News linked to both this project and an event.
According to The Block, Japanese financial group SBI Holdings has recently made a series of aggressive moves, completing multiple major crypto investments in succession: exclusively investing $125 million in Gauntlet's Series C, $76 million in EDX Markets' Series C, spending approximately $289 million to acquire Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank, and taking a stake in Singaporean exchange Coinhako. In addition, SBI also participated in Digital Asset's $355 million financing, Morpho's $175 million token round, and Circle's $222 million token presale, and launched Japan's first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin, JPYSC. SBI stated that the company is driving the group's overall on-chain transformation, aiming to provide end-to-end services across exchanges, asset tokenization, market platforms, and other segments, to position itself ahead of the upcoming "token economy" era. Analysts point out that SBI is building Asia's first scaled on-chain asset management business; its strategic core is not purchasing crypto exposure, but controlling the infrastructure of the next-generation financial system. On the regulatory front, the Japanese parliament is advancing legislation to include cryptocurrencies as regulated financial instruments, and plans to significantly reduce the capital gains tax on crypto assets from 55% to 20% by 2028, aligning it with stocks and bonds, providing policy support for institutional entry.
According to Cointelegraph, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank announced that it may restrict or suspend accounts found to have deposits or withdrawals linked to prediction market platforms such as Polymarket. Bitbank stated that affected accounts may be unable to log in and will be restricted from depositing, withdrawing, and trading.
According to The Block, Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitbank has launched a cryptocurrency-linked credit card that allows users to directly pay bills using assets held in their exchange accounts—including settling payments in bitcoin. The credit card also offers 0.5% cryptocurrency cashback on monthly spending. Per the report, Bitbank introduced this product to enable everyday payment use cases for crypto assets held on its exchange.