I talked to the Financial Services Agency of Japan about p2p crypto trading.

So Japan is weird when it comes to p2p trading of crypto. On the one hand there are no specific laws that prohibit it, there are however recommendations from the FSA to stay away from person to person trading. On the other hand, the Japanese authorities recently arrested a kid for doing p2p. According to the police the kid broke the payment service act as he failed to register as an exchange. So it seems like it is not allowed then and it is not merely a recommendation? Then is it not allowed at all or is there a limit for individuals? It is all very vague so I decided to call the source to find out for sure.

So I called the FSA to get some clarification about all this and my mind was blown. I asked the crypto regulating branch of the FSA if it is ok to buy and sell crypto from/to others. The person on the phone acted like I just asked her something extremely stupid and that I don't understand how crypto works. She proceeded to explain to me that crypto is not a physical object and it is physically impossible to buy or sell it from/to anyone else, one is only able to buy it from the 29 registered companies in Japan. She was so surprised at my question that she thought I was being scammed, because in her mind it is not possible to send crypto from individual to individual.

Honestly I am shocked. My tax money is paying for these incompetent people to oversee laws about things that they don't even remotely understand. As it stands right now it seems that doing peer 2 peer in Japan is a no-go. Which in my view is strange as I view my crypto as my property and I feel that I should be able to do with it whatever I want as long as it is not a criminal act, just like with my fiat.

​