SBI moves to acquire Bitbank, aiming for No.1 spot in Japan’s crypto exchange AUM

SBI Holdings has signed agreements to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen ($288.6 million), according to a company statement. The deal will be executed through SBI’s wholly owned subsidiary SBICAH LLC and, upon completion, Bitbank will become an indirectly held, wholly owned subsidiary with 100% voting rights. The transaction is subject to merger clearance from the Japan Fair Trade Commission and other conditions, with closing expected in October.

SBI plans to integrate Bitbank with its existing crypto unit, SBI VC Trade, combining customer bases, product development capabilities, security and compliance systems, and broader management resources. The group said it intends to use the enlarged platform to expand trading services and develop new financial products linked to stablecoins and other digital assets, leveraging Bitbank’s infrastructure and SBI’s wider financial distribution.

SBI said that a simple aggregation of SBI VC Trade and Bitbank figures, based on data as of the end of April 2026, would bring group 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 in its statement.

Bitbank, founded in May 2014, runs one of Japan’s major cryptocurrency exchanges and says it has recorded no hacking incidents since launch, an important point in a market that has seen prior high-profile exchange failures. SBI first disclosed in May that it was in talks to acquire Bitbank. If the deal clears antitrust review, it will further consolidate the Japanese CEX landscape and position SBI as a leading regulated venue for yen on-ramps and digital asset products, with peers and offshore platforms watching how the combined entity competes for domestic volume.