A Japanese opposition leader just used a decentralized exchange with $844 million in annual revenue and a team of roughly a dozen people to argue that traditional finance is being rebuilt on-chain, and that Japan needs to get on board fast.

At TEAMZ SUMMIT 2026, Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), laid out an aggressive vision for Japan's crypto future. His proposals, a flat 20% capital gains tax, ETF approval, and 10x leverage, aren't just about crypto. They're part of a broader political strategy to put more money in the pockets of Japan's working generation.

What Tamaki Proposed at TEAMZ SUMMIT 2026

On April 8, 2026, Tamaki took the stage at TEAMZ WEB3/AI SUMMIT 2026 in Tokyo's Happo-en garden venue. TEAMZ is Japan's largest Web3 and AI conference, now in its eighth year, drawing roughly 10,000 attendees from around the world. Japan's Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama also spoke at the event, underscoring how seriously Japanese policymakers are taking digital assets.

Tamaki's reform proposals center on three pillars. First, shifting crypto capital gains from the current "miscellaneous income" category (taxed at up to 55%) to a flat 20% separate filing tax, the same rate applied to stock market gains. Second, legalizing crypto ETFs in Japan. Third, raising the personal leverage limit from the current 2x to 10x for crypto trading. All three have been core DPP policy pledges since 2022.

"2028 Is Too Late", The Fight Over Timing

The 20% flat tax for crypto is actually already in Japan's 2026 tax reform outline, approved by the ruling coalition in December 2025. The political direction is set. The battle now is over when it takes effect.

Under the current roadmap, Japan's parliament will amend the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA) during the 2026 regular session (ending July). But if the law is enacted in 2026 and implemented in 2027, the new tax rate would only apply to transactions starting January 2028.

Tamaki called this timeline unacceptable. He pushed for the 20% rate to apply from January 2027, arguing that every year of delay costs Japan capital, talent, and competitive position. "If we're going to do this, do it one year earlier. The speed at which benefits reach people matters," he said.

Why a "Working Generation" Party Champions Web3

Understanding why Tamaki's DPP pushes Web3 so aggressively requires understanding the party's identity. The DPP's core support base is workers in their 20s to 40s, Japan's active earning generation.

In the 2024 general election, the party quadrupled its seats from 7 to 28 by campaigning on a simple message: "increase your take-home pay" (手取りを増やす / tedori wo fuyasu). They successfully pushed for raising Japan's tax-free income threshold (the so-called "1.03 million yen wall") and eliminating a decades-old provisional gasoline tax.

Crypto tax reform fits squarely into this philosophy. Tamaki's logic: "The money you earn is your money." Taxing a working person's crypto gains at up to 55%, when stock gains are taxed at just 20%, is an unfair burden on a generation that increasingly uses digital assets for wealth building.

Japan now has over 13 million crypto accounts, meaning roughly 1 in 10 people holds an account. Investor surveys show that over 50% of crypto holders earn between $20,000 and $47,000 annually, solidly middle-income. This isn't a policy for the wealthy; it's aimed at ordinary workers.

Tamaki also argued that lower taxes would actually increase government revenue. "Businesses and talent that fled to Singapore and Dubai because of high taxes will come back if we make Japan competitive. When the overall market grows, tax revenue increases by hundreds of billions of yen," he said.

Hyperliquid: The On-Chain Finance Revolution in Action

The most striking part of Tamaki's speech was his deep dive into on-chain finance, using Hyperliquid as his primary example.

"Thirty years ago, the internet arrived and every offline transaction moved online. The exact same scale of disruption is happening right now. It's the on-chain transformation of finance," he said.

Hyperliquid is a decentralized perpetual futures exchange built on its own Layer 1 blockchain. It has no central management, no CEO office, no compliance department with hundreds of employees, no physical trading floor. Yet in 2025, it processed $2.95 trillion in cumulative trading volume and generated $844 million in annual revenue. Its team? Roughly a dozen people.

The "monthly revenue of $100 million" (approximately 15 billion yen) that Tamaki referenced reflects peak months where Hyperliquid's fee revenue exceeded that figure. The platform briefly surpassed Robinhood's crypto trading volume, a remarkable feat for a protocol with no venture capital backing and a skeleton crew.

The implications Tamaki drew were profound: blockchain technology is compressing the cost structure of financial infrastructure by orders of magnitude. Where traditional brokerages employ thousands to tens of thousands of people, Hyperliquid matches or exceeds their throughput with a fraction of the staff. This isn't just efficiency, it's a fundamental restructuring of how financial markets operate.

Drawing on his own experience working on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's corporatization and the introduction of Japan's PTS (Proprietary Trading Systems), Tamaki suggested that real-world assets like real estate and energy could be tokenized and brought on-chain, creating "a market worth thousands of trillions of yen."

Global Tax Comparison: Where Japan Stands

Japan's current crypto tax regime is among the harshest in the developed world. Here's how the proposed 20.315% rate (15.315% income tax + 5% local tax) would compare:

The United States taxes short-term crypto gains as ordinary income (up to 37%), while long-term holdings (over one year) are taxed at a maximum of 20%. Under the EU's MiCA framework, each member state sets its own rate, Germany exempts crypto held for more than one year from tax entirely, while France applies a 30% flat rate. Singapore has no capital gains tax at all, making it effectively 0%. South Korea has been planning a 20% flat rate but has repeatedly postponed implementation.

At 20%, Japan would be competitive with the US long-term rate, better than France, and far more attractive than its current 55% maximum. The addition of a 3-year loss carryforward provision, allowing investors to offset future gains with past losses, would further strengthen Japan's position.

From "Crypto Assets" to "Digital Assets", A Rebranding Proposal

Tamaki also proposed renaming Japan's official term for cryptocurrency. Currently, Japan uses the term "暗号資産" (angō shisan, literally "cryptographic assets"), which replaced the earlier "仮想通貨" (kasō tsūka, "virtual currency") in 2019 (effective 2020). Tamaki argued that the word "暗号" (crypto/cryptographic) carries connotations of shadiness and secrecy that deter mainstream adoption.

His proposed replacement: "デジタルアセット" (dejitaru asetto, "digital assets"). This broader term would encompass not just cryptocurrencies but also security tokens, NFTs, stablecoins, and other blockchain-based financial instruments, better reflecting what the industry actually is in 2026.

A Political Philosophy: Opportunity Over Risk

Tamaki framed his approach as a broader shift in how Japanese politics should operate. Using autonomous driving as an analogy, he said: "If one accident happens, the response shouldn't be to ban everything. If 99% of the outcomes are positive, we should pursue it aggressively. Japan won't advance unless politics changes to this mindset."

The same logic applies to Web3. Yes, there are risks, hacks, volatility, scams. But the potential upside, financial efficiency, global competitiveness, new industries, wealth creation for ordinary people, far outweighs the risks of excessive regulation that drives innovation offshore.

What's the crypto tax situation in your country? Would a politician openly championing blockchain at a tech summit fly where you live? Let us know in the comments.

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