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The story
Hiroyuki revealed that after shifting his assets into the eurozone and US dollar zone starting in 2015, his yen-denominated wealth grew 70% “just from sleeping.” The surge was compounded by sharp share-price gains at Louis Vuitton and Hermès, companies he’d invested in. On 5ch, the news sparked a mix of envy and criticism tied to his long-unpaid damages case.
Addressing the accelerating yen depreciation, Hiroyuki said: “I moved my assets into the eurozone and the US dollar zone back in 2015, so my yen-denominated assets have grown 70% just from sleeping.”
He also reported: “Louis Vuitton, one of the companies I invested in, has tripled its share price. Christian Dior is up 2.5x. Hermès is up 10x…”
Last December, appearing on Nippon Broadcasting’s “Izumi Fusaho’s Passion Radio,” Hiroyuki said: “I moved abroad about 10 years ago, and back then it was around 120 yen to the euro. Now it’s 180 yen. Since I moved most of my assets to Europe around that time, they’ve grown 50% over 10 years without me doing anything.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
LOL LOL ("wara" is Japanese netspeak for laughter, like "lol")
He literally turned "contacting creditors and paying off the damages" into a travel-vlog content series, didn't he?
How old is that joke, grandpa?
Wasn't Hiroyuki's whole damages case just about him not disclosing the poster's IP (more precisely, not disclosing it to the standard of proof he personally demanded)?
Isn't it actually the original poster who's supposed to pay, not him?
https://www.ben54.jp/news/3035
You can just sell off what you need bit by bit
I messed up buying my gold bullion as a single 500g ingot
It unexpectedly shot up 300% in value
Selling bullion off in pieces is a real pain, you know
Just got lucky
Well, you need real ability as a base
otherwise
you'll never build up the capital to invest in the first place
If it's still positive after subtracting living expenses, then sure, your assets grow while you sleep — but what's the reality?
A cheap yen sucks, but watching your valuation drop is rough too.
He's only talking percentages, so there's no way to know how much he actually invested or how much he made
he'll probably just vanish before long lol
he'd better be handing over 45% of it in tax
It's already gotten a corrective recommendation, so it'll probably get scrapped eventually
his assets could start shrinking while he sleeps
Something like 105 yen [to the dollar] from the early COVID days just isn't happening again
Background and Key Points
Hiroyuki is Hiroyuki Nishimura, founder of 2channel (now 5channel) and current owner of 4chan. He is a fixture of Japanese online culture and TV commentary, but he is also a long-running defendant in defamation and damages litigation stemming from posts on his boards; Japanese courts have repeatedly ordered him to pay plaintiffs, and he has a public reputation for slow-walking or refusing payment, including one case where he framed “seeking out creditors to pay them” as travel-vlog content. His remarks here are about currency, not investment skill: he moved assets to the eurozone/dollar zone around 2015-2016, when the yen traded near 120/euro; it has since weakened to roughly 180/euro, a decline of about a third, which mechanically inflates the yen value of anything held in euros or dollars even with zero investment return. He separately mentioned equity gains in luxury names (LVMH, Dior, Hermès), which is a distinct, skill-dependent gain layered on top of the currency effect.
The thread’s disagreement isn’t really about the math — commenters mostly accept the yen-depreciation logic (post 11, 12, 17 extend it with their own examples) — it splits on motive and fairness: whether flaunting overseas gains while dodging domestic damages payments (posts 6, 30, 36) is hypocritical, versus whether the damages claims themselves are legitimate in the first place (post 61 disputes the premise of the case entirely).
What the thread never addresses is tax exposure: unrealized currency and share gains aren’t taxed in Japan until realized (post 12 alludes to this), so the “70% growth” is a paper figure, not income he owes tax on yet — undercutting the “he should pay 45% tax” demand in post 36, which conflates unrealized gains with taxable income.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Business News+) thread “[Entrepreneur] Hiroyuki: My Assets Are Growing “While I Just Sleep”.”
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