SBI Holdings said on July 17, 2026 that it has acquired a majority stake in Coinhako, a Singapore crypto-asset exchange, making it a consolidated subsidiary after clearing review by the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Key Takeaways
- SBI Holdings acquired a majority stake in Singapore’s Coinhako on July 16, 2026, making the crypto exchange a consolidated subsidiary.
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore approved the capital injection and share purchase before the deal closed through SBI’s subsidiary SBI Ventures Asset.
- Coinhako’s operating unit Hako Technology holds a Major Payment Institution license from MAS, giving SBI a regulated exchange in Singapore.
- SBI Group ties the purchase to its digital-asset economic zone plan and JPYSC, its planned yen-denominated stablecoin.
- SBI plans to link Coinhako with its stablecoin, tokenization, on-chain finance, and cross-border services across Japan and Southeast Asia.
What Happened?
SBI Holdings acquired its majority position through SBI Ventures Asset, a Singapore subsidiary led by Eiichiro So that injected capital and bought shares from Coinhako’s existing owners. The stake made Coinhako, which operates under the legal entity Holdbuild Pte. Ltd., a consolidated subsidiary.
SBI set out the terms in a notice to investors that confirmed MAS had approved both the capital injection and the share purchase. Co-founders Yusho Liu and Gerry Eng, who built the platform over the past decade, are named as its representatives.
The notice does not announce any immediate changes to Coinhako customer accounts or services, and SBI did not disclose the purchase price, the size of its majority stake, or Coinhako’s user numbers.
SBI Holdings has acquired a majority stake in @coinhako , making the Singapore crypto exchange a consolidated subsidiary.
— CoinLaw (@coinlaw_io) July 17, 2026
The deal cleared MAS review and closed July 16. SBI now controls a Major Payment Institution-licensed operator in a market it’s betting big on. pic.twitter.com/vAy5ZLnRau
Why Coinhako’s MAS license matters?
Coinhako runs its Singapore business through Hako Technology, which holds a Major Payment Institution license from MAS, the regulator’s top-tier authorization for payment and digital-token services. A second unit, Alpha Hako, is registered as a crypto-asset service provider with the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission (BVI FSC).
The licenses are the core of what SBI bought. Rather than build a Singapore exchange and seek approvals from scratch, SBI gains an operator already cleared to serve customers under Singapore’s crypto licensing regime, a market it has singled out for regulatory clarity.
Inside SBI’s Japan-Southeast Asia corridor
SBI frames Coinhako as one piece of a wider plan to build what it calls a digital-asset economic zone across the APAC region. The group is also developing on-chain financial infrastructure with its partner Startale, including JPYSC, which SBI describes as Japan’s first trust-type yen-denominated stablecoin.
SBI said it intends to connect Coinhako’s platform with those services and to explore tokenization, yen-denominated stablecoins, on-chain finance, and cross-border transactions across Japan and Southeast Asia. The group plans to hold its first meeting of overseas branch managers in Singapore this summer.
SBI has framed the purchase within a broader goal of connecting crypto exchanges worldwide so that investors can trade across borders and currencies. The group casts Singapore as a frontrunner in digital asset regulation and a base from which to reach the rest of the region.
SBI Chairman and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao said in the notice:
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
The deal reads as a licensing play more than a headcount play. SBI is buying a MAS-regulated operator and a BVI-registered affiliate, which lets it plug an approved Singapore exchange into infrastructure it is already building at home, including JPYSC. For SBI, the value sits in Coinhako’s compliance standing and regional reach.
SBI’s own framing places the purchase inside a plan to link Japanese and Southeast Asian digital-asset services under one operator, with Singapore as the regulatory anchor. The Major Payment Institution license that Coinhako’s unit holds is hard to obtain and slow to replicate, so control of an approved operator gives SBI a position that a greenfield build could not match on the same timeline. This kind of move adds to crypto exchange consolidation in the region, and SBI cited 2026 as the 60th anniversary of Japan-Singapore diplomatic relations, a signal of how central the market is to its strategy.
