SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire all shares of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank in a deal valued at 46.7 billion yen, or approximately $288.6 million, the companies announced on June 24.
The transaction will make Bitbank a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI Group through its investment arm, SBICAH GK.
The deal represents the largest consolidation move in Japan’s regulated crypto market to date. SBI and Bitbank entered into both a basic agreement and a share transfer agreement, with the transaction structured in two phases.
SBI will acquire shares held by Bitbank’s founders and individual shareholders in August. Bitbank will then buy out shares held by existing corporate shareholders MIXI and Ceres by the end of October, completing the full transition into full ownership.
The transaction is subject to clearance from the Japan Fair Trade Commission and other standard closing conditions. Both companies expect the deal to close around October 2026.
Bitbank told its users the acquisition will have no effect on existing services. The exchange said customers can continue trading and using the platform without disruption throughout the ownership transfer.
SBI is now Japan’s largest crypto group
The Bitbank deal reshapes SBI’s position in Japan’s digital asset market. Combined with SBI VC Trade, its existing crypto exchange unit, the merged operation will hold an estimated 2.92 million crypto asset accounts and approximately 1.1 trillion yen — around $6.8 billion — in assets under custody.
That figure would place SBI ahead of bitFlyer and Coincheck by trading volume, making the group the largest regulated crypto exchange operator in Japan.
SBI has moved to build this position through a series of acquisitions. In April 2026, the company’s VC Trade absorbed Bitpoint Japan. The Bitbank deal extends that consolidation, adding a brand with a long record in Japan’s regulated market and, according to the company, zero hacking incidents since launch.
For Bitbank CEO Noriyuki Hirosue, who is among the shareholders selling their stake, the deal marks an exit for a founder who built one of Japan’s more trusted exchange brands over more than a decade.
The acquisition comes at a moment of structural change for Japan’s crypto industry. Japanese authorities are examining whether to bring digital assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, a reclassification that could take effect as early as fiscal 2027. If that change goes through, crypto exchange operators would face stricter compliance requirements — a shift that favors large, well-capitalized groups over smaller independent platforms.
SBI has positioned itself ahead of that shift. Beyond exchange operations, the group launched JPYSC, Japan’s first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, the same day it announced the Bitbank deal.
The group also rolled out a Visa-branded rewards card that converts spending into Bitcoin and other crypto through SBI VC Trade, and it completed a co-launch of Ripple’s RLUSD dollar stablecoin in Japan.
The result is a financial group with exposure across exchange trading, custody, stablecoins, and crypto-linked payments — built through deal-making at a pace that few competitors in Japan can match.
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