Yahoo Japan Acquires 40% Stake in BitARG Exchange

As the Japanese crypto market seems to be just coping up with the regulatory issues, we have some good news coming from the Asian crypto giant. Yesterday, on Friday, April 13, Yahoo Japan confirmed that it picking up a minority stake in the Tokyo-based BitARG exchange while launching its services later this year.

Yahoo Japan is said to be the country’s biggest online auction site and also one of the most popular websites in Japan ranked #4 by user traffic and #40 globally. The acquisition of this minority stake in BitARG will take place through one of the subsidiary companies of Yahoo Japan which marks an important foray by a tech-giant in the cryptocurrency space.

ARG announced that Yahoo Japan’s wholly owned subsidiary ‘Z Corporation’ will be buying a minority stake in the exchange. The announcement read: “As a result of this capital participation, the Company will be able to utilize the service operation and security expertise of the Yahoo Japan Group, which will make it easier for customers to prepare for the start of the exchange service managed by the Company and to improve the operation after the commencement We will promote the provision of secure exchange services.”

It is also being said that Yahoo Japan, through its other subsidiaries, will be making a number of investments over the course of next year, 2019, to further scale up BitARG’s operations.

Currently, there has been no official word by both the companies on the terms of the deal. However, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters, that the deal is expected to strike somewhere in between $2 billion - $3 billion Japanese Yen which is between $18.5 million and $27.8 million to grab a 40% stake in the exchange.

Last year itself, BitARG has also been granted an official license by the Financial Service Agency (FSA) to operate within the country as a crypto trading platform.

This is recently the second acquisition in Japan by a big company in the crypto space. Earlier this month, Japanese brokerage firm Monex announced plans of buying the ailing cryptocurrency exchange Coinchek which suffered a loss of $500 million being a victim of one of the biggest hacks in the history of crypto markets.

Also, there are reports of some other big Japanese companies looking to jump in the crypto craze. Having gone through all the regulatory measures, Japanese banking giant SBI is looking forward to launching its own crypto exchange later this year.

Line, a popular messaging app across the company and a billion-dollar company, has filed for a license with the Japanese FSA to start its own exchange.