 What was the real story behind it? Well, sorry if the troubles goes like this. It took a very long time. Is that here? Yeah, sure. I read about Bitcoin. It wasn't until 2012, and I had just moved to Taiwan. I quit my job at a law firm, and I wanted to take a year and study Chinese and kind of have some fun before I went back and figure out what to do for a career. Bitcoin was maybe like $20. And I didn't invest, so I was trying to figure out what to do. And the only place to buy it was this shady exchange in Japan that I didn't trust. 2013, the price went away, it spiked for like $150 because there were bank runs in Cyprus, and people were getting their money out of Cyprus by just buying Bitcoin. So this is the time to buy. And the price came back down for like $100 just under, and I threw like half of my money I had at the time in. And I was really regretting it. I was so pissed off. I could have made all this money had I just chanced it on this shady exchange in Japan. Then I was in. And it turns out I was right about the shady exchange in Japan because less than a year later, I had lost everything. Right now, if companies want to have an exchange in Japan, they have to get a license from the FSA. And then even then, if they want to list any new tokens, they have to get permission for every single one. And when China banned ICOs last year, China had the most activity in the world, and they all wanted to come to Japan. And then they quickly gave up because they realized it was impossible. And now it's even harder. The communication issue is surmountable because you can just hire people who speak Japanese, right? But the real issue was it's not clear. Everything has to go through FSA. And FSA decides whether or not they can list a particular token, who knows how long that takes. Even in Japan right now, a lot of people want to invest in ICOs. And a lot of companies want to raise money in ICOs. And they just won't let Japanese invest because they don't want to get in trouble in Japan and the regulations are not clear. And same with the US. And same with China. Need to keep people safe, but also need to make sure businesses can operate. This is actually a great opportunity for Japan. That's what I want to talk to the legislators today about. Because Japan is like seated between the US and China and has to figure out a path to develop its economy further. So it's the world's third biggest economy, but it still has a lot of issues to grow. And so cryptocurrency could be a great strategy. The US and China are not really clear enough. Japan is, they could track a lot of business. But if it's not, it's all going to be. I think I have more friends here than almost anywhere else. Even more than in New York City? Ah, I don't know. I have a lot of friends in New York City, but I haven't been back. I have more friends in the crypto world, I think in Japan than maybe anywhere else. I met most of them here. Actually in 2014, I came here and everyone had lost money there. And we all became friends and we're still friends to this day. Hello. I would never expect that years later I'd be like in Tokyo and going to the theater and the courthouse and all these things. We have to be aware of these things. We also have to be aware of these things and we have to be aware of our big differences in our business. At the same time, we have to be aware of the differences between the two. As a matter of fact, how can we use the word, the word, to communicate with people? If we don't think about it, we have to think about the system of the world, and the system of the money, the system of the IPO, we also have a very big and meaningful impact on things like that. I think it's a very important issue. I would like to say this again, to the world, and to the world, to the world, to the world, to the world, to the world, to the world. I would like to ask for your understanding. New York's New York. The three functions of money in the classical economic textbook that you have studied can be distinguished, but only sovereign back currencies have the three attributes. With all the attributes of a sovereign currency, What is it that has created the interest for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? It is the creation of computers and nobody has the responsibility for crypto assets. There is no government who has a foreign exchange policy. There is no central bank that has a monetary policy linked to that. If you are so full of time, you cannot be an instrument of payment or you need a account. Security laws in the United States are intended to, in all over the world, are intended to benefit individual investors. But what if these investors do not want the protection of those laws? The reality is what we found is that a number of issuers did not even exist and they have been some frauds. It is not something that I would attribute to the Bitcoin or anything like that. I just attribute it to the way those transactions that were unregulated eventually ended up. Who determines what is money? Do people determine what is money or do governments? And if it's governments, why should government have this power? You are the proof exactly of what I'm saying. You're a populist and that's fine. You're entitled to do that. The reality is a sovereign currency is the privilege of a sovereign. And that is decided by the sovereign. Long