Japan’s tightly controlled digital asset market gained its first new licensed entrant in four years today. Laser Digital Japan — the local arm of Nomura Group’s digital asset subsidiary — completed registration as a CAESP with Japan’s Financial Services Agency, receiving registration number 00032 from the Kanto Local Finance Bureau confirmed on Japan’s official FSA registry. The last firm to clear Japan’s demanding vetting process was Binance Japan in October 2022. The gap — nearly four years — is not an accident of timing. It is the direct result of a regulatory regime so stringent that no newcomer could clear it until today.

The registration matters not just as a milestone, but as a signal: the next phase…