Financial Conglomerate SBI to Acquire $30MM Stake in Digital Asset Firm B2C2

July 01, 2020 - Institutional Crypto Market making firm B2C2 today announced that SBI Financial Services (a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, "SBI") has agreed to acquire a $30 million minority stake in the firm.

The investment marks the start of a strategic partnership between one of the largest institutions to have ventured into the crypto market and a veteran digital asset trading firm. SBI, owner of Japan’s first digital bank and largest online brokerage, is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is a member of the TOPIX stock index.

B2C2 will become SBI’s main liquidity provider as SBI expands its crypto offering to millions of existing customers. B2C2 will also benefit from SBI’s distribution network and financial firepower as it launches an electronic prime brokerage built upon its highly successful single dealer platform.

This month, the firm will release a fully automated facility to provide the most competitive two-way prices in the funding market. This capability expands B2C2’s existing secured financing operation, already lending hundreds of millions of dollars. B2C2 will continue to develop its offering until it constitutes a complete cross-asset prime brokerage business.

Yoshitaka Kitao, President and CEO of SBI Holdings, said, “We expect a lot of synergies with B2C2, a firm which has a large number of clients globally and offers abundant liquidity, excellent price competitiveness, and a diverse suite of products for their customers. We will work to develop innovative new crypto products and deepen synergies across our group of companies.”

Max Boonen, Founder of B2C2, said: “Today’s deal with SBI takes B2C2 a big step forward. Having claimed the top spot in our segment thanks to the technological edge of our single dealer platform, we found in SBI the right partner to unlock the next drivers of our growth. B2C2 will benefit from SBI’s balance sheet, which is far larger than anything committed to the crypto market to date. It will complement our asset liability management framework - the most sophisticated in the market - to deliver an execution platform that will not only be a game changer in crypto, but also positions us to expand across asset classes as we set our sights on the $20bn-a-year prime brokerage market.”

B2C2 is a veteran digital asset trading group with a world-class team drawn from global investment banks and buy-side firms. Headquartered in the UK, with offices in London, Tokyo and Jersey City, B2C2 is trusted by banks, brokerages, exchanges and fund managers globally to provide 24/7 liquidity.

Continuously innovative, B2C2 launched the first crypto-native single dealer platform in 2016 and was the first foreign dealer to succeed in the Japanese market. In 2019, the firm launched the first OTC streaming price feed and was the first crypto company in the EU to secure a MiFID investment firm licence. B2C2 OTC Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 810834).