Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings has announced an important milestone. Its crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, now has over 2 million registered accounts. The milestone was reached on July 6.
This growth is linked to a new trend in Japan. As the yen weakens to all-time lows, local businesses are turning to cryptocurrencies. They do not buy Bitcoin and XRP for speculation. Instead, they use these digital assets to pay bonuses and dividends to shareholders. This is part of a new business practice. Companies are including crypto in their loyalty programs. SBI claims that this incentive tool works well.
Weak Yen Boosts Business Crypto Adoption
Retail traders generally dominate crypto purchases. But in Japan the situation is different. The weakness of the national currency forces companies to look for new ways to protect their capital. They diversify their reserves. They use SBI’s premium enterprise service, SBIVC for Prime. This service is intended for businesses.
SBI also claims a top position in the country. It offers the highest number of coins available for staking. This gives businesses a way to earn passive income.
SBI and Ripple dominate the market
SBI’s growth is also due to market consolidation. The figure of 2 million accounts comes from the merger of accounts from the VCTRADE and BITPOINT platforms. SBI acquired BITPoint Japan in April.
At the same time, SBI is entering the stablecoin market. It launched Japan’s first regulated trading of Ripple’s dollar-pegged RLUSD token and yen trust token JPYSC. The close relationship between SBI and Ripple helps. They have a joint venture called SBI Ripple Asia. This company is slowly moving Japan’s massive prepaid payments market onto blockchain. This market is worth 30 trillion yen. To build on this success, SBI has also rolled out a lending service for the new tokens. Users can earn money by lending digital dollars.
The goal: to become Japan’s first crypto exchange
The ultimate goal of SBI is clear. It wants to overtake its main competitors in terms of customers. Its main competitors are Coincheck, which has 2.62 million accounts, and bitFlyer. SBI aims to build a complete on-chain ecosystem. This ecosystem would be based on Ripple and XRPL technologies. The company aims to become the number one crypto exchange in Japan.