before governments existed, people chose what was money. And right now young people are choosing to put their trust into cryptocurrency. It's worth examining why they are doing this. Money was issued by dukes, marcuses, princes and kings. That's exactly what Japan does for the young. That is the tradition where the sovereign takes responsibility. The model you are promoting is a model where there is no authority who can make sure that the way it develops is in the interest of the country. And I think that is where I am absolutely clear. There is only one currency per country and it is essential to the economy of that country. Trying to say that it's one and the same and that the people have to decide on the currency doesn't, in my view, serve well the economy. Long before, money was issued by governments and kings. People used seashells and other commodities as money. And in the end, governments can issue currency, but people can choose which to use. That's why many people choose to use the US dollar and not the Simbaway dollar. That was great. I knew he didn't even wait for a transfer. He was like, you're a populist. I'm like, a mission accomplished when he got pissed off and said that. But look, that's the point is to have a discussion. He wanted to have a discussion about particular policy and not about what underlies the whole policy. And that's really the discussion that we need to have. Absolutely. It really made the whole thing very interesting. It was a great idea to actually bring you along because that really created this whole mapping. I'd love to do more of that. So I guess what we need to hear in Japan is to address and educate the Japanese politicians and bureaucrats. I didn't know what to expect walking in to the conference. I didn't know he was going to be there. I just thought I was going to be giving some remarks on my thoughts about Japan's legislation and where it should go. And once he started giving his talk, I quickly realized the direction things were headed. He was very biased. There was so much more I wanted to say, but there wasn't enough time. Saying that Bitcoin is just used for money laundering and all that type of stuff. So is cash. There's a lot more money laundering going on with cash and there's no distributed ledger to track it all through. So the other interesting thing I raised to him that he didn't want to discuss after the whole discussion we had was that the reason for the US's position is largely because initial public offerings are at like a 20-25 year low. This is because regulations too strict and there's a lot more private capital so people don't need public markets. And the SEC wants to fix this and a long come ICOs which threaten the entire model. I think I had a very unique vantage point because I spent so much time in Japan. I understand as well as anyone why Japan passed regulation. I don't know what Japan's going to do, but it's also a long shot that Japan's going to pass some legislation that's meaningful because other countries are doing the same thing and frankly I think they'll make it much easier for people to do business there. What multi-pass is pretty good. I think Bahamas and Cyprus are also looking at pretty good legislation, talking to them about it. People are free to go and invest where they want to. So if you're an investor in Japan why would you, what you should be doing is you should set up a company someplace in Hong Kong for $1,500 and do all your trading through that and then to pay zero tax. If you trade as a Japanese person you'll pay 55% tax, like why? It's a no-brainer. I think if countries like Japan don't take a forward-thinking approach they're just going to push all the cryptocurrency activity to other places and the internet will let that happen very easily. But what I wanted to tell the legislators too is that it's a great opportunity for Japan because Japan has a lot of issues facing its economy and how to grow it. It's the third biggest economy but seated between the US and China. Both the US and China have sort of rejected cryptocurrency for different reasons. China for to prevent capital flight in the US to protect its IPO market. And so that leaves Japan with a great solution. If they embrace cryptocurrency they can catch the wave and the US and China would miss out and give them a lot of bargaining power. So that's kind of the message I want to deliver to legislators. I think Japan though to their credit is doing a lot more to try to understand it and allow it to exist. But the current legislation is just not doing that at all. It's pushing business away. So I think they understand this from the talks I've had with a few legislators. They know it's not working. The question is what to do about it. And the other question is Japan, I've learned from Mt. Gox. The government and legislature in course move very slow. So once they get something in place it can be quite powerful. But for Japan the question is whether they can get it in place in time. Everyone's already setting up in Malta and other places. So if they do something they want to make sure it's done right and according to the process which takes time. I mean I don't fully understand the government in Japan. I think it's quite unique. But I do know some things from my experience. And any solution is just going to take time. Please subscribe and hodl.