SBI Holdings to Buy Bitbank for $288.6M

Japan's SBI Holdings has agreed to acquire crypto exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen (about $288.6 million), a deal that will make Bitbank a wholly owned subsidiary and create the country's largest crypto exchange by assets under management, according to The Block.

The transaction runs through SBI's subsidiary SBICAH LLC. SBI will buy out founder and individual shareholder stakes in August, with corporate shareholders MIXI and Ceres cashing out by the end of October — full closing is expected around October 2026, pending clearance from Japan's Fair Trade Commission, FinTech Futures reports.

Combine the two businesses and the math is straightforward: SBI VC Trade and Bitbank held roughly ¥1.1 trillion (~$6.8 billion) in client crypto assets between them as of end-April 2026, across about 2.92 million accounts.

“This would place us in first place among domestic cryptocurrency exchange operators in terms of assets under management and among the top in terms of the number of accounts,” SBI Holdings said in its statement.

Bitbank, founded in 2014, has reported zero hacking incidents in its history — a clean record that stands out in an industry where exchange breaches remain a recurring headline, per Yahoo Finance.

The deal fits a broader pattern: as regulation tightens, established financial players increasingly buy licensed exchanges outright instead of building market share from scratch — a faster route to scale in Asia's crypto market.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.