Both financial institutions are the investment arms of the Mizuho Banking Corporation and the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation respectively. The two banking corporations join Mitsubishi as investors in bitFlyer. Previously, in August 2015, Mitsubishi Capital participated in a USD 4.5 million round of funding.
The three megabanks had previously collaborated with bitFlyer in 2016 to test domestic money transfers over a blockchain, with technology provided by the Bitcoin company. The proof-of-concept experiment ran for nine months through September 2016 and clocked 1,500 transactions per second on the blockchain, beating the peak speeds of the existing interbank wire system.
Furthermore, investments and interest in Japan’s burgeoning Bitcoin industry have quickly gathered pace in the lead-up to new regulations to be put into effect in June 2017, according to CryptoCoinNews. In an email to CCN, Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange and wallet CoinCheck predicted a significant growth in Bitcoin adoption by storefronts and merchants across the country. By the end of 2016, there were over 4,200 Bitcoin-accepting merchants, more than quadrupling the total from 2015. That trend is expected to continue into 2017.
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