JPYC
JPYC is Japan's first regulated yen stablecoin, issued by Tokyo-based JPYC Inc. under a Funds Transfer Service Provider registration with the Financial Services Agency. Launched in October 2025, it is fully backed by yen bank deposits and Japanese government bonds, redeemable 1:1, and circulates on Ethereum, Polygon, and Avalanche. Cumulative issuance passed 2 billion yen within six months of launch, with most circulation happening on-chain beyond the issuer's direct accounts. Partnerships with Sony Bank, LINE NEXT, and Sumitomo Mitsui Card back its goal of making the programmable yen a settlement layer for payments and machine-to-machine transactions, with a stated target of 10 trillion yen in circulation within three years.
Japan's first regulated yen stablecoin: a debt-free, fully-reserved, redeemable programmable yen with genuinely strong traction and open on-chain composability, but structurally a single-issuer, single-jurisdiction fiat proxy whose monetary rules live in law and corporate policy rather than code.
M69 Score
Scored against the Money2069 Manifesto — see methodology. Higher = more aligned.
Detailed Rating Breakdown
Issuance Model3x3.0
Single licensed issuer (IM-01: 1) but issuance is debt-free prepaid exchange of yen for tokens (IM-02: 4), supply is fully elastic with demand (IM-04: 4) and contracts through user-initiated 1:1 redemption guaranteed by the funds-transfer license (IM-05: 4). Backing is purely financial collateral, no real-economy signal (IM-03: 2).
Spending Power Stability2x3.0
Full-reserve redemption at par is a hard mechanism but not index-based (SPS-01: 3); the benchmark is a single moderate-stability fiat, the yen (SPS-02: 2); regulated reserve safeguarding gives reasonable transparency (SPS-03: 3); under one year of live data, no depeg so far (SPS-04: 3); global on-chain accessibility but issuance/redemption gated to Japanese KYC (SPS-06: 3).
Fiat Independence & Interoperability2x2.0
Hard-pegged to JPY with 90-100% fiat reserves and full banking dependency (FI-01/02/03: 1); yen failure is protocol failure (FI-05: 1). Partial credit only for open ERC-20 composability that local currencies could in principle settle against (FI-07: 3) and generic crypto interoperability (FI-08: 3).
Traction2x3.0
Active and growing fast: cumulative issuance 2.1 billion yen by mid-April 2026, 2.6x growth in three months, 137,000 holding wallets versus 17,000 direct accounts (TR-01: 5, TR-10: 5); JPYC brand operating since 2021 in prepaid form (TR-02: 3); strong partners (Sony Bank, LINE NEXT, Sumitomo Life, Metaplanet) and heavy media and policy attention (TR-07: 4, TR-08: 5); merchant acceptance still thin (TR-04: 2) and the unit of account is simply the yen (TR-05: 2).
Sovereignty2.0
The issuer or the FSA can halt issuance and redemption (SO-01: 1), single-jurisdiction (SO-03: 1), and compliance controls imply freeze capability (SO-07: 3). Tokens themselves are self-custodied on public chains (SO-04: 3) and secondary circulation is pseudonymous (SO-08: 3), but monetary rules are enforced by law and operator policy, not code (SO-09: 2).
Governance2.0
Corporate governance by a private company; no community process (GO-01: 2, GO-02: 1). The Payment Services Act does bind issuance and reserve rules harder than operational decisions, a real if external constraint (GO-08: 3, GO-06: 3); mechanism transparency is regulatory-disclosure level (GO-03: 2).
Resilience3.0
Structurally simple full-reserve design (RE-04: 4) on mainstream EVM chains with three-chain redundancy (RE-05: 4); full reserves in deposits and JGBs are a sound run defense but untested at scale (RE-06: 3); 4.6 billion yen Series B funds the roadmap but revenue is early (RE-07: 3); explicitly designed for machine-to-machine and AI-agent payments (RE-09: 4); young in regulated form with no crisis history (RE-01: 2).
Inclusivity3.0
Anyone worldwide can hold and transact on-chain, but minting and redemption require Japanese KYC (IN-01: 3, IN-06: 2); low cost on Polygon and Avalanche (IN-02: 4); reserve yield accrues to the company, not participants (IN-04: 2); no anti-concentration design (IN-07: 3).