SBI Holdings has accelerated its digital-asset expansion with a burst of transactions across exchanges, institutional trading infrastructure, DeFi risk management and public-blockchain settlement. Over roughly three weeks, the Japanese financial group agreed to buy licensed exchange Bitbank for 46.7 billion yen, led institutional crypto venue EDX Markets’ $76 million Series C, made a sole $125 million investment in Gauntlet, and on July 13 announced a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation aimed at building a domestic on-chain financial market in Japan.
The pace stands out. So does the form. SBI has long been active in crypto through joint ventures, strategic holdings and acquisitions, but it has far less often appeared as the lead investor in venture financings. That shift has become a focal point in how the market is reading the group’s latest moves.
Three major moves in less than a month
On June 24, SBI said it would acquire 100% of Bitbank through its wholly owned subsidiary SBICAH for 46.7 billion yen. The deal will be completed in two stages and is expected to close around October, subject to review by the Japan Fair Trade Commission.
SBI said that, based on combined figures as of the end of April, SBI VC Trade and Bitbank together would hold about 1.1 trillion yen in customer crypto assets and about 2.92 million crypto accounts. The group said assets under custody would surpass bitFlyer and Coincheck, putting it in the top spot in Japan.
On July 7, EDX Markets said it had raised $76 million in a Series C led by SBI. EDX launched in 2023. Its shareholders include Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Charles Schwab, Virtu, Sequoia and Paradigm. The company said the new capital would be used to expand trading, clearing and settlement capacity and to support expansion in Asia-Pacific.
On July 9, Fortune reported that DeFi asset-management and risk-analysis firm Gauntlet had closed a $125 million financing round in June. SBI made the investment through its U.S. subsidiary and was the only participant in the round.
According to the report, the financing was the largest since Gauntlet was founded in 2018. It was more than five times the size of the company’s roughly $24 million Series B in 2022, a round led by Ribbit Capital at a $1 billion valuation.
The three transactions do not look the same on paper. One is a full acquisition, one is a venture round for an institutional market platform, and one is a sole investment into an on-chain risk and treasury business. What ties them together is SBI’s role as either the only backer or the central one in each case.
SBI’s crypto footprint did not start this year
SBI Group was founded in 1999 as an investment arm under SoftBank and became fully independent in 2006. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and has a market capitalization above $10 billion. The article describes SBI as one of the earliest and most aggressive traditional financial groups globally to enter the crypto sector.
Its crypto activity stretches back years. SBI took a stake in Ripple in 2016 and set up the joint venture SBI Ripple Asia. It has since built positions in companies including Morpho and Circle.
Still, in many earlier cases, SBI’s role was that of a strategic partner, joint-venture partner or acquirer rather than a lead investor in a venture round. Market maker B2C2 is one example: SBI first bought a $30 million stake in July 2020, then acquired a 90% stake in December that year and turned the firm into a subsidiary.
This year has brought a change in approach. In March, Startale Group raised $63 million in Series A funding, with SBI leading $50 million of the round. Three months later, Startale became the technical partner for SBI’s yen stablecoin JPYSC. The article frames the EDX and Gauntlet investments as an extension of that same playbook, where leading a round also creates a deeper operating link.
Retail, institutions and on-chain finance
Bitbank: retail market scale in Japan
Bitbank was founded in 2014 and says it has not suffered a hacking incident since inception. SBI VC Trade only absorbed Japanese exchange Bitpoint in April. With Bitbank now being added, SBI has integrated two licensed domestic peers within a year.
The timing matters in Japan. The article says the Financial Services Agency is pushing to move crypto assets from the current legal regime into the framework of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, while compliance requirements continue to rise. In that setting, licenses and existing customer assets have become scarce resources.
SBI said the Bitbank transaction would strengthen the group’s presence, competitiveness and earnings capacity in crypto and digital assets. It also said it plans to develop new financial products tied to digital assets such as stablecoins.
EDX Markets: institutional rails in the U.S.
EDX Markets does not serve retail traders. It operates an institution-only venue covering centralized clearing and settlement and also offers FlowConnect, a service launched this year that lets financial institutions embed crypto trading capabilities.
EDX has also applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter under the name EDX Trust. If approved, the company would be able to provide regulated custody, clearing and settlement directly to institutional clients.
Its current business includes a U.S. spot exchange and a Singapore-based perpetual futures platform for non-U.S. institutions. The next geographic focus, according to the article, is Asia-Pacific.
Gauntlet: on-chain treasury management and risk control
Gauntlet was founded in 2018 by former Wall Street quantitative researcher Tarun Chitra. The company first became known for stress testing for protocols such as Aave and Compound, then shifted toward on-chain vault curation.
The article compares that business to a mutual-fund-like structure. Investors deposit assets into vaults to earn yield, while Gauntlet uses quantitative models to evaluate the risk of the yield strategies behind them.
According to Fortune, Gauntlet currently manages about $1.5 billion in vault assets. Its clients include Apollo, Coinbase and Circle, and its automated platform monitors more than $42 billion in user assets. After the financing, the firm plans to expand stablecoin coverage from U.S. dollar and euro products to yen and Mexican peso products.
Stablecoins and settlement rails: from JPYSC to Solana
Beyond the three headline transactions, SBI has been active in stablecoins and on-chain settlement infrastructure.
On June 24, the same day it announced the Bitbank acquisition, SBI and Startale Group introduced JPYSC, described in the article as Japan’s first yen stablecoin using a trust structure. It is issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank and distributed exclusively through SBI VC Trade.
