PANews June 25 news, according to Nikkei, SBI Group announced that it will acquire Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen (US$289 million). Through this acquisition, SBI's cryptocurrency custody balance is expected to exceed 1 trillion yen (approx. US$6.2 billion), making it the largest crypto business in Japan's industry.

A subsidiary of SBI Holdings will acquire Bitbank shares from founders and other individual shareholders in August, after which Bitbank will acquire the shares held by existing shareholders Mixi and Ceres by the end of October. Combined with 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 assets under custody of about 1.1 trillion yen. SBI Holdings had disclosed in May that it was in negotiations for a capital and business alliance to make Bitbank a subsidiary.