SBI Holdings has completed its acquisition of Bitbank, making the combined platform Japan's largest crypto exchange operator by custodied assets. The deal closed on October 1 through SBI's wholly owned unit SBICAH, folding Bitbank into the SBI financial group as a wholly owned subsidiary for ¥46.7 billion (about $289 million).
Bitbank said the takeover will not significantly alter services for its roughly 960,000 registered users. The acquisition was executed in multiple stages: SBICAH first purchased 53,704 shares from Bitbank founder and CEO Noriyuki Hirosue and other individual holders. Bitbank then issued 48,952 new shares to SBICAH via a third-party allotment, and the proceeds from that allotment funded Bitbank's repurchase of stakes held by MIXI and Ceres. After those repurchases were completed on October 1, SBI became Bitbank's sole parent.
As part of the ownership change, Tomohiko Kondo, president of SBI VC Trade, took a director seat at Bitbank. Hirosue will become an outside director at SBI VC Trade while remaining representative director, president, and CEO of Bitbank. Satoshi Takagi, Nobuhiro Kanayama, and Masaya Kubota left their roles as outside directors.
The rationale is scale rather than immediate earnings. Architect Partners noted that SBI paid $289 million to buy Bitbank for its regulatory standing and market position. Adding Bitbank's roughly ¥570 billion ($3.5 billion) in custodied assets and nearly one million accounts lifts the combined SBI platform to about ¥1.1 trillion in assets under custody across approximately 2.92 million accounts, ranking first among domestic operators. Bitbank also brings a Financial Services Agency license, deep altcoin liquidity, and an institutional custody business.
Industry observers expect further consolidation, with Architect Partners co-founder Steve Payne naming bitFlyer, the last large independent Japanese exchange, as "an obvious next domino." SBI's acquisition run includes absorbing TaoTao in 2020, taking on DMM Bitcoin's accounts and custody assets after its 2024 hack, and fully absorbing Bitpoint Japan in April 2026. The wave of deals is being driven by regulatory change: Japan is moving crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and preparing to cut crypto gains tax to a flat 20%, raising compliance and capital costs for smaller exchanges.
