It was announced today that the Japanese bank SBI has launched the first bank-owned cryptocurrency exchange through the use of the Ripple Net. The financial giant will focus trading only on Ripple (XRP) tokens for the time being but has hinted at adding bitcoin and even bitcoin cash to their listings in the future. However, there has been no timeline given for when other coins will be added to the platform.
SBI has been working with Ripple for some time now and operates a subsidiary called SBI Ripple Asia, a company that has been testing the viability of the Ripple Network and blockchain implementation in international exchanges and money transfers between large institutions who need fast transactions and low fees.
According to the announcement made by SBI, the 20,000 pre-registered users will be able to trade XRP/JPY and incur no fees for making trades including all buy and sell orders. After a period of about a month in this testing phase, the exchange will be opened up to the general public and then anyone will be able to create an account and trade through their bank if they use SBI for their normal banking practices
While this is an interesting concept, the idea of a centralized, bank-owned cryptocurrency exchange might not be the most attractive thing to a cryptocurrency user who has been used to the decentralization and anonymity that comes with using other trading services. However, this new platform will be especially useful for companies to transfer money across international borders with the help of the Ripple Consensus Ledger. The preliminary tests of the network have been promising so it is likely that we will see more instances of Ripple being utilized by traditional establishments to bring them into the cryptocurrency fold.