SBI Group announced the acquisition of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for approximately $289 million

According to Nikkei News, SBI Group announced the acquisition of the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen (approximately 289 million USD). Through this acquisition, SBI's cryptocurrency custody balance is expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (about 6.2 billion USD), making it the largest cryptocurrency business in Japan. A subsidiary of SBI Holdings will acquire shares of Bitbank from individual shareholders, including the founders, in August, and then Bitbank will acquire shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Combining the account data from SBI VC Trade (as of April), the total number of accounts after the merger is approximately 2.92 million, with total managed assets of about 1.1 trillion yen. SBI Holdings disclosed in May that it is negotiating capital business cooperation for the subsidiary status of Bitbank.