In July of this year, SBI Holdings — which is a large Japanese financial services firm — launched a digital currency exchange called Vctrade. Now, the exchange has announced that it will begin accepting deposits in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple. The announcement, which was made in a press release that was dated December 21, also stated that the exchange may also soon accept deposits in Bitcoin Cash. Though this will only happen after they have completed an evaluation of the currency. The company's announcement further indicated that withdrawals in digital currency will not be available until the end of next month and that they will require the use of a company-designated hardware wallet. The company believes that requiring a single and specific hardware wallet will link customers to fixed cryptocurrency addresses, which they think will fulfill their responsibilities relating to preventing money laundering and the financing of terrorism. SBI Holdings currently controls more than 92,000 million yen in capital (more than $800 million.) They also have more than 6,000 employees through all their subsidiaries. The company further generated more than 175,000 million yen (nearly $1.6 billion) in revenue during the 6-month period ending September 30, 2018. In September, SBI Savings bank — which is a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI Holdings — reportedly signed what was called a "memorandum of understanding" with another Japanese company called Dayli Intelligence. This company specializes in using artificial intelligence with blockchain technologies in order to maximize efficiencies and reduce cost. It was further reported that SBI made the agreement in order to boost its fintech business. Previously to this in August, SBI announced that it had made an additional investment in another Japanese digital currency exchange called LastRoots. This came after an initial investment in December of last year. The exchange was recently the subject of a stern rebuke from Japanese regulators in the wake of the hacking of Coincheck in January, and they had been required to make dramatic changes to their business model.