SBI Group Acquires Bitbank for $289 Million

Odaily Odaily reports that SBI Group has announced the acquisition of Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen, approximately $289 million. Through this acquisition, SBI's combined cryptocurrency custody balance is expected to exceed 1 trillion yen, roughly $6.2 billion, making it the largest crypto business in Japan by scale.

A subsidiary of SBI Holdings will acquire Bitbank shares from individual shareholders, including the founder, starting in August. Subsequently, Bitbank will buy back shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Based on SBI VC Trade's account data as of April, the merged entity will have a total of approximately 2.92 million accounts and combined custody assets of around 1.1 trillion yen.