Sony Ventures Into Crypto With Amber Japan Acquisition
Sony Group is venturing into the world of crypto by acquiring Amber Japan, the Japanese subsidiary of Amber Group.
Amber Japan is a rebranding of Japanese crypto exchange DeCurrent, which Amber Group acquired in 2022.
The move comes as Sony attempts to diversify its portfolio. In March 2023, the $100 billion market cap firm applied for a patent to track in-game digital assets on a distributed ledger.
Sony's NFT patent was surprisingly well received at a time when the industry was scrutinizing NFTs.
In a poll by Twitter user NFT POWER RANKING, 55.3% of respondents said they were "aggressively bullish" about Sony's “NFT Framework for Transferring and Using Digital Assets Between Games Platforms” patent, whilst another 21.9% opted for 21.9% "bullish" and 13.1% went for "mid bullish." Only 9.8% said they were "not bullish."
The latest move comes as part of Sony’s strategy to diversify its portfolio, which already boasts a market value exceeding $100 billion. Sony has been exploring the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain in gaming for the past few years.
Amber Group raised a $300 million Series C round in December 2022 following the collapse of FTX. The round was led by Fenbushi Capital, with participation from notable backers like Temasek, Sequoia China, Pantera, Tiger, and Coinbase,
The Singapore-based market maker recently made investments in:
- Mitosis, an ecosystem-owned liquidity (EOL) L1 blockchain
- BedRock, a multi-chain liquidity restaking protocol
- Help Steps, a Web3 "move and earn" application
- Anichess, a decentralized chess game of Animoca Brands
- Merlin Chain, a Bitcoin L2 solution by Bitmap Tech
- Monad Labs, an EVM-compatible L1 blockchain
- AINN Layer 2, a L2 Bitcoin network for Web3+AI