The world’s biggest exchange at one time Mt. Gox was a Japanese company that went broke due to various factors including mismanagement, lax security and fraud/ theft. Bitcoin has come a long way since then, but most of the Japanese still think that the whole Bitcoin revolution came to an end along with Mt. Gox.
Tokyo played the host for one of the events this week. The event was targeted at educating the Japanese about Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Present in the event were well-known venture capitalists, their firms and some of the experts from the Bitcoin community. The event was held in Tokyo’s Toranomon Hills skyscraper on Monday. The interesting day was filled with demos, briefings and Q&A regarding Bitcoin, other digital currencies and new tech. These sessions were managed by Joichi Ito, the director of MIT Media Lab and co-founder of Digital Garage.
The New Context Conference has been the initiative of Digital Garage for over a decade now. The main intention of starting this conference was to bridge the technological and cultural gap between eastern and western civilizations. Along with digital currency, the conference also covered virtual reality technology.
While speaking at the event, the spokesperson for Digital Garage emphasized on the company’s commitment to focus heavily on getting players from fintech industry to be part of the program. This will help these players from Japan to understand how digital currency works and how these businesses are affecting the similar fintech businesses in the western countries.
Digital Garage has already made few small but significant investments in Japan and they would like to see the tight-knit Bitcoin start-up communities in the region to expand. The company however refused to divulge the details of start-ups they have invested in. Digital Garage finds the growth of Bitcoin similar to that of the internet in its early days. Being still in its infancy, Bitcoin has a lot of potential as it grows in the future.