Ripple, the California-based crypto company which focuses on international remittance service announced recently that it has appointed SBI Group’s CEO, Yoshikata Kitao a member of its Board of Directors.
Kitao was reported coming on board the Ripple team as a replacement for SBI Ripple Asia’s former CEO, Takashi Okita.
SBI and Ripple have a lasting relationship which led to the birth of SBI Ripple Asia, a joint venture continent-wide payment platform initiative which uses the RippleNet worldwide payment network architecture.
The appointment could be a reflection of Kitao’s personal wish to play a leading part in domestic and international crypto-related affairs.
More is yet to be heard of Japanese company’s blockchain exploit as e-commerce giant Rakuten and the country’s arm of search engine, Yahoo Japan which are poised to launch their respective crypto exchanges.
Kitao revealed reasons behind SBI virtual Currencies’decision earlier this month, which led to the delisting of Bitcoin Cash (BCH).
Earlier in April, at an SBI end-of-fiscal-year meeting, Kitao explained to board members, stating:
“Coins that regularly experience hard forks are ludicrous.”
Bitcoin Cash experienced a hard fork in November last year, which was believed a reason for market crash that month.
“We originally intended to support Bitcoin Cash, but Jihan Wu [former CEO of Bitcoin mining giant Bitmain] and Craig Wright [the infamous proponent of Bitcoin SV, the hard fork of BCH] had a disagreement, leading to the advent of Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin SV. Jihan Wu succeeded in retaining control of the name Bitcoin Cash, but we have decided to cease dealing with both tokens.”
