SBI Holdings Plans $289M Bitbank Acquisition to Dominate Japanese Crypto Market
In a strategic move to broaden its digital asset presence, the Japanese financial giant aims to secure complete ownership of Bitbank, reinforcing its position across cryptocurrency exchange operations, stablecoin initiatives, asset tokenization, and blockchain technology development.
SBI Holdings, a leading Japanese financial services company, has entered into binding agreements to take complete ownership of cryptocurrency exchange platform Bitbank in a transaction valued at 46.7 billion Japanese yen ($289 million), moving forward with a proposal initially revealed in May that will establish Japan's largest digital currency trading platform.
In an announcement released Thursday, SBI disclosed that SBICAH, a fully owned subsidiary, will purchase equity stakes from Noriyuki Hirosue, who serves as Bitbank's chief executive officer, along with additional stakeholders, followed by participation in a third-party share allocation program. Following this process, the exchange platform will execute a share repurchase from MIXI and Ceres, ultimately resulting in SBI achieving complete indirect ownership at 100%. The financial conglomerate anticipates finalizing the deal approximately in October, pending approval from regulatory authorities.
This strategic acquisition will broaden SBI's presence in the regulated cryptocurrency exchange sector while expanding its user base, providing the company with an additional avenue for distributing stablecoins, tokenized financial instruments and blockchain-based financial services.
According to data compiled by CoinGecko, Bitbank's daily transaction volume has remained under $50 million throughout the majority of the previous four months. Trading activity is primarily concentrated in the BTC/JPY trading pair, which accounts for 39.5% of volume, with XRP/JPY and ETH/JPY pairs each representing 19.7% of total activity.
According to SBI's projections, merging Bitbank's operations with SBI VC Trade would provide the consolidated entity with approximately 1.1 trillion yen in custodial assets and close to 2.92 million cryptocurrency user accounts, utilizing data current as of late April. The corporation stated that this merged operation would claim the top position among Japanese digital currency exchanges measured by custodial assets and would be positioned among the industry leaders in terms of total account holders.
SBI builds broader digital asset ecosystem
This acquisition of Bitbank represents one component of SBI's comprehensive strategy to construct robust infrastructure encompassing cryptocurrency exchange platforms, stablecoin development and tokenized securities markets.
During February, SBI collaborated with Startale Group to introduce Strium, a layer-1 blockchain platform engineered to facilitate continuous trading and settlement operations for tokenized stocks and real-world asset derivatives.
Earlier this week on Wednesday, SBI partnered with Startale to debut JPYSC, a stablecoin pegged to the Japanese yen. SBI Shinsei Trust Bank serves as the token's issuer while distribution responsibilities fall to SBI VC Trade. Currently, the stablecoin's functionality is restricted to account-to-account transfers exclusively within SBI VC Trade's platform, with plans to enable broader public blockchain distribution once remaining legal and taxation matters are addressed, as stated by SBI.
On that same Wednesday, a partnership between Ripple and SBI Group resulted in the Japanese launch of Ripple USD (RLUSD), a stablecoin backed by U.S. dollars, facilitated through SBI VC Trade. Upon its debut, RLUSD became accessible to both institutional clients and individual retail investors following its approval under Japan's comprehensive regulatory structure governing foreign-originated stablecoin products.