Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings has reported a significant milestone. Its crypto exchange, SBI VC Trade, now has over 2 million registered accounts. The milestone was reached on July 6.
This growth is tied to a new trend in Japan. As the yen weakens to historic lows, local businesses are turning to cryptocurrencies. They are not buying Bitcoin and XRP for speculation. Instead, they are using these digital assets to pay shareholder bonuses and dividends. This is part of a new corporate practice. Companies include crypto in their loyalty programs. SBI says this incentive tool is working well.
Weak Yen Drives Corporate Crypto Adoption
Retail traders usually dominate crypto buying. But in Japan, the situation is different. The weak national currency is forcing companies to look for new ways to protect their capital. They are diversifying their reserves. They use SBI’s premium corporate service, SBIVC for Prime. This service is designed for businesses.
SBI also claims a top spot in the country. It offers the most 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 2 million accounts figure comes from merging accounts from the VCTRADE and BITPOINT platforms. SBI acquired BITPoint Japan in April.
At the same time, SBI is moving into the stablecoin market. It launched Japan’s first regulated trading of Ripple’s dollar-pegged token RLUSD and the yen trust token JPYSC. The close relationship between SBI and Ripple helps. They have a joint venture called SBI Ripple Asia. This venture is slowly moving Japan’s huge prepaid payments market onto the blockchain. That market is worth 30 trillion yen. To build on this success, SBI also rolled out a lending service for the new tokens. Users can earn by lending digital dollars.
The Goal: Become Japan’s Top Crypto Exchange
SBI’s ultimate goal is clear. It wants to overtake its main rivals by client base. Its main competitors are Coincheck, which has 2.62 million accounts, and bitFlyer. SBI aims to build a full on-chain ecosystem. This ecosystem would be based on Ripple and XRPL technologies. The company wants to become the number one crypto exchange in Japan.
