BITPoint Japan becomes wholly owned subsidiary of SBI Holdings

SBI Holdings announced that it will make BITPoint Japan a wholly owned subsidiary by acquiring the 49% shares of BITPoint it does not already own through a transaction in May 2022. The deal is expected to close by the end of the first quarter.

BITPoint had been part of the “Japan Crypto Eleven”, the initial batch of cryptocurrency exchanges licensed by the Financial Services Agency (FSA) in September 2017. This marks SBI Holdings second acquisition of a competitor, after swooping in for Tao Tao in October 2020. The web address of the latter has been redirected to SBI VC Trade, i.e. the exchange has been integrated with and the customers migrated to SBI’s own platform.

By taking full control of BITPoint, SBI wants to accelerate the transformation of the exchange “through more flexible management”. SBI expects to increase the number of accounts through cross-marketing within SBI Holdings’ large customer base, and to pursue a variety of synergies, such as improved trading spreads by providing liquidity from B2C2, a global market maker and another consolidated subsidiary of SBI, as well as to list carefully selected tokens, including in-game tokens developed by gumi Group, a capital and business alliance partner.

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