Animoca Brands Reinforces Its Dedication to Japan

The leading investor in the metaverse, Animoca Brands, has maintained its remarkable ascent after its Japanese affiliate, ‘Animoca Brands KK (Japan),’ successfully funded $45 million at a pre-money valuation of $500 million.

A positive aim to promote the formation of the open metaverse has been signaled by Animoca Brands, even though the market is currently bearish.

Indeed, the investment of $45 million was made in equal parts by Animoca Brands Corporation Limited and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFG (MUFG Bank), which is recognized as one of the most established and influential financial institutions in Japan.

Animoca Brands was only recently valued at $5.5 billion after raising $75 million in an investment round that was also participated in by Liberty City Ventures and Kingsway.
Animoca Brands Japan is a strategic subsidiary of Animoca Brands Corporation Limited. Its primary mission is to cultivate collaborative partnerships in Japan for the purpose of expanding potential in the NFT industry.
The company was established in 2021 and has since attracted significant Japanese intellectual property owners into the Web3 ecosystem while also contributing to the larger goals of its parent company.
According to Animoca Brands, the subsidiary will use the new capital as follows: “to continue to secure licenses for popular intellectual properties, develop internal capabilities, and promote adoption of Web3 for multiple partners, increasing the value and utility of their branded content while fostering the development of a safe and secure NFT ecosystem in Japan.”
In Japan, the market for NFTs is picking up speed and becoming increasingly competitive. Earlier in the month of March, it was mentioned that a potential relationship between Animoca Brands and the 360-year-old MUFG Bank was being explored.

In point of fact, the bank had stated that “in order to resuscitate the NFT market in Japan, it is required to build an NFT environment where everyone can readily trade with peace of mind, similar to the activities of daily purchasing.” The realization of client protection against fraud, impersonation, and loss of content value owing to speculative transactions in the NFT environment is anticipated to lead to further development of the non-fungible token (NFT) market.

Now that the cooperation has been established, Web3’s rapidly growing infrastructure in Japan will be further strengthened by this development.

It’s interesting to note that this piece of news comes at a moment of uncertainty for cryptocurrencies worldwide.

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In particular, Japan has implemented a slew of new laws, one of which is a corporation-level tax of thirty percent on any profit from crypto assets, including any unrealized profits.
Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that have their value fixed to that of another currency, such as the yen, the dollar, or another currency. In June, the upper house of the Japanese parliament passed a bill that would go down in history as a regulation of stablecoins.

Despite this fact, the popularity of NFT is growing rapidly in Japan, and the technology appears to be a good match for Japan’s long tradition of excellence in the fields of games, animation, and beautiful visual art.

Because of this reason, the Japanese financial services company SBI Group has already established a subsidiary that is solely devoted to the name SBINFTs.

Additionally, in April, the Japanese company LINE debuted its NFT marketplace known as LINENFT. This marketplace provides LINE’s 90 million users with access to about 40,000 different NFTs.

Not to mention that Japanese gaming powerhouse Square Enix Group, which owns intellectual property such as Final Fantasy and just made a public commitment to the Web3 and NFT technologies and already has property in The Sandbox, is a major player in this industry.

The Sandbox, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Colossal, and Axie Infinity are some of the ventures that are included in Animoca Brands’ expansive investment portfolio, which totals more than 340 separate holdings.

This Web3 behemoth is showing no signs of slowing down, despite the fact that it has subsidiary offices all over the globe, including in Europe, the United States of America, Australia, and Asia.

Recent developments at the company include the formation of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) known as the Open Metaverse Alliance for Web3 (OMA3). This organization’s mission is to bring together Web3 initiatives in order to develop metaverse standards.

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