Japanese Financial Firm Nomura Invests in Blockchain Climate Startup Allinfra
Nomura, a Japan-based financial holding company participated in a $6 million Series A funding round of Allinfra, a Hong-Kong blockchain startup geared toward battling climate change.
Allinfra Raises $6 Million in Series A Funding Round
Allinfra focuses on climate solutions and leverages blockchain technology to track emissions, renewable energy certificates, and green bonds. The company also tokenizes infrastructure such as solar panels or trains to reduce the cost of funding.
Notably, Allinfra has been involved in numerous high-profile use cases. For instance, the company Allinfra has been involved in Project Genesis which is essentially a project being explored by the BIS Innovation Hub and Hong Kong Monetary Authority to understand the feasibility of tokenizing green bonds.
The report reads in part:
“In late 2020, KPMG announced its blockchain Climate Account Infrastructure to enable its clients to measure and manage greenhouse gas emissions. One of the project partners is Allinfra. The startup also worked with Hong Kong-based Link REIT to tokenize solar panels installed on its real estate. And the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Ubin Phase 5 involved numerous use cases, including one where Allinfra tokenized infrastructure using smart contracts.”
It is also worth noting that there is some cross-over between Allinfra’s experience on the Project Genesis green bond initiative and a recent Nomura project. Allinfra has a security token issuance platform dubbed BOOSTRY. Further, the firm also recently allied with Tokyo Stock Exchange operator JPX on a green bond project.
Nomura Getting Increasingly Active in Blockchain Space
The Japanese financial holding firm is steadily warming up to the emerging technologies space which reflects in the company’s recent moves in the space.
As previously reported by crypto.news, Nomura announced the launch of BOOSTRY, a blockchain-powered platform that facilitates the exchange of securities. The platform essentially automates the process of issuing bonds by using smart contracts that allow for better security and mitigate the margin of error.
It is worthy of note that besides blockchain technology, Nomura is also warming up to digital assets and continues to introduce new services catering to the rising demand for the emerging asset class.
Most recently, crypto.news reported that Nomura Securities had announced it would be offering over-the-counter bitcoin derivatives to its customers.
Nomura’s Head of Marketing Rig Karkhanis stated the firm executed its first trade on CME via Cumberland DRW. Karkhanis said:
“Working with institutional-grade counterparties will allow us to scale into the increasing demand from our clients.”
The timing of Nomura’s entry into the digital assets space is particularly interesting as the wider market continues to be battered on the heels of the US Federal Reserve’s decision to hike interest rates and introduce quantitative tightening to battle raging inflation that has not been seen since the last 40 years.
At the time of writing, bitcoin trades slightly above $29,000 with a market cap of over $555 billion while ether trades at $1,840 with a market cap of just over $223 billion, according to data from CoinGecko.
