SBI Holdings announced yesterday that it will acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for ¥46.7 billion ($289 million), making it a wholly owned subsidiary via SBI’s vehicle SBICAH. The deal, expected to complete around October, would give SBI’s existing exchange SBI VC Trade and Bitbank a combined ¥1.1 trillion ($6.8 billion) in assets under custody and roughly 2.92 million accounts, putting the group first among domestic exchanges by custody assets.
But the deal is less about crypto trading than what comes next. SBI said itself that it is looking to create new business opportunities in digital assets including stablecoins and on-chain finance. The announcement came just days after the partial launch of JPYSC, the yen stablecoin issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank.
A similar pattern is playing out in Korea, where banks and financial institutions have been racing to acquire stakes in crypto exchanges this year in anticipation of stablecoin legislation.
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