Japan's Internet Giant GMO Wants to Borrow BCH, ETH, LTC, XRP From Customers

GMO Internet’s cryptocurrency exchange has added four more cryptocurrencies to its loan program which allows customers to lend their cryptocurrencies to the company. The program was originally launched last month for just bitcoin (BTC) but GMO has now added bitcoin cash (BCH), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC) and ripple (XRP) to the program.

Also read: Yahoo! Japan Confirms Entrance Into the Crypto Space

GMO Wants to Borrow from Customers

GMO Coin, the cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate GMO Internet, announced this week the addition of four cryptocurrencies to its loan service which allows customers to lend their coins to the company.

The service “allows you to rent out the virtual currency held by the customer to the company so that you can receive the rental fee according to the quantity of the lent virtual currency,” the exchange detailed. GMO first introduced this service last month for just BTC.

Interested customers need to apply between May 9 and May 23. If there are more applicants than needed, the company will use a drawing to select whom to borrow from. The target currencies this time are BCH, ETH, LTC, and XRP.

About the Program

Customers can lend between 100 and 1,000 ETH; 50 and 500 BCH; 300 and 3,000 LTC; and 100,000 and 1,000,000 XRP.

The time to maturity is 150 days. Borrowed cryptocurrencies will be returned to customers in the same amounts and types at maturity.

The exchange will pay customers 2.04109589 ETH for each 100 ETH borrowed. For 50 BCH, the company will pay 1.02054794 BCH. For 300 LTC, customers will receive 6.12328767 LTC. Lastly, for 100,000 XRP, the fee payable to customers will be 2,041.0958 XRP. GMO explained that the fee “corresponds to 5% / year (tax included),” adding that taxes will also be levied on the loan fees.

Fully Licensed Exchange

GMO Coin is a fully licensed cryptocurrency exchange in Japan. However, it is one of the two licensed exchanges to receive a business improvement order from the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) after the agency tightened its inspection of crypto exchanges following the hack of Coincheck in January. The other is Tech Bureau which operates Zaif exchange.

The company recently revealed GMO Coin’s financials, showing an operating loss of 760 million yen (~US$7 million) in the first quarter of this year. The cost of operating the crypto business rose by about 560 million yen (~$5.1 million) for the group from the previous quarter. As for the company’s mining operations, GMO revealed that it has mined a total of 906 bitcoins and 537 bitcoin cash.

Would you lend GMO your coins? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Nikkei, and GMO.

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