SBI Holdings has signed agreements to amass all shares of Japanese cryptocurrency change Bitbank in a deal valued at 46.7 billion yen, or roughly $288.6 million, the businesses announced on June 24.
The transaction will make Bitbank a completely owned subsidiary of SBI Group by its funding arm, SBICAH GK.
The deal represents the biggest consolidation transfer in Japan’s regulated crypto market up to now. SBI and Bitbank entered into each a primary settlement and a share switch settlement, with the transaction structured in two phases.
SBI will purchase shares held by Bitbank’s founders and particular person shareholders in August. Bitbank will then purchase out shares held by current company shareholders MIXI and Ceres by the top of October, finishing the total transition into full possession.
The transaction is topic to clearance from the Japan Honest Commerce Fee and different normal closing circumstances. Each firms anticipate the deal to shut round October 2026.
Bitbank informed its customers the acquisition may have no impact on current providers. The change stated clients can proceed buying and selling and utilizing the platform with out disruption all through the possession switch.
SBI is now Japan’s largest crypto group
The Bitbank deal reshapes SBI’s place in Japan’s digital asset market. Mixed with SBI VC Commerce, its current crypto change unit, the merged operation will maintain an estimated 2.92 million crypto asset accounts and roughly 1.1 trillion yen — round $6.8 billion — in property below custody.
That determine would place SBI forward of bitFlyer and Coincheck by buying and selling quantity, making the group the biggest regulated crypto change operator in Japan.
SBI has moved to construct this place by a sequence of acquisitions. In April 2026, the corporate’s VC Commerce absorbed Bitpoint Japan. The Bitbank deal extends that consolidation, including a model with a protracted report in Japan’s regulated market and, in line with the corporate, zero hacking incidents since launch.
For Bitbank CEO Noriyuki Hirosue, who’s among the many shareholders promoting their stake, the deal marks an exit for a founder who constructed certainly one of Japan’s extra trusted change manufacturers over greater than a decade.
The acquisition comes at a second of structural change for Japan’s crypto trade. Japanese authorities are examining whether or not to convey digital property below the Monetary Devices and Trade Act, a reclassification that would take impact as early as fiscal 2027. If that change goes by, crypto change operators would face stricter compliance necessities — a shift that favors giant, well-capitalized teams over smaller impartial platforms.
SBI has positioned itself forward of that shift. Past change operations, the group launched JPYSC, Japan’s first belief bank-backed yen stablecoin, the identical day it introduced the Bitbank deal.
The group additionally rolled out a Visa-branded rewards card that converts spending into Bitcoin and different crypto by SBI VC Commerce, and it accomplished a co-launch of Ripple’s RLUSD greenback stablecoin in Japan.
The result’s a monetary group with publicity throughout change buying and selling, custody, stablecoins, and crypto-linked funds — constructed by deal-making at a tempo that few opponents in Japan can match.
