SBI Holdings President Joins Ripple’s Board of Directors

| Updated
by Darya Rudz · 4 min read
SBI Holdings President Joins Ripple’s Board of Directors
Photo: Ripple

Starting from April 25, SBI Holdings’ Yoshitaka Kitao is officially replacing Takashi Okita on Ripple’s board.

Ripple‘s Board of Directors has welcomed a new member: Yoshitaka Kitao, the Representative Director, President, and CEO of SBI Holdings, Inc., will share his leadership experience and knowledge of global financial markets with Ripple’s team.

Yoshitaka Kitao began his career at Nomura Securities Co. Ltd., where he was engaged in the investment banking business. Then, he served as Executive Vice President and CFO of the Softbank Corporation. In July 1999, Kitao established SBI Holdings, Japan’s biggest financial services company.

Chris Larsen, Executive Chairman of Ripple’s Board of Directors, commented:

“I am excited to welcome Mr. Kitao to our Board of Directors. From conventional financial markets to digital asset markets, his deep understanding of the financial services industry will offer valuable business and financial expertise to help Ripple continue to scale.

Approximately half of our customers are located in Asia-Pac today, and we’re rapidly expanding our global footprint across the region. Mr. Kitao comes at a perfect time for Ripple as we look to deepen our customer base in Asia and beyond.”

Starting on April 25, Yoshitaka Kitao is officially replacing Takashi Okita on Ripple’s board. Known as a proponent of Ripple and XRP, Kitao wants to revolutionize Japan’s payment system by leveraging digital assets. Kitao said:

“Blockchain and digital assets are changing the way we move money around the world, and Ripple is the driving force behind this positive change. I am excited by this opportunity to lend my expertise and be part of the company’s next phase of growth.”

In July last year, Yoshitaka Kitao said that he could become an ‘official of Ripple’. And now we see, that’s true. Moreover, that was predictable, as Kitao has been the key player in the joint venture between SBI Holdings and Ripple, SBI Ripple Asia. Kitao believes that 2019 will be an extremely important year for XRP, as thanks to its broad use cases, XRP will manage to surpass Bitcoin. In February, Kitao went as far as to state that by 2025, every bank in Japan will use Ripple’s XRP.

Recently, SBI Holdings announced that MoneyTap, the remittance mobile app powered by Ripple, is receiving investments from 13 banks. The app, which handles money transfers between banks as well as between individuals via smartphones, does not use XRP but employs xCurrent for powering payments.

As we see, Kitao is extremely optimistic about Ripple. And having joined the company’s Board of Directors, he will do his best to promote Ripple and change the face of Japan’s payment system.

XRP Sales Have Increased

On April 24, Ripple published a report on its market activity over the first three months of the year. According to the company, a total of $169.42 million in XRP has been sold in the first quarter of 2019, compared with $129.03 million in the previous quarter. Q1 sales accounted for 0.32 percent of global XRP volume.

It is notable that Ripple saw a 54 percent surge in institutional investment, which demonstrates an overall rise in demand for crypto from institutional investors. Direct institutional sales of XRP totaled $61.93 million in the first quarter.

However, the total volume of XRP traded globally decreased by about 2 percent to $53.85 billion in Q1 in comparison with $54.82 billion in Q4 of last year. Further, the report states:

“While the price of XRP decreased, the average XRP daily volume was $595.28 million which is on par with XRP daily volume from Q4 2018. In addition, XRP’s correlation with other top digital assets remained consistently high throughout the quarter.”

At the moment, it is unclear whether the daily volume of XRP calculated by Ripple accurately portrays the crypto exchange market landscape, as well as too early to say whether Kitao’s predictions about XRP will be true.

*To learn more about XRP coin, Ripple Labs company and their innovative solutions, please check out our awesome Ripple guide.

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