Japanese financial giant SBI Group announces the launch of cryptocurrency lending services through its subsidiary.

Japanese online financial giant SBI Group announced the launch of cryptocurrency lending services through its subsidiary SBI VC Trade, which is related to cryptocurrencies.

SBI Cryptocurrency Lending Service

According to anofficial announcement released by the SBI Group in Japan on November 24th, the company will introduce a new cryptocurrency lending platform called VC Trade Lending through its subsidiary SBI VC Trade, which is related to cryptocurrency. Initially, the platform allows users to lend their bitcoins to SBI for a period of 84 days and receive an annualized return of 1% (tax included). The minimum threshold is 0.1 BTC, with a maximum lending limit of 5 BTC.

SBI Holdings stated that VC Trade Lending will not charge any account management fees or membership fees, and there will be no charges for deposits in Japanese yen or cryptocurrencies, but there will be withdrawal fees for Japanese yen withdrawals.

This new service named VC Trade Lending initially only supports Bitcoin (BTC). However, SBI supplemented in the announcement that they will further expand the service in the future to include other types of cryptocurrencies such as XRP and ETH, and offer more types of loan terms. Further plans include adding support for Ether (ETH) and XRP.

SBI's Long-Term Involvement in Cryptocurrency

SBI Holdings is a major financial institution in Japan with close ties to the cryptocurrency field. In early October 2020, SBI Holdings' forex and derivatives unit, SBI Liquidity Market, acquired the cryptocurrency exchange TaoTao. Additionally, the company operates its own cryptocurrency business through its subsidiary, SBI VC Trade.

On the other hand, SBI Holdings is a key partner of Ripple. SBI Holdings and Ripple jointly founded SBI Ripple Asia in June last year, collaborating on "store settlement services." SBI Holdings even offers a service to distribute dividends in XRP. In late October 2020, the CEO of Ripple claimed that the uncertainty of U.S. regulations severely affects Ripple's long-term development. At that time, SBI CEO Yoshitaka Kitao stated that if Ripple chooses to leave the U.S., it is likely to relocate to Japan.

Cryptocurrency Fund Delayed

SBI previously announced that it would offer a cryptocurrency fund with lower correlation to traditional assets for individual investors to enhance diversification, with 50% of the portfolio consisting of the cryptocurrency XRP from the cross-border transaction network Ripple, and the remainder in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Originally scheduled for launch this summer, the latest data from a recent meeting indicates that it will be delayed until 2021: