R3 looking to scale in Japan
Another week, another SBI joint venture announcement. Ever since a major funding round in May 2018, SBI has been the principal outside shareholder in R3, the creators of the Corda blockchain protocol. At that time, SBI, through its venture capital arm, invested JPY 2bn in new R3 shares (~17% of a total USD 107), in a round that also included Japan’s three megabanks Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, and Mizuho Financial Group, as well as Japanese broker/dealer Nomura Holdings.
Just last week, the two partners have announced the formation of SBI R3 Japan Co., Ltd. a joint venture entity with a capitalization of JPY 500m, of which SBI will hold 60% and R3 40%. R3 has long had a small office presence in Tokyo, and is now hoping to scale up their operation through this joint venture. SBI has already provided training support for R3, and also had a presence at the “Corda Bootcamp” that took place at FLOC, the crypto academy run by cryptocurrency exchange bitbank. While initially focused on Japan, the joint venture has the option to support R3 across East Asian markets.
Given that Corda specializes in permissioned blockchains (vs. the permissionless architecture of Bitcoin and Ethereum, for example) without its own cryptocurrency, and SBI is also heavily engaged with Ripple through a similarly structure SBI Ripple Asia entity, there is room for speculation that SBI might push for the use of XRP with its Corda customers.
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