- Nexon’s $100M investment in 1,717 BTC at $58,226 each represents less than 2% of its total value of cash.
- This purchase, offering long-term stability and liquidity, is a “disciplined strategy” to maintain Nexon’s cash assets’ “purchasing power.”
- Nexon wasn’t the first Japanese firm to invest in crypto.
The South Korean–Japanese video game publisher Nexon specializes in online games. Seeing every digital platform is embracing cryptocurrencies, it doesn’t come as a shock that the gaming giant has invested an enormous sum of $100 million in Bitcoin.
Nexon’s BTC Investment
On Wednesday, Nexon announced its purchase of 1,717 bitcoins (BTC) at an average price, including fees and other expenses, of approximately $58,226 per coin, amounting to around $100 million. The announcement read the investment “represents less than 2%” of the company’s total value of cash.
Nexon’s president and CEO, Owen Mahoney, said this purchase is their “disciplined strategy” to protect “shareholder value” as well as maintain the “purchasing power” of their cash assets. Mahoney believes Bitcoin is a “form of cash likely to retain its value” and thus “offers long-term stability and liquidity” for their future investments.
Latest Publicly-Listed Firm Buying Crypto
Following the footsteps of global leaders, including MicroStrategy kick-starting the BTC trend purchasing 21,000 BTC for $250 million in August 2020, Square’s $50 million in October, and Tesla investing $1.5 billion in late 2020, Nexon is the latest publicly-listed firm to dip into crypto.
According to BitcoinTreasuries, around 35 publicly traded firms currently hold BTC on their balance sheets.
Not The First To Deal With Crypto
Nexon was founded in Seoul, South Korea, in 1994 and later moved its headquarters to Tokyo, Japan, in 2005, where it went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December 2011. Today, a global leader in Virtual Worlds, it operates over 50 online games available across more than 190 countries.
As Japan recognized digital assets as legal currency in 2016, Nexon wasn’t the nation’s first firm to go crypto. Following the legal acceptance, the top financial services firm SBI set forth plans to launch a bank-backed virtual currency exchange, investing in Ripple and local exchange bitFlyer. Then in 2017, the GMO Internet Group invested $3 million into Bitcoin mining.