By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
SBI FX Trade will become the first forex exchange firm in Japan to support CFD trading for cryptos, including BTC, ETH and XRP.
The latest reports indicate that the Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings wants to launch contract-for-difference (CFD) trading for major cryptocurrencies. Starting on August 31, SBI will begin CFD trading services for crypto assets including Bitcoin (BTC), XRP, and Ethereum (ETH).
Based on the official announcement, this new service will be offered via SBI’s foreign exchange-focused arm, SBI FX Trade. SBI also said that the platform is now accepting new account registrations in readiness for the upcoming launch.
This new trading offering will enable SBI users to trade crypto CFD contracts against the United States dollar and the Japanese Yen. A preliminary review shows that the platform will support up to six new trading pairs.
SBI FX Trade will, in a few days, become the first forex exchange firm in Japan to support CFD trading for cryptos, according to the announcement. SBI Holdings has gained recognition as a major financial institution in Japan. It has actively participated in the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in recent years. Involvement by such major institutions indicates that crypto adoption is gradually going mainstream.
SBI – Ripple Projects
SBI is known as a major partner of notable blockchain company Ripple, which develops several products on top of XRP. XRP is still the third-largest crypto by market capitalization. Ripple and SBI have been working together since 2016 on a joint venture dubbed SBI Ripple Asia.
The venture between these two organizations intends to promote XRP usage across the Asian financial markets. SBI also plans to integrate Ripple-powered settlement across all the Japanese ATMs.
Nonetheless, SBI’s upcoming crypto CFDs are noot something new for Japan. In 2019, a local cryptocurrency firm, Liquid, launched Bitcoin CFD trading. The new service enabled traders to speculate on the asset’s price movement against the dollar and the yen. In July this year, Monex Securities managed to become the first online securities Japanese company to launch cryptocurrency CFD services.