US-Japan digital trade deal should include crypto: America’s Rand Corp
American think tank Rand Corporation’s Sale Lilly and Scott W. Harold have called on the governments of the United States and Japan to include crypto assets in the U.S.–Japan Digital Trade Agreement of 2019.
An opinion piece published by the Nikkei Asia on Wednesday reads Rand Corp analysts’ arguments establishing their support for crypto as a part of the digital trade deal. The article highlights the fact that both the US and Japan are hosts of the largest cryptocurrency markets in the world; therefore, the exclusion of crypto from the agreement is “somewhat surprising.”
It has also been mentioned in the article that although the U.S.–Japan Digital Trade Agreement of 2019 nowhere includes the digital currency ecosystem, some portions of it does cover “non-financial aspects” of cryptocurrency markets.
Rand Corp’s policy analysts have also discussed how the exclusion of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology could add to unnecessary tariffs, thus burdening the businesses operating in these markets. As a solution, they proposed two solutions – negotiating a separate cryptocurrencies agreement or revising the 2019 documents to cover blockchain technology and digital currencies. By adopting either of the two would pave the way for universal adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the analysts suggested.
