Japan's SBI Holdings launches first bank-backed crypto exchange

Japan's banking giant SBI Holdings announced that its new in-house cryptocurrency exchange is now finally live. The news was delayed by several months due to security concerns of the exchange.

Japan's first bank-based crypto exchange is now live and is named as VCTRADE. However, currently, the service is available only for users who per-registered with the platform 8 months ago back in October 2017. But, the company also said in an announcement that it will be available for a wider public till July 2018.

Furthermore, the company also said that for now, VCTRADE will focus on trading of XRP. After this, the exchange will also add support for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. However, the timeline for the said service is not clear at this stage. SBI Holdings' decision is not a surprise though. Considering SBI's existing works with San Francisco-based Ripple that uses a distributed ledger to make cross-border payments, this announcement was always expected.

SBI Holdings first entered into cryptocurrency market in October 2016 with the launch of its wholly-owned subsidiary- SBI Virtual Currencies. The company aimed to launch the country's first crypto exchange that is fully backed by a major financial institution. Later, SBI also registered itself with Japan's Financial Service Agency in September 2017. However, the company later announced in February that the opening will be delayed due to security concerns. Various cryptocurrency related exchanges and companies were suffering from a major increase in the rise of hacks and frauds. So concentrating on security of the platform was an important aspect of the company.

Earlier, SBI Virtual Currencies had canceled a partnership with crypto exchange Huobi in March. The canceled partnership resulted in SBI not being able to use Huobi's resources- both financial and technological to launch VCTRADE, their exchange. This might have been one of the reasons for the delayed announcement.