SBI Acquires Singapore's Coinhako, Adding 480,000 Users to Solana-Backed Push

Crypto News

SBI Holdings has taken majority control of Coinhako, one of Singapore's longest-running crypto exchanges, after clearing regulatory approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore on July 16. The Japanese financial group completed the deal through a capital injection and the purchase of shares from existing investors via its SBI Ventures Asset unit, making Coinhako a consolidated subsidiary. SBI first signaled its intent to acquire the platform in February. Financial terms — the stake size, valuation and investment amount — were not disclosed. The move hands SBI a regulated foothold in Southeast Asia and slots directly into its wider ambition to link exchanges across borders into a single digital-asset corridor.

Coinhako, launched in 2014 and operated through Hako Technology Pte. Ltd., holds a Major Payment Institution licence under Singapore's payments framework — the same tier of authorization required of regulated altcoin and stablecoin service providers in the city-state. Company figures put its user base above 480,000 accounts with more than 200 tradable crypto assets. Its affiliate, Alpha Hako Ltd., is registered as a virtual asset service provider in the British Virgin Islands. For SBI, that licensed base is the prize: it gives the group an immediately compliant platform to layer stablecoins, tokenized securities and cross-border trading onto an established regional customer network.

The Coinhako deal is the third exchange-related transaction SBI has struck in roughly a month. In late June, the group agreed to acquire bitbank, one of Japan's largest domestic venues, for about 46.7 billion yen — roughly 289 million dollars — a purchase that would give SBI the top position by custodied assets at home. Bringing Coinhako under the same umbrella extends that consolidation strategy beyond Japan. SBI's chairman and president, Yoshitaka Kitao, has framed the buying spree as building toward a network where investors can trade across countries without being constrained by national borders or currency barriers.

Weeks earlier, SBI moved on the institutional side of the market, leading a 76 million dollar Series C funding round for EDX Markets, a United States digital-asset exchange built for institutional traders. Taken together with the bitbank and Coinhako transactions, the investment gives SBI regulated trading infrastructure across three regions — Japan, the United States and Southeast Asia. The group has described this triangulation as the backbone of a global digital-asset corridor, positioning itself to route institutional and retail order flow between markets that have historically operated in isolation from one another.

Underneath the exchange network, SBI is assembling the settlement layer. In June it issued JPYSC, a trust-backed yen token billed as Japan's first trust-type yen stablecoin — distinct from algorithmic-stablecoins that hold their peg through code rather than cash reserves — and formally launched Ripple's dollar-pegged RLUSD in the country. This week the group partnered with Ondo Finance to tokenize Japanese equities and wire JPYSC in as a settlement and collateral asset. The push spans every layer of onchain finance, echoing the collateral mechanics that underpin aave and other lending markets where stablecoins anchor liquidity.

The infrastructure ambitions run deeper still. In mid-July SBI struck a strategic partnership with the Solana Foundation, positioning the Solana (SOL) network as a core rail for its Asian onchain-finance buildout, and it has floated a Solana-based token representing Japanese equity exposure. Separately, SBI and Startale Group unveiled Strium, a layer-1 blockchain purpose-built for tokenized securities and real-world assets, similar in aim to networks like algorand, with support for around-the-clock trading and institutional settlement. The combination signals that SBI is not merely buying exchanges but constructing the chains, tokens and stablecoins that will move value across them — a vertically integrated bet on tokenized finance.

Our reading of the sequence is that SBI is executing one of the most aggressive institutional consolidation plays in Asian crypto, stitching licensed exchanges, stablecoins and tokenization rails into a single cross-border stack while broader sentiment stays cautious. COINOTAG's aggregate market data shows the Fear and Greed Index at 27 out of 100, firmly in Fear, with Bitcoin dominance at 69.7 percent and total crypto market capitalization near 1.81 trillion dollars — conditions in which capital rotates toward regulated infrastructure over speculative tokens. SBI's own corporate disclosures confirm the Coinhako, bitbank and EDX transactions; against a fearful tape, the group is buying build-out while others wait, a counter-cyclical wager on tokenized finance maturing regardless of near-term price.