Masayuki Shimura

After graduating from the University of Tokyo with a degree in Economics, Mr. Shimura joined Mitsui Bank in 1982. He had always had a strong interest in other countries, transferred to Singapore for the first time in 1996 and had a second assignment in Singapore in 2010, as Head of the Asia and Oceania Division of SMBC. Mr. Shimura was promoted to Senior Managing Executive Officer of the same bank in 2015, returned to Tokyo and took over the field of crypto assets and blockchain as one of his responsibilities. This became the trigger for his interest in bitFlyer, which was then already on its way to become one of the largest players in the crypto asset industry. In 2017, Mr. Shimura transferred to Sumitomo Mitsui Card as Senior Managing Executive Officer, and in 2019, when he reached his 60th birthday, he decided that as "we live up to a hundred years nowadays, rather than getting comfortable in a large organization, I want to take control of the steering wheel of my life by myself.” With a few years left until retirement, he decided to leave Sumitomo Mitsui Card and founded Shimura & Partners Inc. Just shortly after that, he met bitFlyer’s founder Mr. Kano, and became an auditing committee director of bitFlyer Holdings, Inc. and bitFlyer, Inc. in March 2020. He also serves as independent director and advisor to several startup companies, including BASE, Inc. and HashPort, Inc.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Shimura found value in a lifestyle of working and living in two locations and acquired a vacation home at the southern foot of the Yatsugatake Mountains. Since then, he has been spending many of his weekends at the villa and takes great pleasure in tending the garden surrounded by larch trees.
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning is young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young" (Henry Ford)