Articles by
William Pesek
William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of “Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades.” He has been a columnist for Bloomberg and Barron’s.
June 2020
Five reasons why India is crying out for a crypto revolution
India could reap greater economic growth, cut down on corruption and more if it adopts a more progressive stance on cryptocurrency. A leading role in Asia is New Delhi’s for the taking.
August 2019
READ: Asia Grabs Blockchain Lead From West?
Much has been made of the clear divergence between Asia’s embrace of blockchain innovation versus the West. But three seemingly disparate storylines this month suggest the gap might be widening as we speak. The first is South Korea creating a special enterprise zone for cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings. China’s fast-accelerating timetable for issuing its […]
July 2019
Facebook’s Libra Gets a Timely ‘Like’ From Japan
Facebook just did the unthinkable in the Donald Trump era: give America’s Republicans and Democrats something on which to agree. Same with the Group of Seven nations taking a dim view of the social media giant minting its own money. US President Trump declared that Libra, Facebook’s proposed virtual currency, “will have little standing or […]
June 2019
Will Osaka Be Crypto’s Bretton Woods Moment?
The specter of Facebook clicking “like” on Bitcoin adds fuel to what can best be called a resurrection rally. Left for near dead a few months ago, the best-known crypto asset boomed partly on reports Mark Zuckerberg would unveil a digital currency. Now that Facebook’s Libra is out, it could be stellar news -– a […]
May 2019
Can Digital Currency End Japan’s Economic Malaise?
Risk-averse, regulation-crazy, deflationary Japan was never an obvious epicenter for Bitcoin trading. And yet the government has openly welcomed the crypto industry, betting that blockchain innovation would catalyze a startup boom and create new wealth and jobs. So should the Bank of Japan (BOJ) go one step further and issue its own cryptocurrency? “This will […]