Monex Group, a financial services company based in Tokyo, has shown an interest in buying up the Japanese subsidiary of Sam Bankman-Fried’s defunct FTX crypto platform, according to Oki Matsumoto, the CEO of Monex.
Talking to Bloomberg, Matsumoto said: “Generally speaking, we are naturally interested.” While he did not go so far to say that his group is putting together an official bid for the business, he did say that having fewer cryptocurrency exchanges competing with his firm would be a “very good thing.”
The Japanese entity of FTX has been put up for sale as part of the insolvency process being carried out in the USA. Currently 41 different parties have registered an interest in taking parts of the ruined group, with 25 already making confidential deals with debtors, court papers have revealed.
Matsumoto is wagering that Japanese companies will soon look to buy digital coins as investments and employ NFTs for marketing purposes, and he wants to ensure that his group one of the few in position to offer the necessary services when required.
Monex is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and in 2018 it swooped for the beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, which had been ravaged by hackers. The move was made to supplement its pre-existing offering of Forex services and stocks. Matsumoto was quick to confirm that the plans to float Coincheck on the Nasdeq stock exchange were continuing apace.
Just before its demise at the end of November, FTX Japan held around $139 million in cash and deposits, and at the end of September it reported having around $77 million in net assets at the end of September. The company plans to allow customers to withdraw their funds starting next month.
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