SBI Holding has agreed to buy Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for $289 million. This is SBI’s largest crypto acquisition to date and will make it one of the largest digital asset companies in Japan. SBI has been growing its crypto business by acquiring other companies rather than building everything from scratch. It has already taken over TaoTao, DMM Bitcoin’s customer accounts, and Bitpoint Japan in recent years.
With the addition of Bitbank, SBI will manage about 1.1 trillion yen ($6.8 billion) in crypto assets and serve around 2.9 million customer accounts. This brings not just customers, but also government licenses, a strong trading service for many cryptocurrencies, and an institutional custody business. These would have taken SBI a long time and a lot of money to build on its own. Experts believe more crypto companies in Japan may merge. Due to the latest government rules, which will make it more expensive to run a crypto exchange. Many smaller exchanges may not be able to afford these higher costs.
The changes include a 20% flat tax on crypto profits and could allow spot Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP exchange-traded funds (ETFs). At the same time, crypto exchanges will have to follow stricter rules for capital, customer protection, and reporting. As banks continue to leverage AI to tap into unexplored areas, Deepseek, a prominent Chinese AI startup, raised $7.35B funding to strengthen its offerings and expand the workforce, which is likely to benefit banks like SBI holdings.
Along with the Bitbank deal, SBI also announced plans to launch Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin in Japan. It will introduce a Visa crypto rewards card and expand stablecoin payment services.
