
On a Monday that felt more like a Tuesday, Minister Satsuki Katayama, ever the visionary, proclaimed that Japan’s financial markets would embrace crypto assets and blockchain technology with the enthusiasm of a child discovering a new toy. “There is still room for growth,” she said, as if the economy were a garden that had merely forgotten to water its plants. The New Year’s address at the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Grand Opening Ceremony was a spectacle of hope, punctuated by the solemnity of a man who had just realized his coffee was lukewarm.