The Japanese investment giant SoftBank is dipping its toes in the crypto by supporting a new Bitcoin investment vehicle (BTC), twenty-one capital, in collaboration with Tether, Bitfinex and Cantor Fitzgerald.
For some, the SoftBank group – which has $ 308.7 billion under management – making an interest in Bitcoin is a welcome development and another sign of an institutional crypto. After all, Softbank works more or less as a Japanese sovereign fund, according to Jeff Park, responsible for Alpha Strategies in Bitwise.
But for experienced observers, it could be more an already seen than a breakthrough.
Flashback at 2019, SoftBank made the headlines when its founder, Masayoshi Son, underwent a gigantic loss on a personal investment of Bitcoin.
His exposure to cryptocurrency at the end of 2017, when ICO Mania was at its peak and Bitcoin was negotiated at a summit of $ 20,000.
Bitcoin now negotiating at $ 93,000, the investment of sound would have been very profitable if he had kept. But it sold in early 2018 while Bitcoin was starting to crash, causing a loss of $ 130 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So, the question that investors could ask themselves now is: would this time be different?
To find a clue, let’s take an oracle stock (Orcl) as an example. Recently, US President Donald Trump announced that SoftBank would be part of an $ 100 billion push to build AI infrastructure in the United States in collaboration with Openai and Oracle (Orcl).
It looks like it is a bullish result for the orclo stock. However, since the announcement was made on January 22, coinciding with the Orcl, exceeding $ 188 per share, the action dropped by 28%, while the Nasdaq fell 12% during the same period.
Other external factors, including macro-contrary winds and geopolitical tensions, could explain the underperformance. It could also be a simple coincidence. However, an analyst equaled this oracle sale to the involvement of SoftBank in the IA infrastructure project.
“When SoftBank enters an asset that you have, you sell. I do not do the rules,” wrote Quinn Thompson, founder of Crypto Hedge Fund Lekker Capital, in an article on X, quoting the withdrawal of Oracle.
