Why SBI paid $289 million for an unprofitable crypto exchange: Architect Partners

SBI Holdings is a financial services group with businesses spanning securities, banking, insurance, asset management and venture investing with a market capitalization of about $11 billion. The Tokyo-based company is one of Japan’s most active traditional-finance participants in digital assets, with stakes and partnerships across crypto trading, liquidity, tokenization, stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement.

Bitbank is one of the country’s largest licensed cryptocurrency exchanges, offering spot trading, custody and other digital-asset services to retail and institutional clients.

Cheaper, quicker to buy

Crypto mergers and acquisitions have remained brisk in 2026 as banks, payments firms and exchanges race to build regulated digital asset businesses rather than develop them in-house.

The industry has recorded 144 deals worth $11.8 billion so far this year, according to data from Architect Partners, with buyers increasingly targeting exchanges, custody providers, data firms and stablecoin infrastructure as regulatory clarity draws more institutional capital into the sector.

According to Payne, the Bitbank acquisition is about more than customer growth. The deal brings a Financial Services Agency-licensed exchange, one of Japan’s deepest altcoin liquidity pools and an institutional custody business, Japan Digital Asset Trust, giving SBI capabilities that would be far more costly and time-consuming to build internally.

The acquisition comes at a pivotal moment for Japan’s crypto industry. Legislation passed by the country’s lower house on June 11 would shift crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, aligning them with securities regulation. The reforms lower the tax rate on crypto gains to a flat 20% and pave the way for spot bitcoin BTC$59,464.94, ether (ETH) and XRP exchange-traded funds, while simultaneously imposing more stringent capital, custody and disclosure requirements on exchanges.