Sony’s banking division has filed to acquire a national banking charter that would allow its subsidiary, Connectia Trust, to engage in “certain specified activities involving cryptocy,” according to the company’s application. The application from Sony Bank says the company intends for its new trust to issue U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins, maintain the corresponding reserve assets, and provide custody and digital asset management services.
There’s a growing list of crypto firms filing applications for crypto banking charters from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, including payments processor Stripe, crypto exchange Coinbase, stablecoin issuer Paxos Trust, and USDC issuer Circle.
So far only Anchorage Digital Bank has been able to acquire a fully approved, de novo OCC charter. But there were some hiccups that resulted in the company receiving a cease and desist order from the OCC in 2022. The order was later dropped in August of this year, as the regulatory environment for crypto assets has broadly shifted in a more favorable direction for the industry.
Following the passage of the GENIUS Act in the United States, which formally established a regulatory framework for issuing and trading stablecoins, a rush of power players in the finance and tech industries have entered the stablecoin race. Stablecoins act as digital dollar equivalents in market where dollars are either restricted or inaccessible, since they allow their users to enter and exit digital asset trades, or send payments overseas, without the need to access dollars directly.
Stablecoins have become a very lucrative business for the leading issuers, such as Tether and Circle. Total market capitalization across the sector stands at $312 billion, and users on Myriad—a prediction market developed by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan—currently believe there’s a 68% chance the market grows to $360 billion by February 2026. Sony, then, would be entering the market at an opportune time.
Sony Bank is owned by Sony Group, the multinational conglomerate that also owns Sony Interactive Entertainment, the manufacturer of the PlayStation video game system. But the two businesses are separate and among a portfolio of hundreds of companies and subsidiaries. “During its initial phase of operations, Trust Bank intends to engage in certain digital asset activities that the OCC has previously found to be permissible under existing national bank legal authorities,” the company wrote in its application.
“These include the issuance of dollar-pegged stablecoins and maintenance of corresponding reserve assets, the provision of non-fiduciary digital asset custody services, and the provision of asset management services as fiduciary to certain affiliates.” This isn’t the first time a Sony company has shown interest in cryptocy or blockchain networks. Last year, the Sony Group teamed up with crypto tech firm Startale Group to launch Soneiun, an Ethereum layer-2 network, in January. The project was in the works for a long time after having first been teased in 2023.
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