(Refiles to fix spelling of Boonen in 5th paragraph).
By Alun John and Takashi Umekawa.
HONG KONG/TOKYO, July 1 (Reuters) – An unit of Japanese financial corporation SBI Holdings has actually consented to purchase a minority stake in London-based cryptocurrency marketmaker B2C2 for $30 million, B2C2 said in a statement on Wednesday.
They also revealed a partnership in between B2C2 and SBI Financial Services, the most current example of more institutionally-focused crypto-currency players consolidating incumbent institutions to offer extra services to fulfill their clients more intricate requirements.
On the other hand, Japanese brokerages, like SBI, are looking for brand-new sources of profits, as an economic crisis has hit their core earnings stream of regional retail traders.
SBI will use B2C2s liquidity to support its clients trading cryptocurrencies, while B2C2 will tap SBIs resources, especially its balance sheet, to launch a full prime brokerage for both crypto and other property classes, Max Boonen B2C2s founder stated in an interview.
Prime brokers offer services to hedge funds and other active trading companies but Boonen said that partly since of the lack of access to funds, some normal prime brokerage services like cleaning and financing were under-developed in the cryptocurrency market.
Nevertheless, he included, “We dont desire to limit ourselves to crypto. Crypto is the important things we do since that was how we started, … were keeping our eyes on the reward which is that the [prime brokerage] market is a 20 billion yearly income market,” he said.
B2C2 presently offers liquidity to banks, hedge funds and exchanges.
It currently has a licence to run in Japan, which has among the worlds most established crypto currency markets, and regulative structures.
Yoshitaka Kitao, President and CEO of SBI Holdings, said in the B2C2 declaration that SBI would work to develop ingenious new crypto products.
A sepatate SBI declaration said that it would get a stake in B2C2. (Reporting by Alun John, additional reporting by Takashi Umekawa in Tokyo; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore).
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He added, “We dont want to restrict ourselves to crypto.
