Japanese Strategic Business Innovator Group, commonly known as SBI Holdings stated that it will reward its shareholders with Ripple’s XRP for the second year in a row, after a successful first round that’s ending on March 31.
SBI Holdings said in an official statement that Shareholders with 100 or more shares will get $22.92 or 2500 YEN in XRP as a thank you for rendering support to the company.
The firm added that shareholders have until May 31 to opt for XRP rewards, a month before determining individual reward amounts on June 30. It introduced this option in August 2019, starting the first round of the rewards (which ends on March 31) with 30 XRP for 100 or more owned shares.
Propping Up XRP
SBI Holdings is one of the largest companies to partner with Ripple, and their support for the now turbulent cryptocurrency is expected to play a huge role in boosting investor confidence in Ripple, especially in Japan.
XRP is currently more prevalent in Japan than in the US due to the ongoing lawsuit against Ripple by the US SEC. XRP’s price and reputation as a good investment product plunged in December 2020 when the US SEC finally decided to sue Ripple for selling XRP as unregistered security during its multiple token sales.
The cryptocurrency fell by nearly 40% in the first 24 hours, with many analysts declaring it too damaged to recover from the legal ramifications of the lawsuit. However, XRP has portrayed resilience after bouncing back from its low bottom of $0.22 on February 23, 2020.
The coin has a Year-to-Date (YTD) performance of 202.2% according to MarketWatch data. At the time of writing, XRP is down 2.71% in 24 hours, trading at $0.44 as the world’s 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, down from its longstanding 4th position.
Ripple and SBI Holdings in Japan and ASIA
SBI Group is an online-focused conglomerate that runs three core businesses, Financial Services, Asset Management, and Biotechnological métier.
The two companies first entered into a strategic partnership in 2016 and formed a new company, SBI Ripple Asia, with an aim to create an “Internet of Value” in Japan and other Asian regions. Ripple would benefit by increasing its expansion into the Asian market, while SBI Holding would gain a platform to explore its interest in blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
MoneyTap payments app was launched in 2019 by SBI Ripple Asia. MoneyTap leverages Ripple’s xCurrent enterprise software that’s designed to help banks settle cross-border payments transparently, efficiently and instantly for all RippleNet members.
In January 2021, SBI gave notice of investment procedure completion on Ripple’s investment in MoneyTap. At 33% ownership, the investment made Ripple the biggest external shareholder in the payments company.
