SBI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest financial groups, is launching the first blockchain-based bond for individual investors with a 10 billion yen (approximately $64.5 million) issuance that combines traditional fixed income features with blockchain settlement and cryptocurrency benefits.
The securities, known as SBI START bonds, are fully managed on-chain using BOOSTRY’s “ibet for Fin” platform, an enterprise blockchain platform dedicated to the issuance of security tokens.
The three-year bonds carry an indicative annual interest rate of 1.85% to 2.45%, payable semi-annually.
Ripple rewards
According to SBI, investors in these bonds will also be rewarded with XRP tokens.
Resident retail investors and companies who make purchases worth more than 100,000 yen (approximately $650) and hold an SBI VC Trade account are eligible to receive XRP rewards “in an amount corresponding to their subscription amount.”
These bonuses, detailed on the product page as 200 JPY of XRP per 100,000 JPY invested, will be distributed at launch and again on each interest payment date until 2029.
The bond is expected to begin secondary trading on March 25 through the Osaka Digital Exchange’s “START” proprietary trading system.
SBI Holdings formed a partnership with Ripple back in 2016 and has been a supporter of XRP since then. A subsidiary of the company even distributes XRP directly to shareholders and supports XRP-based remittances between Japan and the Philippines.
The company owns about 9% of Ripple Labs, according to its chairman and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao.
Kitao founded SBI Holdings in 1999 as a subsidiary of SoftBank (later spun off as an independent company in 2006) and has since seen the company grow into a financial giant with annual revenue of more than $8 billion. It first became involved in blockchain technology through a partnership with Ripple and eventually founded SBI Ripple Asia.
The company has since adopted stablecoins. It partnered with Circle to launch USDC in Japan and signed a memorandum of understanding with Ripple to distribute its RLUSD stablecoin.
