SoftBank Moves to Purchase Bitcoin Again – Since the $130 million loss in 2018 | CoinDesk JAPAN

GateUser-7b23e414 · 2025-04-25T01:33:12+00:00

SoftBank reemerges in the Bitcoin investment scene, backing a new company after a past $130M loss. With $308.7B in assets, this move signals a renewed interest in crypto assets, driven by significant losses and participation in a $100B AI project.

GateUser-7b23e414

2025-04-25 01:33:12

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! SoftBank moves to buy bitcoin again since $130 million loss in 2018

SoftBank is supporting a new Bitcoin investment company, Twenty One Capital, along with Tether, Bitfinex, and Cantor Fitzgerald.
This movement signifies that SoftBank, which holds $308.7 billion, has returned to cryptocurrency a few years after its founder Masayoshi Son incurred a personal loss of $130 million from Bitcoin investments.
Factors that have renewed SoftBank’s interest in cryptocurrency include a staggering quarterly loss of 2.4 billion Dollars and participation in a 100 billion Dollar scale AI infrastructure project in the United States.

The fact that SoftBank Group, which has operating assets of 3.087 trillion Dollars (approximately 43.22 trillion yen, based on an exchange rate of 140 yen to the dollar), has shown interest in Bitcoin is a welcome development for some stakeholders and can be seen as a new sign of the expanding adoption of crypto assets by institutional investors. Jeff Park, who serves as the Head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise, pointed out that SoftBank Group generally plays a role similar to that of Japan’s sovereign wealth fund.

However, for experienced market watchers, this may be a development that feels more like déjà vu than a groundbreaking event.

Looking back at 2019, the SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son was heavily reported for suffering huge losses from personal Bitcoin investments.

In the second half of 2017, Mr. Son made a Bitcoin investment during the peak of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) boom when Bitcoin was trading at its then all-time high of about 20,000 Dollars (about 2.8 million Yen).

Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $93,000 (approximately ¥13.02 million), and if Mr. Son had continued to hold it, he would have made a significant profit. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Son sold his Bitcoin at the beginning of 2018 when it began to crash, resulting in a loss of $130 million (approximately ¥18.2 billion).

Due to this background, investors may pay attention to whether the results will be different this time compared to the last.

To explore that clue, let me give an example of Oracle stock. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that SoftBank would participate in a $100 billion AI infrastructure project in the U.S. alongside OpenAI and Oracle.

Some may think this is a bullish result for Oracle’s stock. However, on January 22, when this announcement was made, Oracle’s stock reached a high of 188 Dollar per share, but then fell by 28%. This performance is worse than the Nasdaq Composite Index’s decline of 12% during the same period.

Quinn Thompson, the founder of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Lekker Capital, sarcastically referred to this matter in a post on X (formerly Twitter), stating, “When SoftBank enters the assets you hold, you sell. That’s the rule.”

| Translation & Editing: Rina Hayashi | Image: Shutterstock |Original: SoftBank Is Buying Bitcoin Again, After $130M Loss in 2018. Is This Time Different?

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