SBI Holdings agrees to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank in $288.6 million deal

SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen ($288.6 million).

The transaction will be carried out through SBI's wholly owned subsidiary, SBICAH LLC, and would leave Bitbank as an indirectly held, wholly owned subsidiary with a 100% voting rights ownership ratio upon completion, the company said in a statement on Thursday. 

The deal remains subject to merger clearance from the Japan Fair Trade Commission and other closing conditions, and is expected to close in October, the financial conglomerate added.

According to the statement, SBI plans to combine the customer base, service development capabilities, security and compliance systems, and management resources of Bitbank and its existing crypto operations to expand trading services and develop new financial products tied to stablecoins and other digital assets.

SBI said a simple aggregation of SBI VC Trade and Bitbank figures as of the end of April 2026 would bring the group's crypto customer assets to about 1.1 trillion yen ($6.8 billion) and increase the number of cryptocurrency accounts to roughly 2.92 million.

"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," the company said.

Bitbank, founded in May 2014, operates one of Japan's major cryptocurrency exchanges and says it has recorded no hacking incidents since its establishment. SBI first announced it was in talks to acquire Bitbank in May.