Massive Japanese Bank SBI Makes Significant Investment in Crypto Hardware Wallet Firm

The SBI financial group in Japan has made a number of forays in recent times into the world of cryptocurrencies, and now they have made a substantial investment into a developer of hardware crypto wallets based out of Taiwan.

SBI Holdings Specifics

The financial services division of the SBI Group, SBI Holdings, issued a press release discussing their acquired 40 percent ownership stake in CoolBitX, a crypto hardware wallet from Taiwan.

While the firm’s announcement did not provide details as to how much this ownership was acquired for, it certainly looks to have been a strong play.

There has been significant growth in SBI Holding’s crypto portfolio and as such the company now hopes to sponsor the best security practices.

Their aim with this latest acquisition is to use the security technology that CoolBitX has for risk management in the Group’s various companies to ensure that customers’ assets are safe under enhanced security levels.

SBI Holdings mentioned explicitly that the CoolWallet that CoolBitX manufacturers, a hardware device that provides storage for user’s crypto private keys, is compatible with Android and Apple operating systems through the use of Bluetooth.

Hardware wallets are the safest form of storage for cryptocurrencies as they are wholly decentralized and not linked to the internet, which means that these accounts cannot be hacked, unlike those of desktop or internet based wallets.

Full nodes, hardware wallets, claymores…

— Jameson Lopp (@lopp) October 26, 2017

Bullish Crypto History

Through SBI Investment, the venture capital arm of SBI Holdings, they have established themselves as one of the first large-scale conglomerates to make a substantial investment in the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken at the beginning of 2016.

They also became the leading investors in bitFlyer, which is the most significant and best-funded crypto exchange in Japan.

Towards the latter months of 2016, the firm detailed their plans to launch their very own crypto exchange with the aim of being the first exchange backed by a bank in the country.

While it registered with the financial regulator in Japan, as a result of security concerns the launch date has been postponed.

There are also plans within SBI to launch a digital token which could be traded directly with Japanese yen and could be utilized in order to cater for instant P2P transfer and general payments.

Finally, SBI has co-launched SBI Ripple Asia in order to try expediting the adoption in banks across Asia of the blockchain-based, real-time settlement system.

It is obvious that SBI is extremely bullish about the world of blockchain and digital currencies as a whole and they have put their money where their mouth is with their recent investments.