bitFlyer USA COO Joel Edgerton on Focusing on Crypto with Real-World Value and the Merger of Real Estate and Finance

My background is in technology and finance. I primarily worked in traditional finance sectors, including capital markets, asset management, trust, corporate banking, and insurance. I spent nearly two decades working in Japan and the UK. My entrepreneurial journey began in 2006 when I founded a company that leveraged algorithms based on real estate economics to help individuals make better financial decisions. Unfortunately, that venture failed because the laws and regulations of the time were not conducive to providing automated investment advice to individual customers.

I started accumulating Bitcoin around 2012, although my wife discouraged me from investing in it at the time (and she still doesn't quite get it...)

When I told my wife I was in talks with bitFlyer to build their US business, she was initially against it. She views the crypto market as a gamble and is generally distrustful of banks. She and technology have a rather adversarial relationship, so a crypto exchange seemed to check all the wrong boxes for her.

However, I saw it as a unique opportunity to genuinely help people gain more financial sovereignty. bitFlyer is the leading blockchain and crypto company in Japan. You can walk into an electronics store in Japan and pay with Bitcoin, and that's largely thanks to bitFlyer. I wanted to bring that same level of real-world utility to the US.

Ultimately, my wife recognized how exciting this was for me and that it's a legitimate business with the potential for real impact. We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but it's going to be an exciting journey, and I have a great team to help make it happen.

We are based in San Francisco. We chose this location because of the deep talent pool in the area, and it facilitates better collaboration with our team in Japan compared to the East Coast.

We are still in our growth phase in the US and have a lot to prove. We've expanded our services to 47 states and territories and were among the first to receive a New York BitLicense. We also accept institutional clients from Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands. Since launching, we've expanded our core products, such as our Buy/Sell Crypto feature and the Lightning Exchange. We also developed Instant Deposit to circumvent the delays in moving money caused by traditional banks. These efforts have led to over 2.5 million customers globally entrusting us with their funds.

I believe it's also important to highlight what we have NOT done. We have never gone offline during market volatility, we have never been hacked and lost customer funds, and we have never abandoned our customers to evade regulation.

I believe the primary benefit is that we genuinely care about our customers and are committed to doing right by them. There are massive crypto exchanges with more coins and huge leverage. There are fintech companies with sleek UIs that are proven by consultants. We intentionally choose to list fewer coins to focus on those that solve real-world problems. We intentionally minimize leverage to protect our customers from excessive risk. We are constantly working to improve our platform to make it easier for our customers to make informed decisions rather than gamble with their money. We're not perfect and have areas to improve, but our focus is on our customers and on delivering them the benefits of crypto and financial sovereignty.

I'm excited about the numerous incremental improvements we have planned. Our IT team is probably tired of me constantly adding to their workload.

We have two main products: a straightforward buy/sell feature and a more advanced trading platform. For the buy/sell product, our main goal is to simplify the experience, helping customers buy the coin they want with minimal hassle and educating them about the crypto ecosystem. We are quite conservative about adding new coins because we prioritize customer protection and operate as a regulated exchange. We focus on coins that are being used to solve tangible problems and have fundamental value.

For our advanced trading platform, Lightning, we are engaging with institutional traders to help them reduce trading and capital frictions that add costs or waste time. We are also working to consolidate liquidity across our different exchanges in Japan, the US, and EU.

Behind the scenes, we are investing significant effort into protecting our customers, keeping bad actors off our platform, and continuously enhancing security.

Let's just say sleep is a luxury for me these days. The biggest challenge (beyond all the technical, legal, and regulatory hurdles) is building trust and a relationship with our customers at a scale that makes for a viable business. We are a recent entrant to the US market and face many large companies with extremely deep pockets. We can't simply buy our customers with slick YouTube ads. It also seems like every fintech company out there now has a crypto offering. We need to do a better job of letting people know they don't have to accept the status quo. They don't have to accept platforms that crash when they want to trade most. We truly want to listen and add value for our customers. We want our customers to hold us to a higher standard and push us to become better.

I'm interested in decentralized applications (DApps) for gaming and the ability to have fun while also earning from your efforts. Our Japan office has done some work with Chromatic Frontier Heroes, creating unique in-game assets which is cool. I think projects in this space are promising.

I also like the Brave browser and its emphasis on privacy, security, and speed. We need to control our data and support companies that respect our privacy while still providing a great user experience.

During the Internet boom, you knew the shift went mainstream when AOL bought Time Warner. We can't wait for traditional companies to truly understand blockchain or crypto. I look forward to the day when a blockchain company buys Oracle, and a crypto exchange like bitFlyer buys Charles Schwab or Bank of America. This will signify that we've proven our value and can now truly begin to improve the systems of the world for the better.

We have not yet proven our worth in people's daily lives. We have to demonstrate that we make your life easier, that we save you time and money every single day.

If we need another crypto bull run to succeed, then we haven't done a good enough job adding value for our customers. We are not here to ride the coattails of the market like some of our competitors. We are here to help make the world simpler with blockchain.

I agree with the idea of a merger of real estate and finance. However, we have a very long way to go before that is practical. Finance has been around for thousands of years, and humanity has been trying to trick each other out of their money that entire time. Finance has built systems and rules for protection that allow the smooth movement of goods and services around the world. Crypto and blockchain technology solve some problems in our existing financial system, but they also create new problems that have not yet been solved. It's going to be a fascinating journey, and I look forward to seeing where it goes.