 10,000 bankruptciesVenture Capital & Private MarketsKomainu has raised $75 million in strategic investment from Blockstream Capital Partners, subject to relevant regulatory approvals; Komainu was launched in 2018 as a joint venture between Japanese bank Nomura, crypto security experts Ledger, and digital asset investment manager CoinShares; the funding transaction itself is innovative in that it is funded in Bitcoin with appropriate hedging and risk management and Komainu establishing its own Bitcoin Treasury to manage the Bitcoin provided by Blockstream
