Fintech

Japanese men in their 30s and 40s are the biggest drivers of the bitcoin boom. 

Forty percent of bitcoin trading between October and November was conducted in yen, according to a Nikkei report.

Japanese investors, mostly men, came to dominate trading after regulators started to shut down cryptocurrency exchanges in China.

"More than a few Japanese investors positively value volatility," Muraki [of Deutsche Bank] said in a note on Thursday. He continued: "Japan’s investment style is typified by a combination of low-risk, low-return deposits and high-risk, high-return investments."

Many Japanese investors are engaged in leveraged trading, using borrowed funds. 

Japan's push to attract innovative financial technology (fintech) startups to the country could spell trouble for the US.

On Wednesday at the New York Stock Exchange, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the government was moving forward with a plan to roll back regulations on some fintech startups to help spur the development of emerging technology and drive growth in the country.

As such, Abe is pushing for a regulatory sandbox program that would allow fintechs, startups looking to automate or digitize aspects of financial services, to operate and scale without meeting existing regulations.

"We will make a sandbox in which it is possible for certain participants to conduct trial and error freely on new business for a certain period of time without conforming to existing regulations," Abe said.