SBI Holdings is a financial services group with businesses spanning securities, banking, insurance, asset management and venture capital investing, with a market capitalization of approximately $11 billion. The Tokyo-based company is one of Japan’s most active traditional financial players in the digital assets space, with holdings and partnerships in crypto trading, liquidity, tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement.
Bitbank is one of the largest licensed cryptocurrency exchanges in the country, offering spot trading, custody and other digital asset services to retail and institutional clients.
Cheaper, faster to buy
Crypto mergers and acquisitions have remained vibrant in 2026 as banks, payments companies and exchanges rush to create regulated digital asset businesses rather than develop them in-house.
The sector has seen 144 deals worth $11.8 billion so far this year, according to data from Architect Partners, with buyers increasingly targeting exchanges, custody providers, data companies and stable infrastructure as regulatory clarity attracts more institutional capital to the sector.
According to Payne, the acquisition of Bitbank is not just about customer growth. The deal brings a Financial Services Agency-licensed exchange, one of Japan’s largest altcoin liquidity pools and an institutional custody business, Japan Digital Asset Trust, providing SBI with capabilities that would be much more expensive and time-consuming to build in-house.
This acquisition comes at a pivotal time for the Japanese crypto industry. Legislation passed by the country’s lower house on June 11 would move crypto assets to the Financial Instruments and Foreign Exchange Act, bringing them in line with securities regulations. The reforms lower the tax rate on crypto gains to 20% and pave the way for spot bitcoin. ether (ETH) and XRP, while simultaneously imposing stricter capital, custody and disclosure requirements on exchanges.
