Teruko

Teruko Neriki is a Bitcoin advocate focused on financial freedom and adoption across Asia, with a particular emphasis on empowering young women. She spent four years leading Japan initiatives for Fulgur Ventures, during which she launched Tokyo Bitcoin Base and organized BITCOIN JAPAN 2025 and Bitcoin Tokyo 2024. Dedicated to making Bitcoin philosophy accessible, Teruko is the creator of lostinbitcoin.jp and the Japanese translator of The Bitcoin Standard, The Bullish Case for Bitcoin, The Little Bitcoin Book, and Check Your Financial Privilege. Her early career includes product marketing and business development at Sony. She holds an MBA from Georgetown University. In 2017, Japan accounted for nearly 60% of global Bitcoin trading and became the first country to establish a regulatory framework for Bitcoin. Japan was destined to be the Bitcoin capital of the world. After eight years in the trenches—co-hosting meetups, translating books, launching a 1,300 m² hub, and running conferences—Teruko shares an unfiltered operator's post-mortem: what worked, what didn't, and what the experience taught her about the limits of education, infrastructure, and institutional scale. Most importantly, she explains why she eventually walked away from Japan—not because she stopped believing in Bitcoin, but because she realized she was solving the wrong problem in the wrong market.