WAKAHARA Yukio is Deputy Director-General of the Policy and Markets Bureau at the JFSA since July 2023. His responsibility includes legal affairs on digital and decentralized finance. He joined the Ministry of Finance of Japan in 1994 and has held various positions over his career at the JFSA and the MOF, covering financial supervision and budget planning among others. He also worked for the Sumitomo Corporation (through the personnel exchange program between the government and private sector) as an EU-ETS and Japanese OTC carbon market trader.