SBI VC Trade, a crypto exchange subsidiary of the prominent Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings, announced on Thursday its new offering allowing users to lend their XRP cryptocurrency and earn interest in return. The service comes on the heels of the platform’s successful crypto lending launch for bitcoin in November 2020.
Starting today, the lending service offers a loan term spanning 84 days. The platform has set a minimum lending amount of 1,000 XRP, equivalent to approximately $389 at the current rate, and a cap at 100,000 XRP or $38,900. Investors will earn an annual “usage fee” or interest of 0.1%, which is inclusive of tax. For comparison, the platform’s Bitcoin lending service offers a higher interest rate of 1% annually.
Established in 2018, SBI VC Trade primarily centered its operations on XRP trading. Notably, SBI Holdings maintains a business partnership with Ripple, the blockchain payment entity intricately linked with the XRP token.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Ripple in late December, accusing the firm of violating securities regulations through the retail sales of the XRP token. The legal action led to a slump in XRP’s market value. Following the lawsuit, several U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchanges, including big names like Coinbase and Binance US, opted to delist XRP from their platforms.
However, echoing the sentiment of many in the Asian markets, SBI reaffirmed that, unlike in the U.S., XRP is not classified as a security in Japan. Read all the latest XRP news on Coinography the best crypto news aggregator website.
