LATEST POSTS
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Hedging a Weak Yen with Crypto — Stablecoins and BTC as Practical Tools
Overview of This Article As a weak yen becomes the new normal, more people are asking whether cryptocurrency — not just FX deposits or foreign stocks — can serve as a hedge against yen depreciation. USD-pegged stablecoins (USDC, USDT, and similar) and Bitcoin (BTC) both tend to rise in yen terms when the yen weakens, which is the core of the argument. This article focuses narrowly on the question: how do you use crypto as a weak-yen hedge? It separates…
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How to Hedge a Weak Yen — Practical Countermeasures for Individuals and Businesses
Overview of This Article Since 2022, the USD/JPY exchange rate has moved sharply, and a weak yen has translated into higher prices across daily life and business: gasoline, electricity, food, overseas SaaS, and more. This article organizes the realistic countermeasures available to individuals and businesses across four dimensions — assets, spending, revenue, and risk management — and points out which actions tend to backfire. It is based on information as of May 13, 2026, and reflects what Microfund has observed…
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Prepaid Issuer vs. Electronic Payment Instruments Business vs. Crypto Asset Exchange — Three Categories and Why Registration Matters
Introduction E-money cards like Suica and nanaco, yen-denominated stablecoins like JPYC, and crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum all let you move value digitally. Under Japanese law, however, each falls under a different business category and requires its own notification or registration. This article walks through the three categories — Prepaid Payment Instruments Issuer, Electronic Payment Instruments Business, and Crypto Asset Exchange Service — and explains why the registration regime exists at all, from both the operator’s and the user’s…
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How to Succeed as a Solopreneur — Eight Principles Behind People Who Keep Earning Alone
Introduction Many people who set out to become a solopreneur hit the same wall in year one: “I’m earning less than expected” or “I’m somehow busier than I was as an employee.” This article distills the eight principles consistently practiced by solopreneurs who keep earning, based on the patterns Microfund has seen across many individual operators. All information is current as of May 11, 2026. Note: “What is a solopreneur?” is covered in a separate article. This one is for…
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What Is a Solopreneur? — Owning a One-Person Business and Running It with AI
Introduction Whether you are leaving a corporate job, turning a side hustle into a main business, or starting again after retirement, you no longer have to begin by hiring people and building an organization. A growing number of people are choosing instead to own a one-person business and run it with AI and SaaS. That is the working style this article focuses on: the solopreneur. We cover the definition, how it differs from freelancing and traditional entrepreneurship, who it suits,…
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What Is ENS (Ethereum Name Service)? — The .eth Namespace and How to Use It Well
Introduction Cryptocurrency addresses look like “0x71C7656EC7ab88b098defB751B7401B5f6d8976F” — long, opaque, and easy to mistype. ENS (Ethereum Name Service) replaces them with human-readable names like “alice.eth.” ENS does more than make payments friendlier: it has become an identity layer for Web3, powering profiles, decentralized website URLs, and DAO voting handles. This article summarizes how ENS works, how to register a name, what it costs, common use cases, and key cautions, based on the situation as of May 2026. It draws on Microfund’s…
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Japan’s CPI Over the Past 3 Years — Reading the Peaks and Troughs
For: households that want to verify their inflation experience in numbers, and small business owners who need to reflect price trends in their pricing and cost management. as of May 7, 2026. Why look at CPI now? Many people in Japan feel that the wave of price hikes has eased a bit in early 2026. Indeed, headline CPI for March 2026 came in at +1.5% YoY, well below the +4.0% peak of January 2025. But this does not mean inflation…
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Nominal vs. Real Interest Rates — A Practical Guide to the Difference
Introduction “Time deposit at 0.3% per year,” “variable mortgage rate of 0.5%,” “government bond yield of 1.5%” — every rate you see on a screen is a nominal interest rate. But two products with the same nominal rate can have completely different real value, depending on whether prices are rising or falling. This article explains the difference between nominal and real interest rates with formulas and concrete examples, and shows how knowing this difference actually helps your household and business…
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Money Forward GitHub Breach (May 2026) — Root Cause and What Should Have Been Done
Overview On May 1, 2026, Money Forward, Inc. disclosed that its development GitHub account had been accessed by an unauthorized third party who copied repositories. Approximately 370 records related to the “Money Forward Business Card” (operated by Money Forward Kessai) — specifically the cardholder name in Latin letters and the last 4 digits of the card number — may have been exposed. The company also temporarily suspended bank-account aggregation features while it confirmed safety with each partner financial institution. This…
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Power Outages Don’t Have to Stop You — How Smart Households and Solo Founders Choose a Jackery Portable Power Station (2026 Guide)
[PR / Advertisement] This article contains affiliate links via A8.net (advertiser: Jackery Japan, Inc.). We may earn a commission when you purchase through these links at no additional cost to you. The content is independently compiled by our editorial team based on publicly available information. Imagine the power goes out for 12 hours — right now. Will the food in your fridge survive? Will your client video call stay alive? Will your phone last? Can a baby sleep through a…