SBI Holdings: The Crypto Ambitions and Digital Infrastructure Blueprint of Japan's Financial Giant

Author: BlockBeats

Last week, Japanese financial giant SBI Group released a series of major announcements: first, it announced partnerships with Circle, Ripple, and Startale, and then quickly joined forces with Chainlink to jointly promote stablecoins, RWA tokenization, and cross-border payment solutions. In just a few days, SBI transformed from a "traditional financial institution" into one of the most active Web3 players in Japan.

This is not just an ordinary business cooperation, but more like a signal that SBI is sending to the market: it wants to seize the opportunity of the next round of financial infrastructure transformation, upgrading from a "financial service provider" to a "digital asset infrastructure provider." Against the backdrop of the imminent launch of the yen stablecoin and the gradual formation of the Asian crypto corridor, this move by SBI has undoubtedly pushed itself to the forefront of Japan's financial digital transformation.

Traditional Financial Giants Are Building Japan's Digital Financial Landscape

The story of SBI can be traced back to 1999, when it was still SoftBank Investment under SoftBank, with its name derived from the initials of SoftBank Investment. After becoming independent in 2006, the company was officially renamed SBI Holdings, Inc., headquartered in Tokyo. Initially, its three core businesses were securities, banking, and insurance, and it gradually expanded into asset management and biotechnology, forming a comprehensive group spanning finance and healthcare.

More than twenty years later, SBI is no longer the small player it once was, but has grown into a heavyweight in the Japanese financial market. It is even regarded by outsiders as the strongest challenger to the three megabanks (Mitsubishi UFJ, Sumitomo Mitsui, and Mizuho)—a candidate for the "fourth largest bank." Today, SBI's business framework revolves around five major sectors: financial services, private equity investment, asset management, crypto assets, and next-generation businesses. This diversified strategy has not only helped it gain a firm foothold in the Japanese market but also laid a natural foundation for its later entry into the digital asset field.

More importantly, SBI's involvement in crypto is not a recent trend-chasing move. Behind its recent frequent partnership announcements, it has actually been deeply cultivating the crypto ecosystem for years. Leveraging its traditional financial roots in securities and asset management, SBI has gradually expanded its territory through its subsidiaries into trading, payments, custody, lending, liquidity services, and more, essentially building out the full infrastructure of digital finance. At the same time, it has not missed the new Web3 wave, experimenting with everything from NFTs and decentralized finance to the tokenization of real-world assets. More crucially, it dares to ally with international giants: whether it's Ripple, Circle, or R3, SBI is collaborating with them to explore new possibilities in stablecoins, cross-border payments, and tokenization.

In other words, today's SBI is no longer just a traditional Japanese financial group, but more like one of the rare "dual engines" in East Asia—rooted in traditional finance while accelerating forward in the wave of crypto finance.

From Zero to One: SBI Secures Japan's Only Stablecoin License

In the stablecoin sector, SBI has taken full advantage of its early compliance lead. As early as 2023, when Japan's Financial Services Agency relaxed the ban on the issuance of foreign stablecoins domestically, SBI quickly sensed the opportunity and signed a strategic partnership with Circle. Just a year later, its subsidiary SBI VC Trade completed the registration for USDC trading, becoming the first and only company in Japan to hold a stablecoin license, and took the lead in bringing USDC to market.

Subsequently, SBI and Circle established a joint venture, Circle SBI Japan, dedicated to promoting the adoption of USDC in Japan. When Circle went public in June 2025, SBI decisively invested $50 million, further binding the two parties together. Last week, the two companies expanded their cooperation again, planning to embed USDC more deeply into cross-border payments and digital financial services. Through this series of moves, SBI not only leads its peers in compliance and infrastructure but also becomes a key bridgehead for Circle to enter the Asian market. The digital asset business performance is equally impressive: in 2024, related revenue reached 80 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of over 40%, and the number of users doubled from 800,000 to 1.65 million in just one year.

If USDC is SBI's entry point into the world of stablecoins, then Ripple's RLUSD is its bridge for cross-border payments. Just last week, SBI announced it would introduce RLUSD to the Japanese market, with plans to officially launch in the first quarter of 2026. The design concept of this stablecoin is simple: combine the stability of the US dollar with the speed of blockchain, ensuring compliance and transparency while enabling second-level settlements. For example, if a US user wants to remit dollars to Japan, the funds are first converted to XRP, transmitted cross-border via blockchain in seconds, and then exchanged for yen in Japan, with RLUSD serving as the anchor asset to ensure the stability and credibility of cross-border funds.

