This week, Japanese financial services group SBI Holdings announced that it has acquired 40 percent of Taiwanese hardware wallet startup Coolbitx for digital currencies. In the past few months, SBI has taken root in the virtual currency industry as the bank plans to incorporate multiple types of cryptocurrency business models.
Also read: The entire ICO Miroskii team from “Decentralized Bank” is wrong
SBI Holdings buys Taiwanese hardware wallet manufacturer
Japan’s Strategic Business Innovator Group (SBI) is a financial services company founded in 1999 and headquartered in Tokyo. Over the past year or more, banking firm SBI has increased its interest and stake in companies that focus on cryptocurrency solutions. Last October, news.Bitcoin.com reported on SBI investing in eight types of crypto-related business models, including hedge funds, derivatives, remittances, storage, exchange platforms and mining. Earlier this week, SBI announced that it had bought a large portion of a Taiwanese hardware wallet company called Coolbitx.
SBI wants to further improve security
Coolbitx and the ‘Coolwallet’ have been around since 2015 and have introduced a hardware wallet that looks like a credit card through the use of Near Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth technology. The card is paired with a phone to initiate the transfer of funds such as Litecoin, Bitcoin Core, Ripple, and Ethereum. When the company launched the card, the startup’s founder, Michael Ou, stated, “Our wallet gives you the convenience of a credit card, but with better security.” SBI believes that hardware wallet technology is essential for the Research and development of the bank in the digital currency environment is important.
“We searched for security competence by capturing advanced technologies from external companies in addition to thorough risk management within the company, with the protection of customer assets being the top priority,” SBI translated the details of the purchase announcement from Coolbitx.
In the future, we want to further improve security, taking into account the use of Coolbitx technology.
SBI now owns 40 percent of the shares in the Coolbitx Company
According to SBI, the course of business is intended to meet the needs of the company’s investors while building a robust “ecosystem” of companies in the context of virtual currencies. The Japanese financial firm says that Coolbitx’s wallet has received positive attention due to the recent hacks into cryptocurrency exchanges. SBI believes that Coolwallet’s card feature and its connectivity with iOS and Android operating systems will be something that proponents of cryptocurrencies will leverage for a hardware wallet solution.
“As a result of this investment, the SBI Group’s stake in Coolbitx will be 40%,” emphasizes SBI.
What do you think of SBI Holdings’ investment in a hardware wallet startup? Let us know in the comments below.
Images via SBI Holdings, Coolbitx and Pixabay.
Tags in this story
Bitcoin, Bluetooth, BTC, Coolbitx, credit card, ETH, Ethereum, hardware wallet, Japan, Litecoin, LTC, Michael Ou, N-Featured, NFC, sbi group, SBI Holdings, Security, Taiwan, technology, wallets
At news.Bitcoin.com, all comments with links are automatically held in the Disqus system for moderation. This means that an editor has to look at the comment to approve it. This is due to the many repetitive spam and scam links people post under our articles. We do not censor comment content based on political or personal opinions. So please be patient. Your comment will be published.
Jamie Redman
Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a Florida-based financial tech journalist. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for bitcoin, open source code and decentralized applications. As of September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News on the disruptive protocols emerging today.
Comments are closed.