It is planned to issue a stable token pegged to the yen

The founders of a $1.5 billion investment firm and a blockchain fund are joining forces to launch a new cryptocurrency whose value will be pegged to the yen.

According to the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong blockchain investment firm Grandshores Technology Group is raising $12.7 million to launch a project that would provide traders and users with a “stablecoin pegged to the yen, the price of which will be immune to market volatility.” 

Grandshores Technology founding partner Yongjie Yao is also the founder of the investment firm Hangzhou Grandshores Fund, which has received support from the Hangzhou government. He said the fund's partners are working on an as-yet-unnamed stablecoin that should be released in late 2018 or early 2019.

“We believe that the main buyers of this coin will be traders and exchangers,” he said, adding that Grandshores plans to develop a range of fiat-pegged stablecoins.

Talking to reporters from the South China Morning Post, Yao opined that blockchain will enter the mainstream in the next five years.

“Blockchain will achieve general adoption in the next three to five years,” he said. “We are entering a new stage in the development of blockchain, a stage that can be compared to the transition of operating systems from MS-DOS to MS-Windows.”

The development of reliable stablecoins is a very important process, because these tokens help users better understand the main advantages of the technology, and also help cope with volatility. There are also costs, such as the need to comply with KYC/AML (know your user and anti-money laundering) policies, but such currencies will no doubt attract more institutional investors and highly regulated firms to the crypto market. 

Earlier this year, Gemini and Paxos launched a USD-pegged stablecoin. Both firms claim that this is the first “regulated” stablecoin.