Through its "dual-track" approach with Circle and Ripple, SBI has essentially built a complete stablecoin ecosystem: USDC handles payments and trading, while RLUSD focuses on cross-border settlement and enterprise services. With both tracks running in parallel, SBI firmly stands at the center stage of the Asian stablecoin landscape.

The Rise of RWA: SBI Builds Japan's Version of Robinhood

Beyond stablecoins, SBI is also focusing on RWA (real-world asset tokenization). This has been one of the fastest-growing sectors in the past two years—rising from $5 billion at the beginning of 2023 to nearly $30 billion today, a more than fivefold increase. Bonds, funds, and government bonds are currently the mainstream applications, but equity assets still account for less than 1%, indicating huge potential.

Imagine buying a bond and having to wait several days for settlement, but once on-chain, it can be completed instantly like a transfer. Or take a fund, which traditionally has high investment thresholds and slow redemptions, but once tokenized, it becomes like a digital ticket that can be bought and sold 24/7. For investors, this is unprecedented convenience; for institutions, it means a huge boost in capital efficiency. No wonder overseas giants like Gemini, Kraken, and Robinhood have all launched similar round-the-clock tokenized trading platforms.

SBI clearly does not want to lag behind. In 2025, the group will partner with Web3 infrastructure company Startale to set up an on-chain tokenization platform in Japan, securing milestone-based committed funding, with the goal of building a complete system covering issuance, clearing, custody, and cross-chain interoperability.

More importantly, SBI is not going it alone—it has also brought in the global "plumber" of the blockchain world—Chainlink. This company specializes in "interoperability" between blockchains. Simply put, it enables tokens to flow smoothly across different chains, just like interbank transfers between different banks. This time, Chainlink will help SBI ensure the security and compliance of cross-chain transactions when tokenizing assets such as bonds and real estate. In addition, Chainlink will bring fund net asset value (NAV) data on-chain for transparency, allowing investors to track asset values at any time; its Proof of Reserve technology will also provide on-chain verification for stablecoins and funds, preventing the risk of a disconnect between paper assets and actual reserves.

If Robinhood's significance in the US is to bring stocks and crypto derivatives to retail investors with zero barriers, then SBI is trying to chart a similar path in Japan. With its deep roots in securities and banking, combined with its early moves in stablecoins and RWA, SBI is striving to bring tokenized assets into mainstream investment channels. For Japanese investors, this not only means being able to trade stocks and bonds 24/7 like transferring money, but also being able to participate directly in the global crypto financial market within a compliant and secure framework. In other words, the RWA platform built by SBI is not just a technical upgrade, but a Robinhood-style experiment in financial inclusion, which could mark the watershed moment when Japan's capital market officially enters the Web3 era.

From the Fourth Largest Bank to a Digital Asset Infrastructure Giant

For SBI, entering the crypto world is not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but a natural continuation of its strategy. Japan has long been in an ultra-low interest rate environment, and traditional financial businesses such as banking and securities have become highly homogenized, with shrinking profit margins. Meanwhile, globally, stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization (RWA) are entering a compliance fast track. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) of Japan relaxed stablecoin regulations in 2023, effectively giving the green light to this new sector. SBI did not choose to wait and see, but acted decisively, partnering with international players like Circle and Ripple, leaping from industry observer to rule-maker, and securing a leading position in the two most promising battlegrounds: stablecoins and RWA.

On a deeper level, this is not just a business expansion, but an upgrade in identity. In the past, people saw SBI as Japan's fourth largest bank; now, it is trying to upgrade to become the first infrastructure giant of the digital asset era. Currently, SBI is preparing to launch the country's first bitcoin futures on the Osaka Dojima Exchange, and has set a target to increase digital asset business profits to 50 billion yen by fiscal year 2028, representing a further 150% growth. This means that SBI's ambitions have long since transcended the framework of traditional finance; what it is truly betting on is the deep integration of Japan's financial system with blockchain. In other words, SBI is not just betting on the price fluctuations of crypto assets, but aims to become a key player in the reconstruction of the new global financial order.