Animoca Brands, a crypto games and web3 investment giant in Asia, is expanding into Japan with the help of a $45 million funding round at a pre-money value of $500 million for its Japanese subsidiary to secure local licenses.
The investment came from its parent business, Animoca Brands, as well as from MUFG Bank, one of Japan’s oldest and biggest banks. A statement made in March suggested that Animoca Brands Japan and MUFG Bank had been discussing the possibility of working together.
However, the government has a somewhat onerous taxation framework in place for earnings made using cryptocurrencies. Businesses in Japan are subject to a tax rate of 30%, while individuals are subject to a tax rate of up to 55%.
Animoca Brands has a sizable investment portfolio, some of the companies in which it has invested including the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Opensea, blockchain game businesses Axie Infinity and Dapper Labs, to mention just a few.
The company intends to invest the newly raised funds in the acquisition of licenses for well-known intellectual properties, the expansion of internal capabilities, and the promotion of the adoption of Web3 by multiple partners. This will increase the value and utility of the company’s branded content while simultaneously encouraging the growth of a trustworthy and reliable NFT ecosystem in Japan.
To halt the migration of cryptocurrency start-ups to jurisdictions with higher potential for financial gains, such as Singapore, the government of Japan is mulling the possibility of lowering the tax rates in the next year. Notwithstanding this, an increasing number of Japanese companies are opting to use NFTs.
