June 4, Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings announced that its own crypto exchange started work after several months of downtime caused by security concerns.
The service called VCTRADE is currently open only to users who pre-registered on the platform in October 2017. Representatives of the company said that, probably, it will be available to the general public in July this year.
SBI also said that at the initial stage only Ripple (XRP) will be traded on VCTRADE, after which the exchange will gradually add support for Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash, although the timing is unclear.
This step of the company did not become a big surprise, considering that now SBI Holdings is implementing a pilot project of cross-border transfers based on the blockchain-based solution provided by Ripple.
In October 2016, SBI Holdings established a subsidiary of SBI Virtual Currencies, aiming to launch the country’s first crypto exchange, supported by a large financial institution. In September 2017, the platform was registered by the Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA), but in February this year, it was announced that the opening will take place later because of concerns about the security associated with hacking the Coincheck exchange.
In addition, in March SBI Virtual Currencies refused to partner with Huobi, in which the parties had to use the latest financial and technological resources to launch VCTRADE.
