Japan’s SBI, the largest investor in the blockchain field, establishes a blockchain company

On March 20, according to Nikkei reports, Japanese financial industry giant SBI Group established a subsidiary to handle personal remittances using blockchain technology and other services, and to provide the personal remittance application "Money Tap" participated by Sumishin SBI Online Banking and others.

It is reported that Money Tap was originally operated by SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture subsidiary of SBI Group and Ripple, but SBI has decided to legalize it to facilitate early investment. SBI Group is considering setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary first, then negotiating with a number of banks for investment, and completing the integration by the end of this month. Through legalization, it will be easier for SBI to obtain the financial support needed for Money Tap.

In fact, according to the investment observation report obtained by the blockchain investment bank NKB Group from CB Insights, SBI Group has become the largest investor in the field of blockchain technology.

In April 2018, SBI Bank LLC, a Russian commercial bank affiliated with SBI, joined the blockchain alliance R3 to promote R3’s Corda distributed ledger (DLT) platform and promote the adoption of blockchain technology across industries. In the same month, New York-based cryptocurrency trading platform Templum announced that it had completed $10 million in financing with support from the venture capital arm of Japanese financial giant SBI Group.

In May 2018, SBI invested in Taiwanese blockchain startup OwlTing and plans a public offering next year. SBI has previously postponed the launch of the cryptocurrency trading platform twice, and now announced that it will be launched in the summer of 2018.

In August 2018, SBI established a joint venture subsidiary with Anke Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ping An Insurance Company of China, and Shanghai OneConnect Financial Technology, a subsidiary of Ping An Group. Investment ratio: SBI 60%, Ping An Group 40%. Through this joint venture, SBI Holdings will promote the series of OneConnect financial technology services to domestic financial institutions in Japan. It also hopes that through cooperation with Ping An Group, it can contribute to Japanese financial institutions entering the Chinese market.

SBI becomes the first banking institution to directly launch a cryptocurrency exchange. The platform VCTRADE provides services to Japanese retail investors. SBI has previously established a close partnership with US blockchain startup Ripple and participated in the financing of several large cryptocurrency trading platforms, including Tokyo-based bitFlyer and San Francisco-based Kraken.

SBI has reportedly been injecting funds into the cryptocurrency industry over the past few years. After investing in multiple exchanges, he launched his own exchange. In February 2016, the global Bitcoin exchange Kraken announced that it had received a multi-million dollar investment from SBI. Shortly afterwards, in April, SBI once again led a 3 billion yen (approximately US$27 million) Series C round of financing for Bitflyer, a large Japanese cryptocurrency exchange.

In addition, SBI also participated in the US$100 million financing of social investment network platform eToro, which plans to launch an international cryptocurrency exchange and mobile wallet in the United States. In September 2016, blockchain startup Ripple announced the completion of a $55 million Series B round of financing, with SBI among the leading investors.

In fact, when Ripple began deploying the Asian market in early 2016, its chosen partner was SBI. The two parties reached a cooperation agreement at that time and established the joint venture SBI Ripple Asia. As part of the cooperation agreement, Ripple will also discuss with SBI how to list XRP on SBI’s various online securities platforms.

(Source: Planet Daily)