SBI Group announces acquisition of Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for approximately $289 million

CoinFeed June 25 news, according to Nikkei News, SBI Group 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 shares of Bitbank from founders and other individual shareholders in August, and then Bitbank will acquire shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Combining the account data of SBI VC Trade (as of April), the total number of accounts after the merger will be approximately 2.92 million, with total custodial assets of approximately 1.1 trillion yen. SBI Holdings disclosed in May that it was in negotiations for a capital and business alliance to make Bitbank a subsidiary.