SBI Holdings in Talks with Foreign Firms to Start Crypto Joint Venture

Yoshitaka Kitao, the founder of SBI Holdings Inc, has disclosed that the Japanese financial firm is in talks with foreign financial firms to establish a crypto joint venture. This initiative follows the recent global interest in Bitcoin and Ethereum sending their prices to $48000 and $1800 respectively. Both assets have been said to be an alternative investment target.

According to Kitao, the world has seen a massive evolution in the investment ecosystem as people have moved away from the previous primary Investment targets of Bonds and Stocks. 

Kitao also revealed that the company was working on at least two deals in a bid to advance the idea of establishing the cryptocurrency joint venture. However, he failed to provide good details about the possible partners. It is worth noting that SBI Holdings is not new to providing crypto services. The company has since 2018 provided a cryptocurrency trading service just like most of the popularly known online brokerage. 

Kitao acknowledges the direction to which the cryptocurrency industry is moving to with institutional investors and well known global influencers attaching themselves to it. 

“Institutional investors, mainly hedge funds, have recently started investing in cryptocurrencies…Not just institutional investors but also Elon Musk has,” he said.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) disclosed recently that the company has under a new policy purchased about $1.5 billion Bitcoin. The new policy permits them to be purchasing and holding digital assets from time to time. In just a month of holding Bitcoin, the company made more profits compared to what they could have made in just car making. The price of Bitcoin staged a bull run following the rise in demand to set an all-time high price. Their move is expected to lead more other companies into Bitcoin just as Kitao mentioned Tesla’s investment as a reference. 

Kitao expects that SBI Holdings will take advantage of the cryptocurrency boom to make the area its key earner. Coupled with that, he expects that large scale acquisitions and mergers are established in the future. Last year, they acquired Tao Tao, a local exchange to boost the cryptocurrency portfolio. Also, they acquired a 90% stake in B2C2, a London-based cryptocurrency market maker. 

The company has begun to see the impact in its figures as they made $63.9 million in the first nine months to December as a pretax profit. This was an 83% increase from the same period the previous year. 

“To become number one in the world, our choice is buying a leading company or creating an alliance with major global companies,” he said. “Our M&A strategy will not be something like taking minority stakes in many companies, ” said Kitao.

Other updates from the crypto industry can be found here.