SoftBank Is Buying Bitcoin Again, After $130M Loss in 2018. Is This Time Different?

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. 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.