The Japanese have long put up with near-zero interest rates on their personal savings accounts. At the same time, they are worried about a serious shortfall in the national pension program. These problems have pushed retail investors to consider investing in bitcoin.
Bitcoin is attracting “Mrs Watanabe“, or retail investors who were originally Japanese housewives. Retail interest has jumped, bitcoin exchanges told Reuters on Friday. Investors are “trying to escape rock-bottom savings rates by investing in the cryptocurrency,” the publication wrote. The world’s third-largest economy has been “under a mounting debt burden that successive governments have failed to address,” the BBC described in May. Japan’s government debts have almost quintupled from 50% of the country’s GDP in 1980 to 239% of GDP today.