The Japanese financial company said in an announcement on Monday it will be working with BitOfProperty (BOP), a Singapore-incorporated, Tallinn-operating enterprise that’s already selling fractional ownership of real estate in the EU member state. BOP said it has five properties currently in the capital of the country yielding between 5.3 and 6.59 percent.
MBK, a Tokyo-based and Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed merchant bank, has signed a deal for the tokenization of property in Estonia.
According to the announcement, BOP will be responsible for the acquisition of the properties. It will work with MBK to convert the assets into blockchain-based tokens, which will then be traded through Angoo Fintech, an Estonian company which was acquired by MBK in May 2019.
Angoo Fintech was originally set to open its platform by the end of August, but was forced to delay due to regulatory compliance issues.
MBK has been active in the crypto and blockchain space. In 2017, it formed MBK Asia together with BtcBox, a Japanese exchange that was established in 2014 and registered with the Kanto Finance Bureau.
Last month, MBK said it signed a deal with Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed BS Securities to cooperate in the area of security token offerings and to provide support for the development of business in Japan and China.
MBK, which was founded in 1947 and was originally involved in the textile business, is primarily focused on Japan and China in terms of investment and has interests in a hotel, a bowling alley and an internet cafe in Japan.
Japanese Lawmakers Will Propose Digital Yen to Counter Libra, China
Politicians from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party plan to propose the nation issue its own digital currency.According to a Reuters report on Friday, about 70 lawmakers from the party feel a digital yen is needed to counter the approaching launches of Libra and China’s digital currency.
The effort – aimed at keeping Japan at the forefront of fintech innovation – would be a joint project between the government and the private sector, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Norihiro Nakayama told the news agency.
“China is moving toward issuing digital yuan, so we’d like to propose measures to counter such attempts”, Nakayama said Thursday. The initial stage would be to research the prospect of the digital coin.
The ruling party group is led by former Minister of the Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari and would put the plan before the government possibly next month.
The initiative would seem to counter the view of the country’s central bank, which said last June that to issue a digital yen would mean dropping cash. «Eliminating cash would make settlement infrastructure inconvenient for the public, so no central bank would do this”, Masayoshi Amamiya, deputy governor of the bank of Japan (BoJ), said at the time.
However, it seems to be keeping an open mind. Earlier this week, the BoJ joined five other banks in forming a new working group with the Bank of International Settlements to share research findings about potential cases for central bank digital currencies.
Further, Reuters says Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told parliament today the government will work with the BoJ to examine digital currencies and ways of improving the yen as a means of settlement.
In developing a digital yen, former BoJ board member Takahide Kiuchi said in the report, the central bank would seek to avoid restricting private-sector innovation. «The best way could be to issue a hybrid-type digital currency that is operated and issued by private firms, with the central bank’s involvement”, he said.
After the Facebook-led Libra project was announced last summer, Japan’s regulators expressed concerns about the potential risks of the stablecoin. Soon after, the country formed a working group ahead of a G7 meeting in France to discuss the issues.
