Ex-BOJ official warns Japan and US may intervene again if yen slides further

Former Bank of Japan official Atsushi Takeuchi issued a blunt warning on August 4: if the yen starts sliding again, Japan and the United States will likely step in together to prop it up. On July 30-31, Japanese authorities and the US Treasury executed a coordinated yen-buying intervention that yanked the currency from near 164 per dollar back to the 156-158 range. Japan’s Finance Ministry confirmed the operation on August 3, making it the first bilateral currency intervention between the two nations since 2011. Bitcoin didn’t take the news well, dipping to approximately $63,000 as the intervention unfolded. Why a currency intervention 6,000 miles away matters to crypto To understand why crypto traders should care about the yen, you need to understand the carry trade. Think of it like borrowing money in a country where interest rates are low (Japan) and parking it in assets that yield more (US Treasuries, tech stocks, Bitcoin). It’s essentially free money, until the currency you borrowed in suddenly gets stronger and your repayment costs spike. When Japan and the US jointly intervened to strengthen the yen, traders running yen-funded carry trades suddenly faced higher costs to unwi...