TaoTao

About TaoTao

TaoTao Inc. operated as a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, providing virtual currency trading services to the Japanese market.

The company originated from an exchange named BitARG. In March 2018, YJFX, a subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, acquired a 40% stake in BitARG for an estimated JPY 2 billion (around $19 million). Following this investment, Yahoo! Japan dispatched engineers and executives to BitARG to develop a new exchange system, enhance corporate governance, and build out customer management and internal controls. The platform officially rebranded and launched as TaoTao on May 30, 2019, after approximately a year in development. At its launch, TaoTao was licensed by Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA), a mandatory requirement for all digital currency exchanges in the country.

TaoTao's business model centered on facilitating the trading of virtual currencies. The platform launched with spot trading for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), and also offered margin trading for Litecoin (LTC), XRP, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). Revenue was likely generated from trading fees, a common practice for cryptocurrency exchanges. The service was accessible via a trading website and a mobile application.

In a significant development, on October 7, 2020, the Japanese financial conglomerate SBI Holdings announced that its foreign exchange and derivatives arm, SBI Liquidity Market, had acquired 100% of TaoTao's shares, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary. This acquisition came shortly after TaoTao's partnership negotiations with the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which began in January 2020, were terminated. The acquisition positioned SBI Holdings with two licensed crypto trading platforms in Japan, the other being SBI VC Trade, signaling a strategic move to consolidate its position in the domestic digital currency sector.