Japan's Diet Says Crypto Is Basically Stock Now — Even the 55% Tax Got the Memo 🇯🇵

Japan's House of Representatives approved amendments to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act on Thursday, June 11, advancing legislation that would reclassify cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin ($BTC), Ether ($ETH) and XRP as financial products alongside stocks and bonds. The bill now heads to the House of Councillors for final passage, with the legislation expected to take effect next year.

The proposed framework would move crypto-asset transaction rules from the Payment Services Act to the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, according to Financial Services Agency (FSA) materials dated April 2026. Under the plan, crypto assets would be treated as financial products separate from securities, with new disclosure requirements, tighter exchange oversight, insider trading restrictions and stronger penalties for unregistered operators. Issuers of certain assets would face disclosure obligations when conducting offerings or secondary distributions, and crypto-asset transaction business operators would be required to publish information on the assets they handle. The bill had cleared the Committee on Financial Affairs on June 10, official records showed.

Tax treatment would also shift under the reform, lowering the capital gains rate on crypto profits from a current maximum of 55% to a 20% flat rate, in line with stocks and bonds. That tax change is expected to take effect in 2028. XRP is currently classified as a financial asset in Japan.

The regulatory shift could clear a path for spot crypto exchange-traded funds, with the Japan Exchange Group eyeing launches of Bitcoin and crypto ETFs by 2027. Bloomberg reported the changes would give local investors a regulated route to digital-asset exposure beyond crypto exchanges and listed companies with token holdings. The parliamentary advance follows an Asahi Shimbun report in November 2025 that the FSA had decided to apply the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act to crypto, including $BTC, $ETH and other tokens handled by local exchanges.