SBI Holdings has agreed to acquire Bitbank, a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange, in a transaction valued at about Y46.7bn (nearly $289m).
If completed, the deal will make Bitbank a wholly owned subsidiary of SBI.
The Japanese financial group said the combined business would become the country’s largest crypto exchange by assets under custody.
The acquisition is being structured through a set of agreements with Bitbank chief executive Noriyuki Hirosue, other individual shareholders, and the exchange’s two largest corporate investors, MIXI and Ceres.
Those two corporate shareholders together hold nearly half of Bitbank.
Under the deal structure, an SBI wholly owned subsidiary will first buy shares from Hirosue and other individual holders.
It will then subscribe to a new share issue by Bitbank.
Bitbank plans to use the proceeds from that capital increase to repurchase and cancel the stakes held by MIXI and Ceres.
The transaction is expected to close around October, subject to clearance from Japan’s Fair Trade Commission.
SBI said it would integrate Bitbank’s security and compliance framework into its existing crypto operations, which are centred on subsidiary SBI VC Trade.
Together, the two exchanges are expected to hold around Y1.1tn in assets under custody and serve about 2.92 million crypto accounts.
SBI said that would make the combined group the largest exchange in Japan by assets under custody and one of the biggest by user account numbers.
Bitbank posted a net loss for the fiscal year ended December 2025, according to financial disclosures included in SBI’s announcement. That followed two consecutive years of profitability.
SBI said the acquisition would strengthen the “competitiveness and profitability” of its crypto asset business.
It added that the impact on its consolidated financial results for the financial year ending March 2027 is expected to be “minor”
SBI’s board has approved the transaction.
“Japan’s SBI Holdings to buy crypto exchange Bitbank” was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand.
