Japanese Financial Giant SBI to Reward Shareholders with XRP

Japanese financial colossus SBI Group has announced that it will reward shareholders with interim benefits in Ripple‘s XRP tokens, which is the third largest token by market capitalization.

Per an official statement from SBI’s Morningstar arm, the group’s asset management business, all shareholders with 100 or more shares (100 shares = 1 unit) in the company as of September 30 this year will be rewarded with XRP 30 (USD 7.5) supposedly per 1 unit.

The statement justified SBI’s decision, stating that cryptocurrencies “are already used globally to fulfill various functions, such as settlements and remittances.”

The group also praised the “practicality” of XRP and said that its “efficiency for international remittance” will increase in the future.

SBI is one of Ripple’s closest partners, and the two companies have operated the SBI Ripple Asia remittance initiative since 2016. The initiative has already accrued a number of partners across the continent.

SBI’s CEO Yoshitaka Kitao also became a Ripple board member earlier this year. SBI operates its own cryptocurrency trading platform in Japan, which has previously handed out XRP as part of promotional offers.

SBI says it also plans to pay dividends to shareholders at the end of the current financial year (March 2020), although it did not specify as to whether or not those dividends would be made in XRP, too. The company says it has asked the Tokyo Stock Exchange for permission to hand out more profit returns to its shareholders.

Meanwhile, as reported, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse decided to defend the company from, according to him, “FUD” this week. While some market players stress that there is “a rising concern” over the possibility that the regulators might find XRP to be an unregistered security and maybe even stop its trading, the CEO insisted that this token is not security. He also denied claims that Ripple has been selling XRP at an increasing pace. However, while sales decreased in volume, they increased in value in the second quarter of this year.

At pixel time (06:52 UTC), XRP trades at c. USD 0.25 and is down by 6% in the past 24 hours, by 5% in the past week, by 18% in the past month an by 27% in the past 12 months.