SBI Holdings completed its acquisition of Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank on October 1, making it a wholly owned subsidiary, the Tokyo-listed group said. Bitbank bought back the shares held by its two largest corporate backers, MIXI and Ceres, in the final step of a deal valued at about ¥46.7 billion ($289 million). The combination folds Bitbank into SBI’s crypto business and creates Japan’s largest exchange platform by custodied assets, with roughly ¥1.1 trillion ($7 billion) under custody across about 2.92 million accounts.
A staged deal closes with a buyback
SBI first agreed to acquire Bitbank in June, planning a transaction carried out in stages. The final step was the repurchase of treasury shares: Bitbank bought back all shares held by MIXI and Ceres, retiring the last outside positions and leaving SBI as the exchange’s sole parent. Bitbank continues under CEO Noriyuki Hirosue, and the company has said the change will not affect its existing services.
Scale that reshapes Japan’s market
Bitbank brings a Financial Services Agency license, a spot exchange listing dozens of crypto assets against the yen, and coin-lending and custody services into SBI’s existing crypto operations. SBI said in June the combined platform would hold about ¥1.1 trillion under custody across roughly 2.92 million accounts, enough to rank first among Japan’s licensed operators. Bitbank itself serves roughly 960,000 registered users, and its yen-quoted altcoin liquidity is among the deepest in the country. The deal extends a multi-year consolidation streak: SBI VC Trade absorbed TaoTao in 2020, took on DMM Bitcoin accounts after a 2024 hack, and in July took a majority stake in Singapore’s Coinhako. Analysts at Architect Partners named bitFlyer, the last large independent Japanese exchange, as an obvious next target.
Regulation drives the wave
Japan is shifting crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, with legislation that would cut the tax on crypto gains to a flat 20%. Those changes raise compliance costs for smaller standalone exchanges, pushing financial groups to consolidate scale. SBI has also built exchange infrastructure abroad, including in July when it led a $76 million round for EDX Markets. The group has separately become the domestic distribution platform for Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, deepening its push beyond trading into payments. SBI said the transaction’s impact on results for the year ending March 2027 would be minor.