 Hi. Thank you. Now, definitely, you keep putting me on just before beers, making my job even more tough every time. Well, since we, I think, uncovered earlier on that bitcoins are definitely have no intrinsic value whatsoever. I would say why do we have to worry about regulations, right? Well, that's not the case. Policymakers and regulators are very worried about cryptocurrencies, and that's why we're here. Now, a fireside chat usually has two chairs. We're going to go for the Irish pop discussion instead. So, that's all right. Would you introduce yourself? Yeah. I'm Shane. I'm from Japan. We actually operate Bitcoin R&D team, and also we have a venture capital that invests in Bitcoin startup. So, we have like two arms for the R&D side and venture capital side. So, for R&D side, we have like 10 Bitcoin developer in-house, and mainly they are contributing to the Bitcoin core, writing networks, and a VTC base, or some smart contract protocol called discrete log contract, which is actually we are working together with MIT to develop, like, you know, realize the peer-to-peer derivative protocol. And for the venture capital side, we are actually the investor of the bookstream, and we also invest in hardware world startup in Switzerland, and some trading non-custodial trading protocol. It's called OVN in Boston. So, basically, we have R&D to promote Bitcoin, and then on the other side, we invest in startup that drives Bitcoin adoption. Very good. For disclosure, Ashley Snitch is the only person I actually knew here today when I arrived. We met at JFSA Roundtable in Tokyo, back in late March. So, that's the Japanese Financial Services Authority. So, why is it important? Because Japan is currently the president of the G20, and of particular importance is with the stage of maturity of the Bitcoin market in Japan. Japan is not a stranger to the issues that they've had. As presidency of the G20, they're very, very keen to make sure that virtual currencies, the crypto assets are actually part of the agenda and has been discussed by finance ministers. And there's a meeting of the G20 in Fukuoka, actually, next the end of this weekend, right? So, I was privileged to actually spend two really good days. It's probably the best roundtable I've ever attended, and maybe I wanted to share a bit of my experience of why it was important, and that you can fit in some of your details around Japan, and then we can segue it into regulations. It won't take you long because regulations have a topic this time of the afternoon. So, as I mentioned, Japan cryptocurrency, in particular Bitcoin market, is very mature. They've actually been doing this for much longer, say, of any other country, I think, in the European Union, for example. What was so good about the roundtable is that policymakers and regulators, so the Bank of Japan and the Japanese Financial Services Authority, organized two days with the brought in policymakers and regulators from across the world. So, we had Japan, we had Canada, we had the Hong Kong Monetary Authority there, Singapore, someone from Bafin was there, from AMF, actually, in France. We had someone from the Security Exchange in Australia, and did I forget anyone? And me? Oh, someone, and Abu Dhabi. So, it was interesting because it was just outside of the European Union, so these are, we're talking about regulators that they're actually a lot more mature in terms of usage and acceptance and understanding what the technology can do, which I think is very important. Why was the roundtable also very good is because, on the second day, the GFSA did something really, really good. They literally brought in the likes of them. She knew another private sector, startups and technology companies, and they spent four or five hours doing an update on technology developments. So, you can imagine policymakers and regulators sitting there actually understanding technology bits for the first time. It was just fascinating to see. These are the people that probably would not go and ask questions because they wouldn't know how to go about to do it, and they were able to ask directly from the rain makers, okay, from the technology makers, which was very, very good. But, why is all this important? So, maybe you want, could you give us like a flavor for what happened with the Mongols and then with... For the instant? Yeah, I think Mt. Gox is kind of a little bit old one, but last year in Japan, we have several hacking. One is a conjecture, which is like a 580 million loss, and the other one is like a dive. It also lost 67 million something. So, for the FSA, it's very important to impose a traditional financial regulation to the crypto asset exchanges. So, after that, exchanges are required to enforce a lot of actions to improve the system securities, operational securities, something like that. So, I think last 2018 was kind of like a little bit calmed down in terms of the adoption of Bitcoin, but it was something necessary, you know, step to accept more wider adoptions. So, in terms of adoption of Bitcoin, I know we mentioned this before, could you give us a flavor? Well, like, because I know it's very hard, because it's very hard to get data, but in terms of what could... I think the number of people who has an account in Japan is like about 3% in the population, and however, that the generation like millennial ages or generation Z, its adoption is like about 10%, so I think more younger people are accepting Bitcoin in terms of buy and sell, and I think that's very important because, you know, given if, you know, think about 10 years from now, those people, it's going to get aged, and then it's going to be, you know, more adoption among the populations. So, I think a lot of technology's adoption was, you know, read by the younger generations, and in that context, I think it's very important to see the younger age's adoption. That's a very interesting point as well, because we're saying about 10% of very specific age group cohorts. So, we're talking about, obviously, owning Bitcoin in what would consider households, effectively, like instead of like institutionalize them. So, in terms of the fraud and the money lost through Coincheck and BangOx, these would actually have affected retail investors like you and I here. So, as a result of that, Japan then went ahead and tried to integrate, but more retrofit with the, let's see if I'm correct, it's the GVECEA, which is Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association. So, there's in terms of, they are intending to do self-regulation. So, since they're creation, they're trying to do self-regulate exchanges in Japan, but at the same time, there has been retrofitted of the payments regulation. I understand it, okay, which is a bit of both. On that point, is Michael Ruggs gone now? Yes, I think he's gone. I'm going to plug his work, by the way, in terms of talking to regulations. The Cambridge University just published interesting, actually I would say fantastic, you can download it, I think we'll get it. It's called the Global Crypto Acid Regulatory Landscape Study. It's 23, I think, regulations all over the world. They've actually seen