SBI Holdings has signed agreements to accumulate all shares of Japanese cryptocurrency trade Bitbank in a deal valued at 46.7 billion yen, or roughly $288.6 million, the businesses introduced on June 24.
The transaction will make Bitbank a completely owned subsidiary of SBI Group by way of 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 fundamental 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 tip of October, finishing the complete transition into full possession.
The transaction is topic to clearance from the Japan Honest Commerce Fee and different customary closing circumstances. Each corporations anticipate the deal to shut round October 2026.
Bitbank advised its customers the acquisition can have no impact on current providers. The trade mentioned 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 trade 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 underneath custody.
That determine would place SBI forward of bitFlyer and Coincheck by buying and selling quantity, making the group the biggest regulated crypto trade operator in Japan.
SBI has moved to construct this place by way of a collection of acquisitions. In April 2026, the corporate’s VC Commerce absorbed Bitpoint Japan. The Bitbank deal extends that consolidation, including a model with an extended document in Japan’s regulated market and, in response to 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 trade manufacturers over greater than a decade.
The acquisition comes at a second of structural change for Japan’s crypto business. Japanese authorities are inspecting whether or not to carry digital property underneath the Monetary Devices and Alternate Act, a reclassification that would take impact as early as fiscal 2027. If that change goes by way of, crypto trade 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 trade 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 way of 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 trade buying and selling, custody, stablecoins, and crypto-linked funds — constructed by way of deal-making at a tempo that few opponents in Japan can match.