Which is more valuable: Miracle health supplements and moisturizing cream or XRP? Soon, shareholders in SBI Holdings, the Japanese conglomerate, will be able to decide.
SBI Holdings, part of SBI Group, announced Friday that shareholders with at least 100 shares will be eligible to receive XRP, currently the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. SBI Group runs dozens of companies involved in financial services, asset management, and biotech, including SBI Ripple Asia.
How much shareholders can receive depends on how many shares in SBI they hold and for how long they've had them. Those who have held 1,000+ shares for more than a year as of March 31, can receive 8,000 yen in XRP tokens (about $73). Those who have held at least 1,000 shares for less than a year can receive 2,000 yen in XRP (about $18). Shareholders with 100 to 1,000 shares qualify for the same amount.
There's no telling what XRP will be worth in two months, however. MorningStar Japan—which SBI Group holds a 48% stake in—began issuing XRP tokens to shareholders starting in September, when the price was $0.25. The price subsequently moved above $0.30 for parts of September and October but has since dipped to just shy of $0.24.
SBI stakeholders concerned with the price can receive their reward instead in gold—ALAPLUS Gold, that is. Shareholders can opt to receive 90 tablets of the amino acid mixture (valued at 9,800 yen) and other supplements (depending on how many shares they hold) from SBI subsidiary SBI ALApromo. By current market value, then, the supplements are worth more, though they're a bit hard to resell.
Still, this is welcome news for XRP holders, though not entirely unexpected. Ripple, the company behind XRP, and SBI Group formed SBI Ripple Asia in 2016 so SBI could build a "payment platform which unifies domestic and foreign exchange using Ripple's solution."
The first step, it appears, is liquidity—and we don't mean in the form of ALAPLUS Essential Lotion.