Japan’s SBI VC Swings to Profit Amid Rebound in Crypto Sector

SBI securities has revealed that its trading revenue soared 19.2% in the half-year period ended September 2019, primarily due to the cryptocurrency investment subsidiary, which swung to a profit of $30 million in the six-month period ended September 2019, compared with a net loss of $7.1 million last year.

The Japanese financial service provider published its latest financial report on October 30 for the six-month period ended September 30, 2019.

The report indicated that SBI Securities’ crypto focused venture capital subsidiary has performed incredibly well despite an overall decline in SBI’s revenue.

As per the report, SBI VC Trade has recorded a strong growth in profit before income tax for the first half of fiscal 2019. From a half-yearly loss of 765 million Japanese yen ($7.10 million) in 2018, the company has swung to a profit of 3.20 billion yen ($30 million) in H1 2019.

SBI Holdings has pointed out that SBI VC Trade, a subsidiary of SBI that operates a cryptocurrency exchange, came under SBI Securities in July 2019. In addition to significant growth of cryptocurrency exchange-led earnings, SBI has also posted a considerable rise in earnings from its crypto mining business SBI Crypto.

The mining business recorded a profit (before income tax expense), of 293 million yen ($2.70 million) in H1 2019, compared to a loss of 783 million yen ($7.20 million) in H1 2018.

SBI has stated that it anticipates a surge in cryptocurrency mining due to the arrival of new miners and also in-house miner operations next year. Earlier in 2019, SBI established exclusive unit for manufacturing cryptocurrency mining semiconductor chips.

As in the case of earlier financial reports, SBI has once again highlighted the rising importance of Ripple’s blockchain powered technology in its payment processing division, SBI Remit. The institution also pointed out the increasing relevance of Ripple’s xCurrent platform based remittances.

SBI stated that its subsidiary SBI Ripple Asia is anticipated to back almost 50% of the total Ripple network soon.

Notably, last month, SBI Securities and five more Japanese brokerage companies including Rakuten Securities have setup Japan Security Token Offering Association.