Several months on from launching its in-house cryptocurrency trading platform, Japanese financial giants SBI holdings has officially announced on Tuesday that the new service is now available to members of the general public.
A short statement on the SBI website affirmed that the VcTrade virtual currency exchange service is now accepting applications for ‘opening new accounts.’ Japanese residents between ages 20-70, with interest in trading digital currencies, can now sign up on the platform, even though provisions to accept corporate customers are yet to be put in place by SBI holdings.
An official license to operate the VcTrade exchange was acquired from Japan’s Financial Services Agency, last year September but the owners announced in February that they would have to tighten security measures following the $534 million hack on Coincheck before rolling out the service. Now, it finally seems they are ready to test the deep waters of the crypto markets, hoping to make a strong statement with the new model of crypto exchange.
At the June launch, the exchange services which runs under wholly-owned subsidiary – SBI Virtual Currencies was only made available to pre-registered users as VcTrade pledged to initially support the trading the Japanese yen against XRP, the native token derived from the Ripple blockchain protocol.
Since last month, the owners have subsequently added Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin cash (BCH) yen-based trading pairs on the exchange in order to increase its offering to the numerous users expected to use its platform. More popular trading pairs are likely to be added to the service within the coming days and months.
It is worth noting that, barely two years on from announcing their intent to build the World and Japan’s first bank-backed crypto exchange, SBI holdings are at the threshold of bringing the dream to reality.
For the burgeoning crypto industry, it would be another major lift as the existence of such an exchange will bring institutional money into the crypto space while also serving as a reliable investment portal for over 13 million customers using other SBI Holding Services.
