The rival cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has been fully acquired by the massive Japanese securities company SBI. This is the second time the company has acquired a domestic competitor, and it further solidifies its increasingly firm hold on the domestic cryptocurrency market.
SBI confirmed the move in a post on its website. The company snapped up a controlling (51%) stake in Bitpoint back in May last year. But, the firm wrote, it has now agreed a deal to buy the remaining 49% of Bitpoint’s share. The company did not disclose how much it had paid for the shares.
SBI clarified that Bitpoint would become a “wholly owned subsidiary” of its company. Additionally, the business fully owns the TaoTao cryptocurrency trading platform, which was formerly owned in part by Yahoo Japan. SBI bought TaoTao in 2020. Additionally, SBI runs its own in-house cryptocurrency exchange, SBI VC Trade.
SBI announced that it would enhance current Bitpoint services with the help of liquidity from its UK-based subsidiary B2C2. The company also stated that it might consider adding tokens associated with gaming to the platform in the future.
Bitpoint was founded by the points system operator Remixpoint.
Japanese Securities Giants Muscling out Local Crypto Exchange Startups?
Smaller domestic startups, like the industry leader bitFlyer, have historically dominated the Japanese crypto exchange scene.
Securities firms, on the other hand, have been eager to enter the market in recent years in an effort to cut down on the number of firms they must contend with.
In 2018, The Monex Group, a major competitor of SBI in the securities market, acquired the Coincheck exchange. Additionally, Monex has been mentioned as a potential bidder for the trading platform FTX Japan, which a US bankruptcy court is set to auction off later this year.
Other well-known sectors involved in the scene are the e-commerce behemoth Rakuten and the massive South Korean-Japanese chat app Line. These two businesses run their own exchanges.
Apart from its exchange operations, SBI also runs SBI Crypto, a cryptocurrency mining subsidiary. Alongside America’s Ripple, SBI also manages the SBI-Ripple Asia blockchain network.