SoftBank Is Buying BTC Again, After $130M Loss in 2018. Is This Time Different?

Japanese funding big SoftBank is dipping its toes again into crypto by backing a brand new bitcoin (BTC) funding automobile, Twenty One Capital, in conjunction with Tether, Bitfinex, and Cantor Fitzgerald.

For some, the SoftBank Group—which has $308.7 billion belongings beneath administration—taking an curiosity in bitcoin is a welcome improvement and one other signal of mounting institutional crypto adoption. After all, SoftBank capabilities kind of like a Japanese sovereign wealth fund, in accordance with Jeff Park, head of alpha methods at Bitwise.

But for seasoned observers, it could possibly be extra of a déjà-vu than a breakthrough.

Flashback to 2019, SoftBank made headlines when its founder, Masayoshi Son, took a big loss on a private bitcoin funding.

Son had taken publicity to cryptocurrency in late 2017, when the ICO mania was at its peak and bitcoin was buying and selling at an all-time excessive of round $20,000.

With bitcoin now buying and selling at $93,000, Son’s funding would have been very worthwhile had he held on. But he offered in early 2018 as bitcoin started to crash, ensuing in a $130 million loss, in accordance with the Wall Street Journal.

So the query buyers could possibly be asking themselves now’s, would this time be totally different?

To discover a clue, let’s take Oracle (ORCL) inventory for instance. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump introduced that SoftBank could be a part of a $100 billion push to construct AI infrastructure in the U.S. in conjunction with OpenAI and Oracle (ORCL).

One would say it is a bullish final result for ORCL inventory. However, because the announcement was made on Jan. 22, coinciding with ORCL topping at $188 per share, the inventory fell 28%, whereas the Nasdaq has gone down 12% in the identical time period.

Other outdoors elements, together with macro headwinds and geopolitical stress, may clarify the underperformance. It is also only a plain coincidence. However, one analyst tied this Oracle selloff to Softbank’s involvement in the AI infrastructure undertaking.

“When SoftBank enters an asset you own, you sell. I don’t make the rules,” Quinn Thompson, founding father of crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital, wrote in a publish on X, citing the Oracle pullback.