Japan’s SBI Holdings has long had a massive footprint in the blockchain sector. Today it made five major announcements, most of which relate to stablecoins. As a Ripple investor and partner for many years, it announced plans to distribute the RLUSD stablecoin in Japan. It’s cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary SBI VC Trade received Japan’s first license as an Electronic Payment Instruments Exchange Service Provider, which allows it to distribute foreign stablecoins in Japan. It started with Circle’s USDC and formed a joint venture with Circle in March. Today it revealed a $50 million investment in the company’s IPO.
Beyond these partnerships with major stablecoin issuers, SBI is also launching initiatives focused on practical applications within Japan. The first is to explore the usage of stablecoins with SMBC, Japan’s second largest bank. Earlier this year SMBC announced plans to explore the commercialization of stablecoins with the Avalanche blockchain and collaborating with Fireblocks and TIS.
The second initiative, Project Trinity, aims to investigate the use of stablecoins for security token settlement as delivery versus payment (DvP). Japan has an active security token issuance market, particularly for the tokenization of real estate. Cumulative issuances have reached Yen 193 billion ($1.3 billion). Many real estate initiatives target consumers directly. Project Trinity involves seven institutions including SMBC, securities firms, tokenization platforms and secondary markets.
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AloJapan.com