what's the most used, for example, word. So, we moved on away from digital currency through virtual currency. Now, maybe crypto assets, crypto currencies, the most preferred used. The data analysis as well of what kind of regulations are new, what countries have actually gone and actually retrofitted system regulations, which is very, very interesting. And Japan is clearly covering that as well, which I think is very good. I just wanted to close off maybe within terms of, we mentioned G20. My concern, I think it's a good thing that the regulators and policy makers want to look about how we can actually look at putting our hands on understanding potential risks on crypto assets. Everybody's trying to do a global coordination of that. And I know there's not much we can do because G20 hasn't happened yet. It's actually not happening until next week. But you are really trying to push a real global engagement effort. How much can you say about that? Be safe. I think that one of the Japanese professor Shinjiro Matsuyo and one guy from JFSA, Yuta, Takanashi is kind of like promoting a concept to provide a way to engage with developer communities. Because it's very important to understand what is happening in tech communities. So in that context, JFSA is really understanding technical trend. So I think they are trying to try not to regulate, but they want to create a better way to deal with these technologies. And so in that context, I think that we had JFSA rendezvous. So we're not only the regulator, but also that the developer community people are joined to discuss about that. Okay. And I think that's a point actually of, has anyone here worked with the financial action task force guidelines, draft guidelines are being gone around? You have? What do you think? Exactly. So, and I'll just be two minutes. That's exactly the example. I use an example to explain to people, particularly in policy making and regulation stuff. It's impossible for somebody to look at considering risks and opportunities of technology they have not seen. Okay. So I'll give you an example of my mother. I give her a phone about eight years ago. Told her it was a mobile phone. It was for her to get calls on the go whenever I called her. So she would answer calls. And that was fine. She didn't have to be at home by the phone to answer my calls, which was great. So as she got more comfortable, I started sending text messages and I never got replies from the text messages. And I arrived at the airport, said, mom, I'm home and I've got a reply. Are you okay? I never got a reply. I just never got replies to this, you know, to the text messages. So one day I called my mother and I said, mom, why are you not replying to the text messages? And she said, oh, I read them. I know. Yeah. But mom, you have to reply to them for me to know that you read them. So this was before WhatsApp and the double blue tick, right? But the point I'm making is I had given her a mobile phone and she understood it was for mobile phone calls. And that was enough. I had got the step further to explain to her with this thing now you can do something like a text, okay? So what I'm seeing here is that when you're sitting up in front of regulators and policy makers and you're trying to, them to understand what technology or blockchain can do, you have to show it to them somehow. And I think that's what GFSA has done really good with engagement. An example of that is the financial action task force guidelines from the feedback received from the global digital finance. It is clear that there are some of the proposals in there are just not possible from a technology perspective. Again, there's a disconnect there. So maybe cussing off on the FAFA, please. There's not much we can do, as I said, on the G20 because this is happening now Friday and Saturday. So keep an eye on the news. Hopefully, there will be some developments and some agreements from all our G20 finance ministers. The financial action task force is due to vote this month on crypto regulations. So how many people knew about that? Well, you might want to get a draft of that and start looking at that, I would say, because there are voting on that this month. As I said, the global digital finance, I've done a really, really good job of providing feedback. So I have a few other people. But what's interesting is FAFA on one side are voting on that this month. But Yosco actually opening a public consultation next month. So I'm not sure how the financial action task force global effort is going to tie up with the Yosco. At the same time, we have the fifth anti-money laundering directive being implemented at the end of July, something that I know Japan has worked really hard because of the previous issues they've had with mangos and coinchecks. So if you want to understand whether how could affect you, there's a specific definition of virtual currency in the fifth AML, but also what a virtual asset provider is. So please check that out. It might be of interest to you. To the SEC, I think there was a very interesting fintech action, sorry, a fintech task force discussion a few days ago. They moved on to some discussion about maybe potentially tokens could be tradable as a security without being security, but nothing is defined as or agreed as a no from an SEC perspective. So that is the fastest update on global regulations I could possibly give anyone. Is that okay? Okay. Any questions for me? For the Japan side, you know, we have a crypto exchange license, but so we started creating the custodian as well. So maybe starting next year. So I think the wallet service provider or custodian type of business will affect especially in Japan. Yeah, very good. And just maybe to clarify as well, you already have covered regulations in terms of investor protection. You've already done the exchanges, which is very important, and you've been wanting to strengthen the AML because even after strengthening the AML, coinchecks still happened, correct? Yeah. So you actually would say you're an example to follow. Very good. Thirsty for a beer now? Yeah. Oh, there was a question. Good question. I think that somehow Bitcoin Cash community exists in Japan, but in terms of trading, still Bitcoin is, I think, dominated in Japan market. And and Evian said that, actually, that some of exchanges withdraw over the listing of Bitcoin Cash. So I don't know. It's okay if, you know, as far as technology is supported by a lot of engineers and communities, I think it's okay. And yeah. Standards for digital services with custodians. So it looks like there is some duplication of effort, some kind of direction towards standardization for digital technology. I don't quite, you know, I don't know about that one. But the academia, you know, people, you know, especially in Japan, is working on, you know, creating a standard for custodians. And I know that the kind of, you know, program is, you know, running, but I'm not sure how, you know, working with a global standard in Japan. Yeah. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you for joining us on the stage. It was probably the best and like most intense update on regulation.