Financial giant SBI to run its first security token offering in October

Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings is getting more serious about the security token offerings industry.

SBI is planning to run its own STO allotting shares of SBI e-Sports, the company’s new e-sports gaming arm, Cointelegraph Japan reports Oct. 9.

Announcing the news on Friday, SBI said that the upcoming STO will be conducted using ibet, a blockchain platform developed by digital security startup Boostry. Scheduled for Oct. 30, the STO will be carried out by SBI’s online securities subsidiary, SBI Securities, while SBI holdings will act as an underwriter.

SBI said that the company considers STOs a “core technology of fintech” and plans to tokenize a number of other assets in the future. The firm stated that it looks to tokenize assets like real estate, fine art, and intellectual property rights including copyrights for games and movies.

A security token offering, or STO, is a type of public offering in which tokenized digital securities, known as security tokens, are sold on special exchanges. A security token represents an investment contract into an underlying investment asset, such as stocks, bonds, funds and real estate investment trusts.

News of the company’s upcoming STO comes shortly after SBI made another move into the space by acquiring a 10% stake in Boostry in July 2020. As reported, Boostry is a joint venture of Japanese investment giant Nomura and Nomura Research Institute.