SBI holdings, a Japanese Securities and banking giant, launched a cryptographic asset fund for retail investors last year. It has been actively investing in infrastructure to enable it to launch more cryptographic products. The company recently made a strategic investment in digital asset, a New York based startup known for building enterprise blockchain solutions. the company said in an announcement that as part of the transaction, the two companies will launch a joint venture this year to operate throughout East Asia, including Japan and South Korea**
This round of undisclosed financing has increased the scale of $300million raised by digital asset from IBM, Goldman Sachs and other companies since its establishment in 2014. The company is tokenizing assets with the help of blockchain companies.
Digital asset said in a separate statement that the purpose of the cooperation is to produce digital currencies, or to write digital currencies that act in a certain way according to predetermined conditions, and to introduce them into the Japanese market.
This programmable currency, tentatively called "smart yen", will be built using DAML, a smart contract language created by digital asset, which is famous for its role in the distributed ledger Technology (DLT) platform of the Australian Stock Exchange. The Hong Kong stock exchange is also a client of DAML and is facilitating the clearing of the exchange.
According to Yoshihiro kitao, President and representative director of SBI holdings, smart yen will "make it possible to establish a revolutionary, customer-oriented cash system by directly linking each individual customer loyalty program with deposits and fully automating the process of providing loyalty through smart contracts".
The smart money system is likely to create "more opportunities for Japanese retail banks to develop innovative products, such as loyalty programs, coupons and other incentives, to promote customer growth and retention," Yuval rooz, co-founder of digital asset, estimated that he will be the CEO in 2019.
Digital asset is just one of the few investments the Japanese financial company has made to expand its cryptocurrency business. It made a major acquisition in mid May, when it acquired a controlling stake in bitpoint, the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange. At the end of 2020, SBI acquired the cryptocurrency trading platform b2c2 in the UK.