Tokyo — Japan’s Fisco group is experimenting with selling bonds denominated in bitcoins, figuring that the digital currency will eventually become a legally recognised financial asset in Japan and help boost its business. A unit of the Tokyo-based financial information provider issued three-year debt worth 200 bitcoins to another firm in the Fisco group on August 10, in what is likely the first such deal in Japan, according to Masayuki Tashiro, the company’s chief product officer. One goal of the sale is to test the bonds’ potential to become a useful fundraising tool, he said. The notes issued were worth about $813,000 as of Wednesday. The experiment is another example of how companies and investors worldwide are looking for ways to make money out of bitcoin. Some investors have turned to digital currencies as a haven asset as tensions between the US and North Korea escalate. Japan, where regulators have made more progress than other nations in crafting crypto-currency laws, is bec...
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