Yasushi Fujii: Digitalized Money Will Be Different

Yasushi Fujii, is the founder of multiple successful gaming and entertainment companies, also serving as Chief Digitalization Officer at several local governments in Japan. He shares his perspective on the future of money: visualization of money flows opens new perspectives for economists.

Yasushi Fujii, 45, with an MBA, is known as a Digital Strategy Advisor. He founded Ping Pong Productions Co., Ltd. in Sendai and managed it until his departure to KLab Inc. in 2012. Now he manages Bandai Shinko Public Corporation. Besides his involvement with the commercial sector, Yasushi Fujii has worked as an associate professor at the University of Aizu Industry-Academia Innovation Center. Currently he is working on digitalization projects in multiple local governments such as Nishiaizu-cho, Yanaizu-cho. In addition, he is “CODE for AIZU” fellow, Aizu Life Laboratory Director, “CODE for AIZU” Founder, Digital Agency Open Data Evangelist, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Regional Information Advisor.

Mr. Fujii highlights an interesting property of digital money such as cryptocurrencies. He says, it is “visualizing” the flow of money that enables us to see “the engine that generates money”. When we see it, then we can design our economic policies accordingly. He brings an example of local money in action: digital funds invested in cultural promotion can be tracked in confectionary, tea shops, tourist attractions — inside the community.

He talks also about the importance of digitalization of local communities. A project called Byacco, developed in cooperation with Soramitsu, created a sovereign payment system for University of Aizu. It mimics all the functions of state monetary system such as payment for goods, transfers and even the revenues from external sources — the student were targeted for this trial in this case. There is an idea to expand this experiment to larger communities.

One of the biggest inventions that digital money has introduced is its programmability. Mr. Fujii believes this particular feature will make money a completely different medium, that will solve issues with fair distribution of resources.

Mr. Fujji also shared his vision on new money concepts: money is a tool and like any mechanism it should evolve and correspond to a new era. No one can predict what the future form of the money will be, we can’t even exclude the scenario where it will disappear altogether. But we need to lay the foundation for its development, which is data collection (experimenting) and using new possibilities of technology. We need to align our destination with nature.