One of Japan’s biggest financial companies, the SBI Group, has made a major move in the domestic market, snapping up a controlling stake in the TaoTao crypto exchange from Yahoo Japan.
The size of the deal was not disclosed, but TaoTao (previously known as BitARG prior to Yahoo Japan’s involvement) confirmed in a press release that SBI had acquired all of Yahoo Japan operator Z Holdings’ shares in the exchange – while Japanese media reports are claiming that TaoTao has become an official SBI “subsidiary.”
In the press release, TaoTao explained that it had undergone a “change of shareholders,” with Yahoo Japan’s shares.
The company added that it had also “formed a partnership with” SBI’s SBILM subsidiary, a newly launched branch of the financial giant that is set to use R3 blockchain consortium-developed technology to power its foreign exchange trading solutions.
The news comes in a busy week for both TaoTao and SBI. Earlier this week, the former stated that it had ended talks with Binance on a ”strategic partnership discussion” with TaoTao and Z Holdings – a deal that could have seen Binance return to the Japanese market.
SBI operates a crypto exchange of its own in Japan – SBI VC Trade – as well as a crypto mining subsidiary named SBI Crypto. It also runs the SBI-Ripple Asia blockchain network in conjunction with American crypto giant Ripple.
