Japan passes crypto overhaul to bring digital assets under financial…

Japan's parliament passed legislation reclassifying cryptocurrency as a financial asset under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, moving regulation away from the Payment Services Act and introducing insider trading rules, stronger compliance obligations, and significantly increased penalties for unlicensed operators. The shift aligns Japan with a global regulatory trend of applying traditional financial frameworks to crypto markets. If you're building a crypto exchange or trading platform in Japan, you're now regulated like a stock exchange — insider trading rules, higher penalties for non-compliance (10 years prison, 10m yen fines), and registration under FIEA instead of PSA. The compliance bar just jumped, but the market you're entering is now explicitly legitimised as financial infrastructure, not a payment experiment.