Sumitomo Mitsui Trust will partner with Bitbank to form a company focused on institutional custody services for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui Trust is launching a new company for institutional clients seeking custody services for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The new company will be called Japan Digital Asset Trust and is a joint venture with 85% owned by Bitbank and 15% owned by Mitsui Trust.
The company reportedly has $2.3 million in committed capital for the launch and expects to raise a total of $78 million.Sumitomo Mitsui Trust, Japan’s second-largest bank, is creating a new company called the Japan Digital Asset Trust to offer custody services for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to institutional clients, according to a report by Nikkei Asia.
The new company will hold assets such as bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for large investors and corporations because the company believes investors will feel more comfortable if custody of these assets can be held by trusted financial institutions.
The Japan Digital Asset Trust will be a majority-owned joint venture by Bitbank, a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange, which will control 85% of the company. The remaining 15% of the property will be owned by Mitsui.
The new company is expected to have $2.3 million in equity at launch and hopes to raise enough capital from investors to reach a target of $78 million.
This announcement follows news that competing Japanese bank Nomura Holdings Inc. also recently announced that it would create a subsidiary to offer escrow services to institutional clients looking to acquire bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
When scaled down to the global scale, the adoption of bitcoin as an institutional asset class is on the rise as the Mitsui Trust joins other financial institutions such as BNY Mellon, which last year supported a cryptocurrency exchange. Likewise, Fidelity created Bitcoin First, which was a resource to show institutional investors why they should invest in bitcoin before any other cryptocurrency, and subsequently offered bitcoin-based products.
World banking leader Morgan Stanley also published a report on the viability of bitcoin as a currency following the events of Jack Maller’s Bitcoin 2022 announcement, where he announced that Strike, his Bitcoin infrastructure company, had integrated with the provider. the world.