Web3.0 as a Catalyst for Bridging Global Economic Distances — An Interview with Tomohiko Kondo, SBI VC Trade

What do you think about the current state of the Web 3.0 field?

Tomohiko Kondo (hereinafter Kondo): I believe that the essential impact of crypto assets, blockchain, and the Web 3.0 field is that it will bring global economic distances even closer. Just as airplanes have shortened the physical distance between countries and made it easier for people to travel between countries, I believe that Web 3.0 will play a major role in shortening economic distances and making it easier to transfer economic value between people around the world, by enabling communication with people all over the world.

Web 3.0 is primarily recognized in the context of building a decentralized and decentralized ecosystem with blockchain technology at its core, following Web 1.0, when the Internet appeared and made it possible to view content from all over the world, and Web 2.0, which enabled individuals to disseminate information and communicate two-way, including through SNS platforms. Of course, I don't disagree with this view, but in terms of its impact on people's lives and industry, I believe that Web 3.0 will greatly contribute to the "transfer of economic value" as I mentioned at the beginning. For example, the emergence of Bitcoin made it possible to send value around the world with just an address, and the emergence of stable coins made it easier to transfer value linked to legal tender.

No. 1 in Japan in terms of number of staking brands, focusing on handling stable coins

What kind of appeal do you want to deliver through your company's projects and services, and what do you want to achieve?

Kondo: First of all, we think that the first priority is to help people experience and become familiar with crypto assets, which are the basis of value transfer as I mentioned earlier. In order to do this, we are not only focusing on trading services that take short-term price movements into consideration, but also on services that allow users to hold crypto assets for the long term. As part of this service, we provide a staking service that allows users to increase the amount of crypto assets they hold just by holding them, and we handle the largest number of crypto assets in Japan.

In addition to crypto assets, we are also focusing on expanding use cases that utilize blockchain and Web 3.0. For the international remittance solution "Ripple Payment" being developed by the US company Ripple, an SBI Group investment, we act as a bridge for remittances from Japan to the Philippines, Vietnam, and other countries. We have also partnered with XDCNetwork, the first in Japan, to promote the electronicization of trade finance. As a whole, the SBI Group announced a partnership last year with Circle, a US company that issues the stablecoin USDC, and are aiming to distribute USDC domestically, assuming that we will register as an electronic payment instrument trading business.

We believe that by contributing to the expansion of such actual use cases, the transfer of global economic value will become easier, which will ultimately contribute to improving people's lives.

Future outlook ▶︎
Aiming to have the stablecoin USDC circulate domestically within the year, facilitating global value transfer and improving all kinds of convenience

https://www.sbivc.co.jp

Profile

◉ Tomohiko Kondo

CEO, SBI VC Trade Co., Ltd.

Joined SBI Holdings as a new graduate in 2007 and was in charge of the SBI Group's information systems. Since becoming a director of SBI VC Trade in 2019, he has been mainly involved in cryptocurrency and Web3-related businesses and has been in his current position since 2023. Graduated from the Graduate School of Business Administration at SBI Graduate School in 2016.