Japan FinTech Observer #74

Norbert GehrkeFollowTokyo FinTechNewsletterListenShareWelcome to the seventy-fourth edition of the Japan FinTech Observer.

74th Edition of the Japan FinTech Observer

Norbert Gehrke

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We will host the Japan FinTech Observer weekly call again on Monday evening, starting at 8pm JST on LinkedIn Audio. You can find this week’s event here.

Canadian Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), with one-fifth of the stores but 1.5x the market capitalization, is making a bid for 7&I Holdings. “Japan’s M&A scene may never be the same again,” says Leo Lewis in the Financial Times.

The partnership of the Astar Foundation and Sony is due to launch Soneium, an Ethereum Layer 2. The ASTR token remains at less than half recent highs, and at about a quarter of a spiky peak. With an abundance of Layer 2s already in the market, this move smells like the “not invented here” syndrome.

The Fed will cut interest rates in September, and the JPY closed Friday nearer to USD 1.40 than to 1.50. Or, in other words, we are still just about where we started the year, when analysts were predicting up to six US rate cuts. Among the analysts we follow, there remains a split opinion regarding the next BOJ move: October or January.

Otherwise, here is what we are going to cover this week: