Two of Japan’s largest crypto firms, Monex and SBI Groups, have seen strong performances in the second quarter of the year, according to the groups’ respective Q2 reports.
Fast facts
- SBI operates two domestic exchanges, SBI VC Trade and the TaoTao platform, as well as the mining arm SBI Crypto and U.K.-based liquidity provider B2C2. The firm also recently partnered with U.S.-based Rippled to allow for XRP — Ripple’s native token — remittances to be made between Japan and the Philippines.
- In a consolidated Q2 report across its crypto arms, SBI posted a pre-tax profit of of US$41.7 million, a year-on-year increase of 56% over 2020’s Q2 figures. Hoping to build on the current market interest in non-fungible tokens, the company said it would potentially launch an NFT marketplace and a secondary market platform. It also said the firm had a dedicated DeFi unit that was working on a smartphone app.
- Monex, which operates the domestic exchange Coincheck well as the U.S.-based Trade Station, reported pre-tax profits of US$82 million, a quarter-on-quarter rise of 1.4 times over profits from the previous quarter in its own Q2 report.
- The firm attributed much of its success to high trade volume of altcoins on Coincheck, which only recently became part of the group, saying: “Coincheck focuses on expanding the number of supported coins and offers the highest number of cryptocurrencies for trading among Japanese cryptoasset exchanges.” The firm said BTC trading only accounted for 12% of revenue in the quarter, a due to Bitcoin’s continued downward trend.