On April 12, the Liberal Democratic Party's Digital Society Promotion Headquarters and the web3 Project Team (PT) held a joint meeting to formulate the "White Paper 2024," which serves as a set of policy recommendations.
Following an interview with Kawasaki Hideto, Secretary-General of the PT and member of the House of Representatives, let's take a look at the contents of the white paper.
On April 12, the Liberal Democratic Party Digital Society Promotion Headquarters and the web3 Project Team (PT) held a joint meeting to formulate the policy proposal "web3 White Paper 2024". Following an interview with Kawasaki Hideto, Secretary General of the PT, and a member of the House of Representatives, let's take a look at the contents of the white paper.
A white paper is generally a report that analyzes the issues and factors that companies need to solve and introduces solutions to solve them, but the newly released "web3 White Paper 2024" proposes the current situation and issues in Japan, as well as matters to be discussed and solutions, on a wide range of themes related to Web 3.0, mainly from the perspective of the legal system.
In the world of Web 3.0, it is common for projects that issue tokens to publish materials in the form of white papers to inform investors of their business plans and prospects, so this is likely following that tradition.
The White Paper formulated this time is the third installment, following the "NFT White Paper" published in March 2022 and the "web3 White Paper 2023" published in April 2023.
In the first installment, the "NFT White Paper," web3PT sincerely expressed a sense of crisis, saying, "The arrival of the Web 3.0 era is a great opportunity for Japan. However, if we continue as we are, we will definitely miss out."
In the past, there have been hacking incidents of cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan, and even back then, Japan's regulations regarding Web 3.0 were particularly clear and strict. Although Japan was excellent in terms of risk management, including investor protection, from the perspective of creating innovation, there were a mountain of issues, such as legal and tax systems.
We will view the new market of Web 3.0 as an opportunity for Japan and create a business environment that promotes innovation through appropriate regulations. This is what web3PT is trying to achieve through its proposals in a series of white papers.
In fact, based on the white papers that have been released so far, discussions on many issues have progressed, and laws and ministerial ordinances have been revised. In addition, guidelines have been established on issues that were unclear in interpretation, which has supported the promotion of Web 3.0 business in Japan.
Perhaps because the Web 3.0 industry has a strong emphasis on freedom, it sometimes shows a resistance that can be described as an allergy to "regulations," but at least it should be considered that web3PT's activities are a major driving force for realistically promoting Web 3.0 business in Japanese society.
The newly formulated "web3 White Paper 2024" also sets out the message, "Nippon Nexus: Weaving the web3 Era - Japan at the center of the web3 era."
In addition, web3PT's strong will can be seen from the positive intention that "This paper is a proposal to strongly support the development of blockchain technology, which can become a social infrastructure, in addition to incorporating the web3 ecosystem into the development of our country."
This paper summarizes the issues and recommendations on a wide range of themes related to Web 3.0 as "issues that must be addressed immediately to promote Web 3" and "issues that should be discussed and deepened in anticipation of further development of Web 3."
Although introduced at the bottom of this article, these are only a small part of the issues. If you read the "Web 3 White Paper 2024," you will see how many issues there are in the area called Web 3.0.
For example, in the topic of "digitalization of payment and investment methods," which is listed as an issue that must be addressed immediately, "measures to promote the distribution of permissionless stable coins" are mentioned.
Permissionless means that the permission of an administrator is not required or there is no administrator, and anyone can freely access the network and trade. Many US dollar-linked stable coins, which are currently mainstream in cryptocurrency trading, fall into this category.
As the Web 3.0 ecosystem expands, the demand for such stable coins continues to grow, and development of Japanese yen-linked stable coins is also progressing in Japan. Looking ahead to a future where stablecoins will be used as "money used by many people," the report recommends that banks and businesses in Japan should begin sorting out the obstacles and legal issues that prevent them from issuing stablecoins.
The web3 White Paper 2024 also summarizes the progress made on the issues raised as recommendations in past white papers, and it can be seen that there has been definite progress in many areas.
As Kawasaki said in an interview with this magazine, tax reforms on corporate taxes on cryptocurrency holdings have been carried out for two consecutive years, and the efficiency of cryptocurrency (token) listing reviews at domestic cryptocurrency exchanges has been improved, and the number of cryptocurrencies being handled has actually increased dramatically in the past two years.
In addition, consideration has begun on the legal nature of digital assets such as NFTs, and progress has been made in training blockchain engineers and dealing with unauthorized NFTs that use content with rights holders without permission.
In light of the above, the white paper by web3PT is full of ambition to incorporate the rapidly developing Web 3.0 market and Web 3.0 business into the current social system without slowing down its momentum, and to use it as a catalyst to make Japan even better. I hope that this welcome challenge will continue and that we will see many progress.
