SBI Holdings Japan is getting ready to introduce its 23 million user base to cryptocurrency trading on its trading platform VCTRADE. The platform was launched last month with support for Ripple’s native coin XRP. It has added support for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash since then. SBI Holdings is the largest partner of Ripple and is expecting to launch full-scale services on VCTRADE in July.
Millions of Customers for Crypto Business
SBI Holdings noted in an internal report:
“At the launch of full-scale services, expecting customer inflow from the SBI Group’s customer base of 23.47 million, specifically, SBI SECURITIES with approx. 4.26 million accounts, SBI Sumishin Net Bank with approx. 3.21 million accounts, and SBI Liquidity Market, including SBI FXTRADE, with approx. 1.05 million accounts, etc. Through mutual collaborations between businesses ecosystems, endeavor to realize a seamless trading environment between existing financial ecosystem companies.”
The company has already started working with Hong Kong’s Global Max, which acts as a market maker. The company noted:
“As an exchange market that is extremely secure and open to the world, will acquire the global liquidity of multiple and diverse cryptocurrencies, which may become a global common currency with regional universality.”
SBI Takes Its Crypto Ambitions One-Step Ahead
Yoshitaka Kitao, executive chairman, CEO, and president of SBI Holdings, earlier said:
“We have already moved aggressively to take advantage of Ripple’s technology, investing in the company in January of 2016, and later launching SBI Ripple Asia (a joint venture) in May of 2016. Very quickly, we launched a consortium of 61 banks, including the top in Japan to use Ripple for both domestic and cross-border payments. And, we are increasingly interested in looking to use XRP for payments.”
He remains bullish on the blockchain technology. Kitao stated:
“We want to take blockchain beyond financial. There’s a lot of speculative demand around cryptocurrencies, which is why the price is going up so quickly, but people need to think about how these technologies are being used in real life and how they can improve people’s businesses.”
Kitao suggested that the technology could help bring a boom to the Japanese economy in the next couple of years.
