Japan's largest on-line
financial conglomerate, SBI Holdings, now owns two licensed
cryptocurrency trading platforms with its new acquisition of TaoTao
exchange.

According to an official announcement
on Oct. 7, SBI’s foreign exchange and derivatives arm SBI Liquidity
Market has acquired all shares of TaoTao, making it a wholly-owned
subsidiary of the company.

Formerly 40% owned by internet giant Yahoo! Japan’s YJFX, TaoTao launched its crypto trading service in May 2019.

With the new acquisition, SBI now has two crypto trading platforms as the company is already offering crypto trading
services through its crypto-focused venture capital arm, SBI VC Trade.
Operating a crypto asset exchange, SBI VC Trade has bee a subsidiary of SBI Securities since July 2019.

Per SBI, TaoTao’s acquisition will contribute to the company’s expertise to provide better crypto-related services:

In
the future, we will make maximum use of the management resources such
as knowledge of the SBI Group as a comprehensive financial group, as
well as the customer base and service expertise of the crypto assets
that TaoTao has cultivated so far [...]"

SBI’s acquisition of TaoTao comes shortly after the exchange officially ended negotiations
with Binance. After nine months of negotiations intending to build a
joint crypto exchange initiative in Japan, TaoTao abruptly abandoned the
alliance on Oct. 5. As reported by Cointelegraph, Binance is unlikely
to enter Japan in 2020 as a result. 

source link: https://cointelegraph.com/news/japanese-financial-giant-sbi-acquires-taotao-crypto-exchange