Also that day, Ripple’s dollar stablecoin RLUSD debuted on SBI VC Trade after clearing review by Japan’s Financial Services Agency. The article says that gives SBI VC Trade control of the key fiat-to-crypto gateway for the three main regulated stablecoins now circulating in Japan: JPYSC, USDC and RLUSD.
SBI then said it would launch a JPYSC lending service on July 16 with a 3% annualized yield.
On July 13, SBI announced a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation. The company said the Switzerland-based foundation would take a stake in SBI R3 Japan, an SBI affiliate that will be renamed SBI Solana Global.
The article says that would place Solana alongside SBI and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group in efforts to open up a domestic on-chain financial market in Japan.
The new SBI Solana Global will be built around the Solana public blockchain ecosystem. Its priority areas include speeding up issuance of stablecoins such as JPYSC and focusing on the tokenization, structuring and circulation of real-world assets including corporate bonds, commercial paper, funds and real estate. The team also plans to build a cross-border payments network, institutional on-chain financial services and payment infrastructure for what the article describes as the future AI Agent era.
The partnership did not emerge in isolation. The article notes that SBI’s R3 blockchain alliance had already aligned with the Solana Foundation in May 2025, with Solana serving as the security validation layer for permissioned institutional chains. R3’s Corda platform now manages more than $10 billion in compliant RWA, according to the report.
SBI said Solana’s scalability, low cost and global ecosystem make it a core part of on-chain finance infrastructure. Its role, as described in the article, is to bridge regulated Japanese assets and traditional institutional depth into Solana’s global liquidity network.
How analysts and investors are reading the strategy
The string of transactions has triggered broad discussion in the industry. Several institutional analysts and venture investors spoke to The Block and offered different ways to frame SBI’s push.
Buying “pipes” rather than crypto exposure
Joseph Goh, Asia-Pacific head at investment banking advisory firm Areta, said SBI is attempting something other traditional financial groups in Asia have not yet done: building an end-to-end, cross-border digital-asset chain that spans issuance, settlement, market infrastructure, asset management and retail distribution.
He characterized the strategy this way: SBI is not buying crypto exposure, it is buying the “pipes” of the next-generation financial system.
Goh highlighted two lines of development. In asset management, he said Gauntlet’s institutional on-chain capabilities could be paired with the distribution SBI controls through Bitbank and Singapore-based Coinhako, creating what could become Asia’s first scaled on-chain asset-management business. In settlement, he said whoever controls the yen leg of on-chain settlement could hold an important strategic position in the future of Asian finance, and SBI’s work around JPYSC, USDC distribution in Japan and Solana points in that direction.
Market timing and the logic of a downturn
Others looked at timing through the lens of the market cycle. Quynh Ho, head of venture investing at GSR, and Neoclassic Capital co-founder Mike Bucella both said bear markets can be the best periods for long-term positioning because valuations are lower and competition for deals is less intense. Bucella said investors with a long time horizon should enter at cyclical lows and wait for the eventual turn in the market.
The article says SBI’s latest push is taking place while digital assets are in a third straight quarter of declines.
Animoca Brands co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu added a regulatory angle, saying SBI is positioning early for coming regulatory changes in Japan rather than waiting for complete clarity. He also said some large crypto transactions are being evaluated by traditional financial institutions.
Portfolio companies focused on access and distribution
The two companies that received capital from SBI focused less on the money itself and more on what comes with it.
When asked what SBI brings beyond capital, Gauntlet CEO Tarun Chitra said the main value lies in distribution and market access. SBI’s network in Japan and across Asia, he said, can help Gauntlet reach financial institutions and tokenization projects that were previously out of reach.
EDX CEO Tony Acuña-Rohter said the company can tap into SBI’s broader digital-asset ecosystem, including market makers, stablecoin initiatives, tokenization efforts and brokerage businesses, and explore ways to jointly advance institutional market infrastructure.
Not every assessment was fully positive. Goh said execution and regulatory timing will be decisive. He added, however, that Bitbank and Coinhako are both regulated licensed exchanges, and that SBI’s use of minority investments in some cases has already reduced part of the potential integration and operating risk.
SBI’s own explanation
Asked why it moved so aggressively in a concentrated period, SBI told The Block that the group is pushing a broader on-chain transition and aims to provide a full suite of capabilities spanning exchanges, asset tokenization and market platforms. The recent acquisitions, investments and partnerships, it said, are all part of that group strategy.
Kefei Lin, a group executive, also told Fortune that SBI plans to increase investment and operations in the United States this year as U.S. regulation becomes clearer.
The article links part of SBI’s confidence to expected regulatory tailwinds at home. Japan’s House of Representatives passed a key bill last month that would bring crypto assets under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act and regulate them on the same footing as stocks, opening a path for crypto ETFs. Japan also plans to cut the top capital gains tax rate in 2028 from 55% to 20%, in line with stocks and bonds.
SBI chairman Yoshitaka Kitao has repeatedly said that the shift of traditional finance onto blockchains is irreversible and that building reliable infrastructure investors can trust is the group’s top priority.
Why lead rounds instead of buying everything outright
The article closes by arguing that SBI’s unusual choice in this wave is not the fact that it invested, but how it invested. Rather than defaulting to full acquisition or classic joint ventures, SBI has in several cases chosen to lead rounds.
From that perspective, the structure matters. EDX and Gauntlet both count major Wall Street institutions among their shareholders, including Citadel, Fidelity and Apollo. The article argues that preserving a neutral third-party identity is what allows such companies to keep attracting heavyweight partners.
By leading rounds instead of fully taking over these businesses, SBI can secure a stronger strategic position without stripping away that neutrality. That, in the article’s framing, has become one of the defining features of its latest push into on-chain finance.