The world’s first crypto-currency to be owned by a bank is finally here. This comes two years after its initial announcement and after months of constant delays and hiccups. An announcement made on Tuesday confirmed the news, sending shockwaves through the crypto sphere. SBI Holdings, a financial giant based in Japan formally unveiled this crypto-currency which will be known as VCTRADE. SBI had initially launched the exchange albeit in a limited way only exposing itself to about 20,000 of its preregistered users. SBI decided to hold off from more extensive launch despite them having secured an operational license while still abiding by regulations that helped strengthen and reinforce security.
These measures are important especially in the wake of high profile crypto hacks that have occurred recently. One of them being the 530 million crypto heist that befell Coincheck, a well-known exchange based in Tokyo. In this new move, SBI has launched its crypto which is open to the general public. This means that all Japanese residents aged between 20 to 70 years will now have access to the cryptocurrency as opposed to the previous limited launch that only accommodated 20,000 people. At the moment, the exchange is only open to retail investors but this is set to change in due time. At the moment, no applications from institutional investors or corporates are under review. SBI has stepped things up since their preliminary launch that was held in June by diversifying the crypto tokens that were available for trade.
Compared to the preliminary launch where the exchange only offered Ripple’s XRP which powers the Ripple consensus ledger (RCL), the exchange will be offering trading support for Bitcoin cash (BCH/JPY) as well as Bitcoin (BTC/JPY). This means that the three cryptocurrencies will be supported by SBI’s platform and not only one which was previously the case. It is expected that this move will help improve remittance just as the initial deal with Ripple did. SBI had earlier struck a deal with Ripple which would ensure an intrinsic partnership that would see both SBI and Ripple jointly run SBI Ripple Asia in a move that would greatly improve remittance flows into Asian markets.
The addition of Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin (BCH) cash will definitely thrill investors who were eagerly waiting for SBI holdings to finally make the leap after long periods of holding up. Despite having acquired their licensing on time from the financial services Agency (FSA), SBI justified holding up the launch quite convincingly. The recent hacks such as the one that happened to Coincheck as mentioned earlier justified the self-imposed delay of the coin launch. When SBI first voice their interest in crypto 2 years ago, they became the first mainstream traditional financial corporation to explore the crypto space and now they have just recorded another first by launching the first crypto token owned by a bank.
