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By Helene Braun, Tom Carreras|Edited by Aoyon Ashraf
Apr 24, 2025, 6:17 p.m.
- SoftBank is backing a new bitcoin investment firm, Twenty One Capital, alongside Tether, Bitfinex, and Cantor Fitzgerald.
- The move marks a return to crypto for the $308.7B asset manager, years after founder Masayoshi Son lost $130M on a personal bitcoin bet.
- SoftBank’s renewed crypto interest follows a surprise $2.4B quarterly loss and its inclusion in a $100B U.S. AI infrastructure initiative.
Japanese investment giant SoftBank is dipping its toes back into crypto by backing a new bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle, Twenty One Capital, in conjunction with Tether, Bitfinex, and Cantor Fitzgerald.
For some, the SoftBank Group—which has $308.7 billion assets under management—taking an interest in bitcoin is a welcome development and another sign of mounting institutional crypto adoption. After all, SoftBank functions more or less like a Japanese sovereign wealth fund, according to Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies at Bitwise.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
But for seasoned observers, it could be more of a déjà-vu than a breakthrough.
Flashback to 2019, SoftBank made headlines when its founder, Masayoshi Son, took a gigantic loss on a personal bitcoin investment.
Son had taken exposure to cryptocurrency in late 2017, when the ICO mania was at its peak and bitcoin was trading at an all-time high of around $20,000.
With bitcoin now trading at $93,000, Son’s investment would have been very profitable had he held on. But he sold in early 2018 as bitcoin began to crash, resulting in a $130 million loss, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So the question investors could be asking themselves now is, would this time be different?
To find a clue, let’s take Oracle (ORCL) stock as an example. Recently, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that SoftBank would be part of a $100 billion push to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. in conjunction with OpenAI and Oracle (ORCL).
One would say this is a bullish outcome for ORCL stock. However, since the announcement was made on Jan. 22, coinciding with ORCL topping at $188 per share, the stock fell 28%, while the Nasdaq has gone down 12% in the same period of time.
Other outside factors, including macro headwinds and geopolitical tension, could explain the underperformance. It could also be just a plain coincidence. However, one analyst tied this Oracle selloff to Softbank’s involvement in the AI infrastructure project.
“When SoftBank enters an asset you own, you sell. I don’t make the rules,” Quinn Thompson, founder of crypto hedge fund Lekker Capital, wrote in a post on X, citing the Oracle pullback.
Helene is a New York-based markets reporter at CoinDesk, covering the latest news from Wall Street, the rise of the spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds and updates on crypto markets. She is a graduate of New York University’s business and economic reporting program and has appeared on CBS News, YahooFinance and Nasdaq TradeTalks. She holds BTC and ETH.
Tom writes about markets, bitcoin mining and crypto adoption in Latin America. He has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from McGill University, and can usually be found in Costa Rica. He holds BTC above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.
