Wine Firm Madison to Buy Stake in Japan-Based Bitcoin ATM Company BitOcean

By Swati Kishore

As part of the company’s strategy for diversification, the Hong Kong-based Madison Holdings Group is planning to buy a 67.2 percent stake in BitOcean, a Japan-based firm which makes Bitcoin Automated Teller Machines.

Madison Labs, which is a subsidiary of Madison Holdings, has filed to the secondary board of the Hong Kong stock exchange to acquire a stake in BitOcean from third parties for USD 15.12 million.

Interestingly, HDR Cadenza Management, which is a part of the HDR Global Trading that owns the Hong Kong-based crypto exchange BitMEX, is also planning to buy a 51%stake in Madison Labs.

The Chairman at Madison Holdings, Raymond Ting Pang-wan, has stated that Madison Labs’ partnership with BitOcean will help the company diversify. Pang-wan also added that Madison Labs will be able to develop its digital currency exchange through its deal with BitMEX.

In an interview, Pang-wan elaborated on why Madison Labs is diversifying into financial tech domain saying,

“Our wine business is stable and profitable, but then it is small. It is hard to make wine trading into a very big business. This is why we have to diversify into financial technology and the cryptocurrency business – to achieve a better return for our shareholders. Virtual currencies and blockchain are getting more popular. Investing in the virtual currency sector will expand our income source.”

Notably, the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been grappling with the bear trend. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at USD 3,880.30. Pang-wang, however, thinks with Bitcoin being cheap, this is the ideal time to enter the crypto business.  

Japan has a regulatory system in place for digital currency trading. In fact, the Asian nation accounts for 20% of the total Bitcoin trading in the world. After the United States, Japan is the only other market which has a licensing system for crypto exchanges.

In October, the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong had announced that it will be introducing a testing environment for new technologies. It was also announced that the securities regulator would look into the regulation of digital currency trading platforms.