SBI Ventures Asset Pte. Ltd. has acquired a majority stake in Coinhako, Southeast Asia’s longest-standing licensed crypto exchange, finalizing the deal on July 16. This move integrates Coinhako into SBI’s growing digital asset network, which already serves over 14 million users across finance sectors including brokerage, banking, and insurance.

The acquisition marks the fifth major digital asset move from SBI in just five weeks, following their recent investments in JPYSC, Bitbank, EDX Markets, and SBI Solana Global. Unlike typical Western crypto market expansions led by companies like Circle and Tether, SBI is methodically building a full corridor connecting the Japanese yen with Southeast Asian retail crypto accounts.

Building a Global Digital Asset Corridor

The deal details were shared in a shareholder notice from SBI Holdings, revealing that SBI Ventures Asset secured approval from Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS) for a capital injection and share purchase in Holdbuild Pte. Ltd., Coinhako’s parent company. Coinhako operates through two regulatory entities: Hako Technology Pte. Ltd., holding a Major Payment Institution license from MAS, and Alpha Hako Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Founded around ten years ago by Yusho Liu and Gerry Eng, Coinhako has grown to amass hundreds of thousands of users. SBI’s chairman and CEO, Yoshitaka Kitao, described the acquisition as a strategic step toward establishing a "global corridor for digital assets" by linking exchanges worldwide. This phrasing aligns nearly word-for-word with SBI’s other announcements this July, indicating a clear long-term vision rather than a standalone statement.

On Coinhako’s blog, co-founder Yusho Liu called joining SBI "the natural next chapter," emphasizing the company’s decade-long effort to build a compliant platform in demanding regulatory conditions.

This string of acquisitions goes beyond normal mergers and acquisitions: each piece fits strategically into a timeline that reveals SBI’s ambition to own every layer of the payment chain from Japanese yen to Southeast Asian users. However, the Bitbank acquisition still awaits approval from Japan’s Fair Trade Commission, and JPYSC remains restricted to SBI VC Trade accounts without external wallet access.