During its first-quarter earnings presentation, Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings stated its stake in Ripple remains worth approximately 6.6 trillion yen ($45 billion), despite a recent slowdown in XRP's price.
Director Yasuo Nishikawa, standing in for CEO Yoshitaka Kitao, attributed the token's weakness to uncertainty surrounding the U.S. CLARITY Act, which has yet to pass. “As if waiting to see the outcome of the CLARITY Act, XRP’s price has been sluggish,” he noted. The remarks come as SBI reported record quarterly earnings, with profit attributable to shareholders surging to 148.1 billion yen, nearly 2.5 times higher than a year earlier. Its private equity segment, which includes the Ripple investment, saw profit jump 328% year‑over‑year to 119.9 billion yen, driven by exposure to crypto, AI, semiconductors and quantum computing.
While the broader crypto business posted a pretax loss of 1.4 billion yen due to subdued markets, SBI’s global market‑making subsidiary B2C2 remained profitable. The firm is preparing for a market rebound, launching support for the JPYS stablecoin, pursuing on‑chain finance partnerships, and finalizing the acquisition of Japanese exchange Bitbank in August. Once completed, SBI expects to serve about 3 million customer accounts with roughly 870 billion yen ($5.9 billion) in assets under custody.
