Nomura, a top investment financial institution in Japan, says it plans to set up a digital asset subdivision outside the country. Japan says it would employ up to 100 staff to operate in the cryptocurrency subdivision.
The bank says it intends to establish a new subdivision organization to assist institutional investors in executing cryptocurrency and non-fungible token transactions. According to a Tuesday report from persons aware of Nomura’s intentions, the bank intends to collate several digital asset services inside a single organization holding about 100 employees before the end of next year.
According to its first-quarter report this year, Nomura is one of Japan’s most prominent investment services providers and manages over $560 million worth of assets. A local news outlet announced that the organization would set up the digital asset subdivision outside Japan.
However, the initial board of the subdivision would begin with some of the current staff at Nomura. Meanwhile, the organization hires other persons knowledgeable about blockchain technology and Web3.
Nomura is seemingly under pressure to extend its services into the emerging digital asset industry. A senior bank officer reportedly said that the bank could find it challenging to remain competitive in the financial sector if it doesn’t float the cryptocurrency subdivision.
Moreover, Nomura’s latest plan comes at a critical time in the financial services institution’s history. Last Thursday, reports filtered to the public that Nomura has started providing BTC derivatives’ trading services to its customers in Asia. The bank reportedly oversaw over 6,900 Bitcoin futures transactions on Monday. Meanwhile, the prices of digital assets across different offerings have plummeted after many investors panic-sold their digital currencies over the Terra (LUNA) crisis.
China Again Becomes Second-Most Productive Bitcoin Miner
In neighboring China, recent data reveals that bitcoin mining activities remain active, regardless of the crackdown on the virtual assets industry. The Asian nation comes only behind the US in the statistics on nations’ contribution to the world’s BTC mining output by hash rate.
Earlier this year, China reportedly supplied about one-fifth of the world’s BTC mining output. The Tuesday report reported that the US contributed nearly 38% to the world’s combined BTC mining output.
Most of the virtual assets mining operations of BTC took place in China in 2019, when the country supplied over three-quarters of the globally minted Bitcoin. However, in July and August last year, different regulatory restrictions on cryptocurrency mining factories in the nation crashed the coin’s minting output to zero
In September, China’s Bitcoin mining industry took a turn when its Bitcoin mining rate increased to about 22% of the world’s supply even though China banned cryptocurrency operations in the territory within the same month. Other countries in the leading five Bitcoin mining nations include Kazakhstan, Canada, and Russia.