The head of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), Yuichiro Tamaki, revealed his ambitious cryptocurrency reform plans on his X social media account yesterday. The announcement comes as Japan's election season enters full swing, with Tamaki's proposals focused squarely on the country's notoriously strict crypto tax regime.

According to the official campaign document, the accompanying reform package centers on establishing a flat 20% tax rate for cryptocurrency gains. This is a far cry from what currently exists, wherein crypto investors can pay as much as 55% in taxes due to miscellaneous income classifications.

Beyond tax reform, Tamaki's ambition reaches as far as greater digital asset incorporation into Japanese society. The DPP's platform introduces mechanisms for implementing NFTs into governance processes, creating cryptocurrency ETFs, and loosening leverage restrictions on trading. Perhaps most interestingly, there is the prospective abolition of levies on crypto-to-crypto trades that may have, up until this point, been a huge barrier to the trading of digital assets.

The reform package has also tackled monetary innovation at the local level. Tamaki has suggested digitizing the Japanese yen and giving local governments powers to issue their respective digital currencies, aiming to trigger regional economic growth. This may well bring Japan one step closer to something resembling modernized financial infrastructure.

While many have welcomed the proposals, a variety of onlookers remain skeptical. Critics say that even at the proposed 20% rate, it could negate the exact reason cryptocurrency was created in the first place, to act as a hedge against such systems. Concerns have also been raised over Japan's general burden imposed on its citizenry through taxation.