Japan is preparing for one of its most significant crypto regulatory shifts in more than a decade, as the Financial Services Agency (FSA) considers reclassifying crypto assets from “payment instruments” to “financial products.” The move comes amid soaring adoption — with crypto accounts quadrupling to 13 million in five years — and growing concerns over fraud, cybercrime, and inadequate consumer protections.

During the FSA’s sixth crypto working group meeting on Nov. 26, officials highlighted an average of 350 monthly consumer complaints, rising overseas scam activity, and increasingly sophisticated attacks targeting Japanese users.

Why Japan Wants to Shift Crypto Under Securities Law

If approved, oversight would move from the Payment Services Act (PSA) to the stricter Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA). This would introduce more rigorous disclosure rules, insider-trading safeguards, criminal penalties, and enhanced reporting obligations for exchanges.

Several industry voices argue the change is overdue.
Emeritus Professor Yoshikazu Yamaoki noted that tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum no longer behave like payment tools but instead mirror speculative investment assets — similar to securities.

Others warn the shift could burden small exchanges and accelerate consolidation, as FIEA-level compliance requirements are significantly heavier.

Tax Reform: The Turning Point

The working group also supports a flat 20% tax on crypto gains, matching stock trading. Currently, crypto income is taxed as miscellaneous earnings — ranging from 15% to 55%.

Industry advocates say aligning taxes with equities could help Japan catch up with global crypto adoption.
ANAP Holdings CEO Rintaro Kawai argues the country is already “significantly behind” and risks having “no future” in Bitcoin innovation without meaningful reform.

A Fragmented Framework That Can’t Keep Up

Japan pioneered early crypto regulation, but years of piecemeal amendments — from Mt. Gox reforms to 2022’s stablecoin laws — have resulted in an inconsistent legal structure. Whitepapers require no formal accuracy standards, and self-regulation by the JVCEA remains weaker than traditional securities oversight frameworks.

Regulators now believe only a full transition to securities-style supervision can restore market integrity.

Europe’s largest asset manager brings a major traditional finance product on-chain, signaling accelerating institutional adoption of blockchain technology.

Amundi, the largest asset manager in Europe, has launched a €5 billion tokenized money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain, marking one of the most significant institutional commitments to on-chain finance to date. The fund, developed in partnership with the asset servicing giant CACEIS, went live on November 4, 2025, and represents a major step toward bringing regulated financial products into blockchain environments.

A Milestone for Traditional Finance Moving On-Chain

According to the company, tokenizing the fund enables a more efficient structure for issuance, record-keeping, and settlement while maintaining compliance with existing regulatory frameworks. The collaboration between Amundi and CACEIS establishes the infrastructure needed to securely issue and manage tokenized shares of the fund on Ethereum.

In a statement, Amundi described the launch as “a pivotal step in bridging traditional finance with the innovative capabilities of blockchain technology,” highlighting the shift toward hybrid financial models that blend regulated investment products with decentralized infrastructure.

Why Ethereum?

The decision to deploy on Ethereum underscores the network’s growing role as the preferred blockchain for institutional-grade tokenization. The model enables:

• Faster and more transparent transactions
  
• Programmable compliance
  
• Greater operational flexibility
  
• The ability to interact with on-chain systems or custodians
  

Investors are expected to benefit from smoother transitions between traditional custody structures and blockchain-based holdings, potentially streamlining internal operations for asset managers and institutional treasuries.

Potential Impact on Ethereum and DeFi

Market observers anticipate that a tokenized fund of this size could influence liquidity flows within the Ethereum ecosystem, especially as institutions explore on-chain settlement or integrate tokenized shares into their operational frameworks.

While the fund itself remains within traditional regulatory boundaries, its presence on Ethereum may indirectly benefit related DeFi infrastructure by reinforcing blockchain’s credibility as a settlement layer for large-scale financial products.

The move reflects a broader trend in Europe toward tokenizing real-world assets (RWA), with regulators increasingly open to blockchain-based financial innovation. Previous tokenized fund pilots across the region suggest that regulatory support for tokenization will continue to expand as institutions seek improved transparency and operational efficiency.

Coral Protocol has officially launched Coral V1, a major upgrade introducing remote, production-ready software agents designed to streamline multi-agent deployment across blockchain ecosystems. The release marks a significant step toward practical, scalable AI systems that can collaborate, automate tasks, and operate across distributed environments.

The new system allows developers to rent, customize, or integrate remote agents with their own local setups. These agents operate independently while maintaining full transparency, with every decision and action recorded through threads and telemetry inside Coral Studio, giving builders clear oversight of agent behavior.

Remote Agents Go Live Through the Coral Registry

A key feature in Coral V1 is the Coral Registry, a marketplace where developers can publish their agents and automatically receive payouts each time those agents are used. This structure gives contributors direct economic incentives, addressing long-standing challenges around compensation in AI development.

The launch introduces full support for:

• Agent creation
• Agent acquisition
• Agent configuration
• Secure settlement through Solana-powered on-chain payments

These agents can also work together as specialized teams — a shift from traditional frameworks that treated agents as simple functions. Coral Protocol’s approach allows developers to build systems that more closely resemble real-world organizational workflows, with defined roles, processes, and communication rules.

Roman Georgio, Coral Protocol’s Co-Founder and CEO, described the launch as the culmination of years of engineering:
“Coral V1 embodies our vision of an AI ecosystem where specialized agents collaborate to accomplish virtually anything.”

Fixing Long-Standing Problems in Multi-Agent AI

Multi-agent systems have historically been difficult to deploy on-chain due to:

• High infrastructure overhead
• Poor interoperability
• Lack of standardized communication
• No reliable compensation model for agent creators

Coral V1 addresses these shortcomings by enabling remote agents that operate within a shared framework and can coordinate without developers managing complex back-end infrastructure.

The system differs sharply from platforms like LangChain, which require callable algorithm-style agents. Coral instead allows developers to define interaction rules, letting agents operate more like departments in a business rather than isolated functions.

Performance Milestone and Ecosystem Growth

In August, Coral Protocol drew attention by outperforming Microsoft’s Magnetic UI by 34% on the GAIA benchmark, a rigorous suite that evaluates agents on complex reasoning, research, and real-world tasks. The results placed Coral ahead of several major AI players in agent performance.

CTO Caelum Forder said the results indicate that the “Internet of Agents” is no longer theoretical, encouraging developers to “Coralize” their systems for improved efficiency and lower costs.

The protocol has undergone substantial changes in 2025:

• A rebrand from Ai23T
• Launch of the CORAL token on Solana
• Over 500% token growth since debut (despite being 40% below its ATH)

Coral’s roadmap for late 2025 includes:

• Session Contracts
• On-chain task coordination
• Local Server and Agent Mesh tools for decentralized deployment

Together, these upgrades position Coral Protocol as a leading infrastructure project in the emerging AI-on-blockchain sector.