Japanese financial giant SBI acquires TaoTao crypto exchange

Japan’s largest on-line financial conglomerate, SBI Holdings, now owns two licensed cryptocurrency trading platforms with its new acquisition of TaoTao exchange.

According to an official announcement on Oct. 7, SBI’s foreign exchange and derivatives arm SBI Liquidity Market has acquired all shares of TaoTao, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company.

Formerly 40% owned by internet giant Yahoo! Japan’s YJFX, TaoTao launched its crypto trading service in May 2019.

With the new acquisition, SBI now has two crypto trading platforms as the company is already offering crypto trading services through its crypto-focused venture capital arm, SBI VC Trade. Operating a crypto asset exchange, SBI VC Trade has bee a subsidiary of SBI Securities since July 2019.

Per SBI, TaoTao’s acquisition will contribute to the company’s expertise to provide better crypto-related services:

In the future, we will make maximum use of the management resources such as knowledge of the SBI Group as a comprehensive financial group, as well as the customer base and service expertise of the crypto assets that TaoTao has cultivated so far […]”

SBI’s acquisition of TaoTao comes shortly after the exchange officially ended negotiations with Binance. After nine months of negotiations intending to build a joint crypto exchange initiative in Japan, TaoTao abruptly abandoned the alliance on Oct. 5. As reported by Cointelegraph, Binance is unlikely to enter Japan in 2020 as a result.