SBI Group Announces Acquisition of Japanese Crypto Exchange Bitbank for Approximately $289 Million

According to a report by Nikkei, SBI Group has announced the acquisition of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen ($289 million). Through this acquisition, SBI's cryptocurrency custody balance is expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (approximately $6.2 billion), making it the largest crypto business in Japan. A subsidiary of SBI Holdings will acquire Bitbank shares from individual shareholders, including the founder, in August, followed by Bitbank's acquisition of shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Combined with account data from SBI VC Trade (as of April), the total number of accounts post-merger will be approximately 2.92 million, with total custodial assets amounting to about 1.1 trillion yen. SBI Holdings had disclosed in May that it was in capital and business cooperation negotiations regarding the subsidiary-ization of Bitbank.