The market value of digital assets such as crypto assets and stablecoins already exceeds 250 trillion JPY (as of January 2022). Financial products such as investment trusts with digital assets as an underlying asset and ETFs have appeared. Digital assets are consequently starting to be recognized as one of the proper asset classes in the world. In the past, the digital asset investors were mostly retail clients but in recent years, with the market expansion, institutional investors entered the market, a study shows that 71% of institutional investors from North America and Europe have growing intention to invest into digital assets in the future.

The trend of digitalization is globally increasing.  As digital assets with blockchain technology come into existence, we can foresee that in the future many forms of digital assets - crypto assets, security tokens, NFTs and stablecoins - will be issued and circulated in Japan.

From now on, many types of digital assets will appear and more institutional investors and enterprises will make the best use of them. In the digitalized society that requires a highly transparent and reliable method of asset storage, we expect the need for trust business to securely store and manage the digital assets will increase.

Japan Digital Asset Trust Preparatory Company, inc. (JADAT) ※1 is a preparatory company for the purpose of establishing a trust company specializing in digital assets ※2. JADAT will have both the know-how of digital asset storage management system with Japan's most advanced and highest security level of the Company, and the know-how of trust business of SuMi TRUST Holdings, which is a specialized trust bank group.

※1 After the registration by the related authorities based on the Trust Business Act, it is expected to change its business name to Japan Digital Asset Trust, inc.

※2 Refers to crypto assets, security tokens on public blockchain, stablecoins and NFTs.