Japan Exchange Group, Inc. (JPX) recently announced that it has “made a minority investment of JPY 360 million in Digital Asset Markets, Inc. as of February 25, 2022.”
Through this investment, JPX aims to “strengthen its relationship with Digital Asset Markets, Inc., which enables trading of a crypto asset linked to the physical gold price, and Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities, Inc., the issuer of said asset, while contributing to the acquisition of cutting edge expertise in the digital asset space as well as the development of new business areas.”
As mentioned in the update, Digital Asset Markets, Inc. is a crypto-asset exchange service provider which “handles Zipangcoin, a crypto asset issued by Mitsui & Co. Digital Commodities, which is a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co.”
Zipangcoin is a crypto-asset that aims to be “roughly linked to the price of physical gold, achieving convenience and enabling small-lot trading for retail investors through digitalization.”
In a separate announcement, it was noted that in October 2021, the Japan Exchange Group, Inc. (JPX) established a Sustainable Finance Platform Development Working Group consisting of “a varied range of related parties including issuers, institutional investors, and academics, to consider the practical issues around the creation of an information platform that gathers and provides a wide range of information on green bonds and similar products, alongside other related topics.”
The Working Group met 4 times between then and January 21, 2022 and also released its First Report in Japanese on January 31, 2022.
JPX has now published an English translation of this report, which can be accessed here.
The Report “summarizes the Working Group’s discussions so far.” It also sets out practical aspects of “how the platform should look and the issues that will need to be tackled to ensure further enhancement and transparency of the market in the future, as well as possible responses to those issues, with the aim of contributing to the sustainable development of the market and wider economy by spurring deeper dialogue on ESG among all market players including issuers, investors, and review providers.”
