SBI Holdings to Develop Onchain Trading Platform

SBI Holdings breaks new ground with blockchain trading infrastructure—traditional finance finally catches up to crypto's potential.

The Vision: Seamless Digital Asset Trading

SBI's platform aims to bridge traditional markets with blockchain efficiency—executing trades directly on-chain while maintaining regulatory compliance. No more intermediary delays or legacy settlement systems dragging down performance.

Why It Matters Now

Traditional institutions face growing pressure to adopt blockchain technology or risk becoming obsolete. SBI's move signals that even conservative financial giants recognize the inevitable shift toward decentralized infrastructure.

Market Impact

Expect increased institutional adoption as SBI's platform demonstrates real-world scalability. Other major players will likely follow suit—though they'll probably claim they 'innovated' the concept years later.

Because nothing says financial revolution like a conglomerate finally realizing blockchain isn't just for drug dealers and meme coins—sometimes it takes traditional finance a decade to acknowledge what crypto natives built in their garages.

Startale Group Pte Ltd, a global crypto infrastructure leader, and SBI Holdings, Inc, a comprehensive global financial group with over 11 trillion JPY in assets under management and a customer base of over 65 million worldwide, including 14 million securities accounts, have announced a groundbreaking strategic joint venture to partner up and launch an onchain trading platform focused on tokenized stocks and real-world assets (RWAs).

This partnership positions the alliance at the forefront of the global tokenized stock revolution, capitalizing on the explosive momentum created by Robinhood’s recent launch of tokenized stocks and major crypto exchanges like Kraken, Bybit, and Gemini expanding their tokenized stock offerings. The joint venture directly addresses the massive $18.9 trillion tokenized asset market opportunity projected by 2033, with the aim to bring about institutional-grade onchain trading infrastructure globally.

The partnership comes as 2025 is being recognized as “the year of institutional adoption in crypto, with DeFi playing a pivotal role in reshaping traditional finance”. SBI Holding and Startale aim to take this concept further with true 24/7 onchain trading capabilities and cross-border settlement infrastructure with lower fees.

The joint venture has secured milestone-based committed funding to fuel development and market expansion, with capital deployment structured across strategic milestones to ensure disciplined execution and sustainable growth towards commercial launch.

“The whole financial market is moving from an offchain environment to onchain. We believe that the tokenized stock revolution is the largest opportunity and onchain trading is the next frontier,” said Sota Watanabe, Founder of Startale Group. “While traditional markets remain closed 70% of the time, our platform will enable continuous, programmable trading of tokenized stocks, including US and Japanese native stocks, with near-instant settlement capabilities. This isn’t just about digitizing existing assets, it’s about creating entirely new financial primitives that merge the trust of traditional equities with the composability and accessibility of DeFi.”

• True 24/7 tokenized stock and other financial assets trading with no market closure limitations
• Near-instant cross-border settlements, eliminating traditionally long settlement cycles
• Fractional ownership, making high-value stocks accessible to retail investors
• Composable financial products integrating tokenized stocks with DeFi protocols

“A structural transformation is currently underway in global financial markets, characterized by the on-chaining of RWAs—in other words, the tokenization of real-world assets,” commented Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President & CEO of SBI holdings. “As tokenized RWAs enable 24/7 real-time settlement and achieve unprecedented liquidity and capital efficiency, the convergence of traditional finance and DeFi will likely accelerate. We predict that this movement will eventually lead to the digitalization of capital markets themselves, including exchanges. By capturing this trend and by leveraging our corporate ecosystem together with Startale’s blockchain technology, we have great expectations for creating a new decentralized platform. This platform will be highly interoperable, always open, accessible to anyone, and designed to meet the needs of users worldwide in the global market. “

The joint venture addresses critical market gaps identified in traditional tokenized stock offerings. Unlike existing platforms that operate during limited hours or serve restricted geographies, this new infrastructure will provide true 24/7 global access with institutional-grade security and compliance frameworks specifically designed to meet the needs of a global market, ensuring interoperability and accessibility for users worldwide.

Leveraging Startale’s proven blockchain infrastructure and SBI Group’s corporate ecosystem spanning finance and digital space, the platform will feature:

• Advanced Account Abstraction, eliminating complex wallet management for retail users
• Institutional custody solutions meeting the highest security and regulatory standards
• Frictionless Retail Onboarding with access to previously exclusive markets
• Real-time compliance monitoring ensuring adherence to international regulations

This business alliance is structured around the establishment and operation of two specialized joint venture companies with clear mandates: one entity will be responsible for Core technology development, while the other wil handle the planning and execution of brand and business expansion strategies.

Further updates on the platform’s development and launch timeline will be shared as milestones are achieved.

Source: SBI Holdings