Japan's Third-Richest Person Just Gave Bitcoin 'Huge Endorsement'

SoftBank Group has made a $50 million investment into industrial-scale Bitcoin mining company Cipher Mining. 

Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, has opined that this is a "huge endorsement" for the diversified Bitcoin/AI model from SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son.  

$160 million Bitcoin loss 

Son, the third-richest Japanese person, initially invested in Bitcoin at the peak of the 2017 bubble. As reported by U.Today, he ended up losing as much as $160 million after deciding to sell his Bitcoin holdings at a huge loss due to viewing it as a distraction.

Obviously, the disastrous Bitcoin bet hardly made a dent in his massive net worth, which currently stands at a whopping $31.3 billion. 

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In 2020, he predicted that digital currencies would be "useful," but he stopped short of singling out a single token. 

Softbank's AI bet 

Earlier this week, it was reported that SoftBank was preparing to make a staggering $25 billion million investment in OpenAI. The terms of the investment are yet to be fleshed out, according to the New York Times. 

The Japanese behemoth is also part of the $100 billion AI project called Stargate, which was announced in partnership with OpenAI, Oracle, and other major names.