SBI Buys Bitbank for $289M to Form Japan's Largest Bitcoin Exchange

Crypto News

SBI Holdings has agreed to acquire crypto exchange Bitbank in a ¥46.7 billion ($289 million) all-share deal that creates Japan's largest Bitcoin and altcoin trading venue by custody assets. The company's investor-relations disclosure confirms the purchase runs through wholly owned subsidiary SBICAH, buying out founder Noriyuki Hirose alongside institutional holders MIXI and Ceres. Once complete, SBI VC Trade and Bitbank will hold roughly ¥1.1 trillion ($6.8 billion) in customer crypto and about 2.92 million accounts. Bitcoin (BTC), XRP and Ether together account for more than 79% of Bitbank's spot volume. The transaction still requires Japan Fair Trade Commission antitrust clearance and is expected to close around October 2026.

South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission fined Bithumb $136,000 after finding the exchange transferred user data overseas without separate consent. The regulator's official notice states Bithumb shared Tether (USDT) order books with BingX between September and November 2025 — despite holding consent only for Stellar — and exposed user information to 13 foreign exchanges. The penalty extends a punishing run of scrutiny for one of the country's largest platforms: a six-month suspension imposed in March was reversed by a court in April, and police reportedly raided its offices this month. Compliance pressure on centralized exchanges in Korea keeps building ahead of a planned 22% crypto tax in 2027.

Seychelles-registered exchange CoinEx is at the center of fresh sanctions-exposure allegations tied to Iran. Blockchain-analytics findings circulating in the market allege CoinEx was the single largest counterparty to Nobitex, Iran's biggest digital-asset exchange, with roughly $2.7 billion in traced flows and more than $3.84 billion across over 60 Iranian platforms over seven years. The same on-chain analysis flagged about $6 million linked to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps wallets and $374,000 tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. CoinEx denies any commercial relationship with sanctioned entities, arguing that funds merely passing through a platform do not prove knowledge or support. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Nobitex and peer exchanges earlier this month.

Outside crypto, BlackBerry shares surged nearly 23% on Thursday after an earnings beat and raised guidance recast the former phone maker as an artificial-intelligence infrastructure play. Its QNX operating system — a deterministic, safety-certified software layer that guarantees real-time, lag-free control — now sits inside smart cars and warehouse robots built on Nvidia and AMD chips. Management positioned QNX as the difficult-to-replicate nervous system for the emerging physical-AI stack, citing safety and reliability as the moat. The rally underscores how cryptography-based, mission-critical software is being repriced as a core component of the broader automation and robotics build-out drawing heavy investor capital.

Apple stock dropped roughly 6% on Thursday after the company raised starting prices across its Mac and iPad lines, passing higher memory costs to consumers. Apple blamed a worsening shortage of memory chips driven by AI data-center demand: the MacBook Neo now starts at $699, up from $599, the 13-inch MacBook Air climbed to $1,299, and the entry 14-inch MacBook Pro reached $1,999. Contract prices for the DRAM used in PCs and phones roughly doubled in the first quarter — the steepest jump on record — as Samsung and SK Hynix redirected supply toward AI memory demand. iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods pricing held steady.

Macro tailwinds also shifted. International oil prices plunged about 4% as fears over Hormuz Strait shipping disruptions eased, dragging Brent crude to $73.74 and WTI to $70.34 — both the lowest since February 27. The move pushed sovereign bond yields lower worldwide: the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield fell 10.40 basis points to 4.3940%, while South Korean government bond yields declined across every maturity, the 10-year off 2.7 basis points to 4.144%. Cheaper energy eases inflation pressure, typically supporting risk assets, though a firmer dollar capped the rally. Lower yields tend to improve the liquidity conditions that crypto markets track closely.

The thread tying Thursday together is consolidation and compliance reshaping how digital-asset markets mature. SBI's buyout, Bithumb's penalty and CoinEx's sanctions scrutiny all point to regulators and incumbents tightening control, just as the AI capital cycle — visible in BlackBerry and Apple — competes for the same investor attention. COINOTAG's aggregate data frames the caution: our Fear & Greed Index reads 12/100 (Extreme Fear), Bitcoin dominance sits at 70.3%, and total crypto market capitalization stands near $1.70 trillion, far below recent all-time highs. With stablecoin initiatives central to SBI's roadmap and AI-driven trading tools proliferating, capital is rotating toward regulated, infrastructure-heavy plays.