After SBI completes its acquisition of Bitbank, what changes will happen to Bitbank?

SBI Holdings completes its acquisition of Bitbank, and Japan Cryptocurrency Exchange officially becomes its wholly-owned subsidiary

On October 1, SBI Holdings completed the final share transaction of Bitbank, making the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange a wholly-owned subsidiary. The acquisition marks the official end of months of negotiations and integration between the two parties.

Transaction details and service continuity

According to an announcement released by Bitbank, the company has completed the final step of buying back shares from MIXI and Ceres, thus meeting all requirements in the acquisition agreement reached with SBI Holdings at the beginning of the year. At this point, SBI Holdings became Bitbank's sole parent company.

Despite the significant changes in its shareholding structure, Bitbank made it clear that existing customer services will not be affected. Users can continue to use the exchange platform in accordance with the original service arrangements, and various business functions will remain in normal operation.

This acquisition adopts a multi-stage transaction structure rather than purchasing all shares in one go. The total transaction value was approximately 46.7 billion yen, including planned share transfers and capital support provided through a third-party rights issue. The specific steps are as follows:

• SBICAH GK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SBI, first acquired 53,704 Bitbank shares from CEO Noriyuki Hirosue and other individual shareholders.
• Subsequently, Bitbank issued 48,952 new shares to SBI units (third-party rights issue).
• Funds from the above transaction were used to support Bitbank's repurchase of shares held by MIXI and Ceres.

With the completion of the repurchase work on October 1, all remaining steps have been implemented and the transaction has been officially closed.

Management adjustments and new governance structure

With the ownership change, Bitbank introduced a new management system that includes senior leadership of SBI's existing cryptocurrency trading platform on its board of directors.

• Tomohiko Kondo : Currently serving as President and Representative Director of SBI VC Trade, he has joined Bitbank as a director. He has led SBI VC Trade since June 2023 and became the representative director and president of SBI Digital Assets Holdings in June 2026.
• Noriyuki Hirosue : Will continue to serve as the representative director, president and CEO of Bitbank, and will also serve as an external director of SBI VC Trade.

In addition, three external directors, Satoshi Takagi, Nobuhiro Kanayama and Masaya Kubota, stepped down due to the new governance structure adjustment. Currently, Bitbank's board of directors consists of Hiroshi, Naomichi Noda, Masaaki Kato, Masahiro Terada, Tomohiko Kondo and three external directors responsible for the audit and oversight committee.

SBI's strategic expansion in digital assets

This acquisition is an important part of SBI's efforts to build its digital asset ecosystem. In addition to exchange business, SBI is also actively deploying in areas such as stablecoins, institutional transactions and tokenized assets:

• stablecoin cooperation : In June this year, SBI VC Trade became the distribution platform of Ripple USD (RLUSD) in Japan. The dollar-linked stablecoin has been opened to retail and institutional customers through the VCTRADE platform.
• Yen stablecoin development : SBI is advancing the Yen-based stablecoin product "JPYSC" project, which will be issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank, and SBI VC Trade will provide distribution and other crypto infrastructure support.
• Cross-border testing : In September, SBI and Kyobo Life Insurance completed a cross-border testing involving representative operations of the Japanese yen and the Won stablecoin. This test uses Canton Network to handle transfers, foreign exchange, settlement and other aspects without having to route through US dollars.
• International Institutional Investment : In July, SBI led a US$76 million Series C financing from EDX Markets to support its expansion in trading, clearing and settlement.

In the domestic market, SBI has previously merged Bitpoint Japan into SBI VC Trade, further consolidating its position as Japan's main cryptocurrency trading, custody and digital asset service platform. The addition of Bitbank enables Bitbank, which has mature businesses such as spot trading and EPOS Crypto Card, to complement SBI VC Trade and jointly serve a wider customer base.

SBI stated that in the future, it will make full use of the group's financial functions, customer networks and management resources to promote the development of Bitbank's digital asset business and continue to improve service quality. Existing users can continue to use Bitbank's various services with confidence.