SBI Holdings is a financial services group with businesses spanning securities, banking, insurance, wealth management and venture capital with a market capitalization of approximately $11 billion. The Tokyo-based company is one of Japan’s most active traditional financial participants in digital assets, with efforts and partnerships across crypto trading, liquidity, tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement.
Bitbank is one of the country’s largest licensed cryptocurrency exchanges, offering spot trading, custody and other digital asset services to retail and institutional clients.
Cheaper, faster to buy
Crypto mergers and acquisitions have remained buoyant in 2026 as banks, payments firms and exchanges race to build regulated digital asset companies rather than develop them in-house.
The industry has recorded 144 deals worth $11.8 billion so far this year, according to data from Architect Partners, with buyers increasingly targeting exchanges, custodians, data firms and stablecoin infrastructure as regulatory clarity draws more institutional capital into the sector.
According to Payne, the Bitbank acquisition is about more than customer growth. The deal brings a Financial Services Agency-licensed exchange, one of Japan’s deepest altcoin liquidity pools and an institutional custodian, Japan Digital Asset Trust, giving SBI capabilities that would be far more expensive and time-consuming to build in-house.
The purchase comes at a crucial time for Japan’s crypto industry. Legislation passed by the country’s lower house on June 11 would move crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, bringing them into line with securities regulation. The reforms lower the tax rate on crypto gains to a flat 20% and pave the way for spot bitcoin ether (ETH) and XRP exchange-traded funds, while imposing stricter capital, custody and disclosure requirements on exchanges.
