Japanese Financial Giants Compete For Profit in Crypto Business

Japanese financial service giants Monex Group and SBI Group have made major cryptocurrency announcements as competition between exchange platforms begins to heat up again in the country.

Monex, which recently bought the Coincheck exchange platform, has claimed that Coincheck’s turbulent financial year actually resulted in USD 57 million in profits, despite a hugely damaging hack in January this year, and pending court cases from several groups of disgruntled Coincheck customers seeking financial damages.

Per Business Insider Japan, Oki Matsumoto, Monex’s CEO, told investors, “We’ve looked at various examples, and conservative estimates from our lawyers have calculated the maximum potential payouts to be somewhere in the region of 2 billion yen (USD 18.3 million).”

Monex has also announced plans to build on its new cryptocurrency business with its own proprietary blockchain platform and an initial coin offering (ICO).

SBI, meanwhile, says it will finally open its own exchange platform in summer this year. The company has repeatedly pushed back its launch, and at a press conference also held on April 26, the company’s CEO Yoshitaka Kitao refused to set a firm launch date. However, Kitao was exceptionally optimistic about SBI’s prospects in what is already a very busy domestic market.

Kitao told reporters, also per Business Insider Japan, “When we do launch the platform, it will become the number one exchange in the blink of an eye. That is why we need to take the time now to build a safe system, one that is capable of dealing with an enormous number of customers joining at once.”

This week, SBI also confirmed it had made a “strategic investment” in New York-based fintech company Templum, which operates a regulatory compliance platform for ICOs.