SBI Holdings announced recently that they completed an investment round in Clear Market Holdings through their Crypto Investment arm, which leaves them with 12% ownership in the company. Even as the price was not disclosed, reports place the figure somewhere close to 1 billion Yen, or $9 million.
The company provides electronic trading services for over-the-counter derivatives. Interestingly, this might mark the move of SBI into the derivatives market for cryptocurrencies. This is due to the fact that Clear Markets has obtained approval to operate in Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom. They also have approvals for Swap Execution Facilities from the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC].
Clear Markets is reportedly planning to launch a swap trading service of digital assets and virtual currencies. A swap is a kind of derivative in which two counterparties exchange cash flows of one party’s financial instrument for those of the other party’s financial instrument. The company also has approval for derivative brokerage in 32 countries in the UK and Europe. SBI states [trans.]:
“We believe that these efforts will greatly contribute to the development of the digital asset ecosystem by the SBI Group, and have reached this investment.”
They also specified their plans for future movement into these markets:
“The SBI Group is expanding its capital and alliance with digital asset-related venture companies to build digital asset-based ecosystems. We will continue to concentrate on investing and tie-ups with digital asset-related venture companies with high technical capabilities, while seeking synergies with existing digital asset-related companies within the SBI group.”
Moreover, this marks the second cryptocurrency-focused investment SBI has made recently. Earlier in July, they invested in Lancium Technologies, which aims to mine cryptocurrencies using wind power. This is keeping in mind with reducing their environmental burden for their Bitcoin Cash [BCH] mining activities.
Jan Yakira, a cryptocurrency enthusiast, stated on the move:
“This move might be big for the yet-undeveloped cryptocurrency deriavative market. Synergy mentioned by SBI might still be the ultimate end goal of these partnerships, as they have a dependable source of liquidity from SBIVC. The future is anyone’s guess, though.”
The post Ripple partner SBI Holdings enters cryptocurrency derivatives market with new investment appeared first on AMBCrypto.
Source: AMBcrypto
Original Post: Ripple partner SBI Holdings enters cryptocurrency derivatives market with new investment
