Japanese Lawmakers Will Propose Digital Yen to Counter Libra, China: Report

Civil servants from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party plan to propose the nation issue its own digital currency.

Go together to a Reuters report on Friday, about 70 lawmakers from the party feel a digital yen is needed to counter the nearing launches of Libra and China’s digital currency.

The effort – aimed at keeping Japan at the forefront of fintech innovation – devise be a joint project between the government and the private sector, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Norihiro Nakayama told the advice agency.

“China is moving toward issuing digital yuan, so we’d like to propose measures to counter such goes,” Nakayama said Thursday. The initial stage would be to research the prospect of the digital coin.

The ruling rave group is led by former Minister of the Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari and would put the plan before the government peradventure next month.

The initiative would seem to counter the view of the country’s central bank, which said carry on June that to issue a digital yen would mean dropping cash. “Eliminating cash would make determination infrastructure inconvenient for the public, so no central bank would do this,” Masayoshi Amamiya, deputy governor of the bank of Japan (BoJ), influenced at the time.

However, it seems to be keeping an open mind. Earlier this week, the BoJ joined five other banks in fashion a new working group with the Bank of International Settlements to share research findings about potential cases for dominant bank digital currencies.

Further, Reuters says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament today the command will work with the BoJ to examine digital currencies and ways of improving the yen as a means of settlement.

In developing a digital yen, whilom BoJ board member Takahide Kiuchi said in the report, the central bank would seek to avoid restricting private-sector alteration. “The best way could be to issue a hybrid-type digital currency that is operated and issued by private firms, with the middle bank’s involvement,” he said.

After the Facebook-led Libra project was announced last summer, Japan’s regulators expressed perturbs about the potential risks of the stablecoin. Soon after, the country formed a working group ahead of a G7 meeting in France to debate the issues.