In a recent YouTube video, a popular market analyst argued that Japan is quietly laying the groundwork for one of the most aggressive national integrations of digital assets into traditional finance — with XRP positioned as core “plumbing” in that future.
Levi Rietveld’s focus ranges from pension money moving into crypto to regulatory changes that could open Japan’s stock and real estate markets to tokenization.
Japan’s Pension Shift & a Top-Down Digital Finance Agenda
Levi highlights what he calls Japan’s “largest XRP news ever”: the country’s national business corporate pension fund is reportedly preparing to allocate 1% of its assets to cryptocurrencies.
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While exact figures weren’t provided, he stresses that even a single‑percent allocation from these large pools of capital could translate into hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into digital assets over time.
This move is framed as part of a longer, coordinated policy arc.
In January, Japan’s finance minister Satsuki Katayama declared 2026 to be “Japan’s digital year” at the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s New Year opening ceremony, explicitly backing the integration of crypto trading into regulated stock and commodity exchanges.
The goal is to let everyday investors access digital assets through the same infrastructure they already use for equities and futures.
By April 2026, Japan’s cabinet had approved a bill to bring crypto under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (FIEA), reclassifying crypto assets as financial instruments.
Levi views this as the structural change needed for digital assets to be traded alongside stocks, with clear rules on issues like market abuse and insider trading.
Stablecoins, Tokenization & XRP’s Role In The Pipes
The regulatory groundwork is being matched by infrastructure moves. In October, JPYCoin Inc. launched JPYc, described as Japan’s first regulated yen‑backed stablecoin under the new framework.
According to the YouTube episode, JPYc is fully reserved with yen deposits and Japanese government bonds, redeemable 1:1, and live on public chains including Ethereum, Avalanche, and Polygon.
Levi Rietveld argues that Japan’s tokenization drive will likely start with equities — enabling 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks — and then extend to real estate, a market he describes as “massive” domestically.
In his view, that shift alone could eventually send trillions of dollars’ worth of assets onto blockchain rails, with broader spillover as other jurisdictions follow.
XRP enters the picture via both domestic and international banking ties.
The analyst points to private‑sector adoption in Japan, notably through firms such as SBI Holdings, and links it to recent pilots he says involved JPMorgan and Mastercard using the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for cross‑border payments.
Those flows are already touching Japan, Europe, and other regions where major banks operate.
He characterizes XRP as future “plumbing”: widely used behind the scenes, largely invisible to end users, similar to how SWIFT underpins bank transfers today.
The thesis is that once these systems are fully wired up, ongoing cross‑border and tokenized‑asset settlement could route “trillions” in value through XRP over time — even if most of the world never realizes they are interacting with it.
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Japan’s national business corporate pension fund plans to allocate 1% of assets to cryptocurrencies, but detailed timelines and asset breakdowns were not disclosed.
JPYc is a fully reserved, yen‑backed stablecoin operating on public blockchains, launched under Japan’s new stablecoin framework. It provides regulated yen liquidity for on‑chain finance.
The video cites existing ties between XRP and Japanese financial groups such as SBI, and references recent pilots where global banks used XRPL for cross‑border payments that route through Japan.
The analyst believes XRP will play a major role, especially in cross‑border settlement, but Japan’s tokenization efforts are likely to involve multiple blockchains and intermediaries.
