Japanese Bitcoin Industry Unveils ‘Aurora’ to Let Global Anime Fans Support $2 Trillion Yen Space

Japan Bitcoin Industry Co., Ltd. has debuted a self-custodial Bitcoin payments platform designed to help Japanese companies sell to international fans who are often shut out by traditional payment systems.

Using this week’s Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong to introduce the product, JPI dropped Aurora — aiming to reach an audience that could not be serviced before. 

The pitch is simple: anime, manga, games, and other Japanese content have a massive global following, but the payment rails supporting that content haven’t kept pace. 

Aurora aims to close that gap by letting international customers pay in Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, while giving Japanese merchants a simple point-of-sale and API layer to manage invoicing, payment tracking, and integrations.

According to JBI, the market for Japanese anime content outside Japan reached ¥2.17 trillion in 2024, up 26% year-over-year — yet many overseas fans still struggle to pay for streaming subscriptions, digital merchandise and limited-access drops due to geographic payment restrictions.

The platform’s core design principle is that JBI never touches the money. Each merchant runs its own self-custodial Lightning node, receiving Bitcoin directly from customers.