Everything in Observer
Mining Pools
Business Description
SBI Crypto operates a Bitcoin mining pool and miner financial services platform as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tokyo-listed SBI Holdings, Inc. (TYO: 8473), with corporate self-mining operations dating to August 2017 from headquarters at 1-6-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo.
The SBI Crypto Pool aggregates hashrate across Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and Bitcoin SV (BSV). The platform supports solo mining, hashrate splitting, and a referral program, and is accessible in English, Mandarin, and Japanese. Third-party pool reviewers cite a 1.5% pool fee and a 15 PH/s minimum entry threshold, orienting the service toward professional-scale operators. To support miners' capital requirements, SBI Crypto offers three structured lending products: crypto-backed loans, asset-backed loans, and hashrate-backed loans. A consulting arm advises on hardware procurement and datacenter equipment, drawing on the company's stated experience across large-scale buildouts.
SBI Crypto publicly launched its pool on March 18, 2021 (following a limited private release earlier that year), with the company's self-mined contribution standing at approximately 1.1 EH/s and the pool ranking 11th globally by hashrate, according to SBI's official press release distributed via PR Newswire. Pool infrastructure was independently audited by cybersecurity firm Silent Breach at launch. As of recent mempool.space data, the pool has mined 4,440 all-time blocks and accumulated over 23,491 BTC in total rewards, with a one-week network contribution of approximately 2.5% and a long-run average pool health of 99.12%.
The pool's infrastructure was co-developed with Frankfurt-listed Northern Data AG (NB2). SBI Holdings became a strategic shareholder of Northern Data in July 2020, converting convertible notes into 700,250 shares of the German firm. Northern Data contributed datacenter management expertise; its Whinstone US facility in Texas was part of the asset base underpinning that partnership at the time of the pool's launch.
SBI Holdings has pursued vertical integration across the mining supply chain beyond the pool itself: a separate subsidiary, SBI Mining Chip Co., was established to develop and manufacture proprietary ASIC chips. SBI Crypto forms one arm of SBI Holdings' broader digital-asset and blockchain cluster, which spans cryptocurrency exchange, custody, and financial services operations across Japan and other Asian markets.
