Japanese companies in the digital currency business have launched an industry group for self-regulation with the support of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The new group aims to establish a peer-to-peer monitoring system to ensure security at participating companies and that services are not used for illegal activities such as money laundering.
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A member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Mr. Fukuda, stated: "Bitcoin companies are established and operating within the current framework of the law, meaning the risk of criminal activity is no different from the possibility of such activity in any other newborn industry."
The LDP had previously asked the country’s crypto-currency companies to create their own governing body.
Earlier this year, the Japanese authorities had decided not to impose regulation on Bitcoin, despite the collapse of the digital currency exchange MtGox in March 2014, following an alleged loss of BTC744,000 ($430m).
After Japan’s Financial Services Agency started to work on regulation, the proceedings stopped in June. At the time, Takuya Hirai, a lawmaker running the LDP’s internet media division, commented:
"Basically, we concluded that we will, for now, avoid a move towards legal regulation."
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