Copper: The World’s Largest Custodian for Institutional Investors — An Interview with Takatoshi Shibayama

Last month, BitLending, which I am involved in, set up a booth at the Japan's largest Web 3.0 conference, "WebX," held in Tokyo for two days and I had the opportunity to interact with various people. My impression of the visitors was that many were not industry insiders, but rather general public. There were also many students and foreigners.

I happened to talk to a lady at the booth, and I found out later that she was the head of a certain US asset management company, one of the companies that had applied for a Bitcoin ETF with the SEC, when a familiar face appeared at a talk session.

The enthusiasm was palpable. Those who went to the venue for the first time probably felt the excitement of having wandered into Disneyland, and the expectation of the beginning of some amazing innovation. It is not wrong to think that this is the current state of Japan's Web 3.0. However, I would like to emphasize here that this is still in the growth stage.

On the other hand, looking at the world, the world's largest Web 3.0 conference, "TOKEN2049," is well-known as the world's largest Web 3.0 conference, and both the number of visitors and exhibitors is at least twice as large as Japan's. I think this difference is simply due to differences in markets.

Just because it is a Web 3.0 product, you might think that it can expand globally without borders, but the reality is not that simple. Not only do national regulations differ in each region, such as Europe, America, Asia, and the Middle East, but the situation is also different for each ecosystem in each field, such as the nature of users, supply and demand balance, and trends.

This is probably why the world's top exchanges such as Binance, Coinbase, and Bybit are not exhibiting at WebX. The same thing can be said about each field, such as payments, real estate, security, financial services, games, and NFTs.

Given that, Japan is truly an island on land. This is exactly what it means to become a Galapagos, and it's just deja vu for Japanese products. While building a unique path domestically, we must also consider a certain degree of international standardization with an eye on global expansion so as not to fall behind our overseas competitors. How many years has it been since I thought that at least we should be on the same page when it comes to taxation?

It seems that WebX will be held on the same date at the same venue next year, but this kind of large-scale event is a big milestone for us in the industry. What do we want to be like next year? Will we even survive? We will need to upgrade in many areas, including the number of visitors and exhibitors.

This year will be an unexpectedly hard battle for both the exhibiting projects and the organizers who gather exhibitors and advertisers. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is living with a sense of crisis that we are still hanging on by a thread. That's how hard it is to make a living in a new industry.

The theme of this article is "Custodian." It's probably a word that most readers are unfamiliar with. In the context of finance, custody refers to a service that stores and manages financial assets. A custodian is a business that safely stores clients' assets and provides related services such as settlement of transactions, asset management, record keeping, and reporting.

One of the keys to the maturation of the cryptocurrency industry is an increase in players. Just as the market has recently reacted sensitively to the inflow and outflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs, it is an absolute necessity for traditional financial giants such as BlackRock to enter the market in various ways.

This time, we will focus on Copper, the world's largest custodian for institutional investors. They provide safe asset storage services that avoid the risk of hacking and theft, and infrastructure services for efficient trading and settlement in the market, but they are also working on new initiatives to further promote the spread of cryptocurrencies.

This time, through an interview with Takatoshi Shibayama, Head Director of Asia at Copper, we will delve into the current state of the industry from the company's growth strategy and future prospects.