Japan’s TechBureau Emerges as Silent Blockchain Ninja with Catapult Weapon

Blockchain startup Tech Bureau unveils new core Catapult and raises US$ 6.6 million  to fund Zaif Bitcoin Exchange.

Blockchain startup Tech Bureau is based in Osaka, Japan. It has been in the news recently as it’s raised funds for its two major offerings: Zaif exchange and Mijin, a private blockchain product. Cointelegraph had the opportunity to talk to Takao Asayama, CEO of Tech Bureau Corp (Zaif Exchange). We asked him in detail about the future of Tech Bureau and recent new developments.

Funding from existing partners

Takao Asayama revealed to us that TechBureau has received funding to the tune of JPY 720 millions, which is worth about USD 6.6 million. The funding comes from their alliance partners such as FISCO, Infoteria, SJI, OKwave, MoneyPartners Group, arara, in addition to 2 VCs, NTVP (TechBureau’s seed investor) and Hiroshima VC. Infoteria is responsible for providing middleware that connects legacy systems and blockchain. SJI integrates Mijin into bank systems. OKwave creates user-auth with Mijin, and MoneyPartners will introduce direct bitcoin deposits into prepaid MasterCards. Takao Asayama says, “We as a strong alliance, will introduce and implement Mijin blockchain, and our bitcoin exchange engines to their services / products.”

TechBureau plans to Catapult ahead

TechBureau already has a domestic Bitcoin exchange called Zaif. They provide services like auto-debit from bank accounts to enable accumulation. Takao told us that this year there are plans for Zaif to become multilingual, so that foreign customers can take advantage of the Japanese Yen market. Mijin, according to him, has been developed keeping the global market in mind from day one.

Cointelegraph also got exclusive access to a press release ahead of time that indicates that TechBureau, in sync with open source project NEM, will be forming an alliance to share a new Mijin based core called Catapult. This new common core would have an entirely reworked architecture. The new features include:

Migration from Java to C++ for improved performanceOptimization of memory managementImprovement in flexibilityImprovement in throughputImprovement in overall performanceImprovement in stabilitySwitching from http protocol to socket communicationOptimization of network communication

According to the press release made available by TechBureau, “Mijin and NEM shall be creating yet another first in the cryptosphere. Catapult will mark the beginning of an enterprise class approach. It will create a new standard of design and is unprecedented in the blockchain domain, lifting its bar. This new technology will be provided not only to Mijin products, but also extended to the NEM open source project.”

Mijin can conquer the global private blockchain market

According to TechBureau’s Takao Asayama, Mijin is a very unique private blockchain product. They have already demonstrated that Mijin can be applied for a bank ledger system in Spring. Takao Asayama is confident in the system’s secure handling of critical financial systems. He says, “We created a ledger system on 300 bucks a month AWS environment and that did run a solid ledger system equivalent to 30-50 million dollar worth ledger system.  As I was claiming for over 6 months, It was really "zero downtime".  That bank even couldn't take down the ledger system run by 6 nodes, and hackers they hired couldn't manipulate the ledger.  We have proven private blockchain is more than worth something.”

Asayama is confident that the Series A funding will enable TechBureau to launch a global distribution of Mijin. He would like to attract more investors from Europe and USA so that they can accelerate the pace of TechBureau’s business even faster. He thinks that soon Mijin and Zaif will be merged. While Mijin will be responsible for ledger systems for various businesses, Zaif will be, in his words, an ‘ultimate crypto/token/JPY exchange engine’. He told us that TechBureau can build an exchange engine into a private ledger and everyone can handle any tokens or cryptos for the business without the headache of complicated development or security.

It is quite possible that TechBureau is about to revolutionise the Blockchain business and extend the functionality of the technology behind Bitcoin to the mainstream financial sector. As Takao Asayama says:

“We also would like to partner with major exchanges in each area, to enable mijin to handle more currencies other than JPY.  Japanese ninja Mijin is now ready to conquer the global private-blockchain market.”