SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao pushed back on a viral claim that the Japanese financial group holds $10 billion worth of XRP, arguing instead that SBI’s more consequential exposure sits in its equity position in Ripple Labs, a stake he suggested the market may be underappreciating.
The exchange began after an X account described SBI as “a major partner of Ripple” and “holder of $10 billion in XRP,” tying the claim to SBI’s growing footprint in Asia through the acquisition of Coinhako, a regulated crypto platform based in Singapore. Kitao replied directly, disputing the framing and pointing to SBI’s ownership in Ripple rather than a headline XRP number.
SBI CEO Dials Up Ripple Valuation SpeculationIn a separate post the same day, Kitao went further, explicitly tying his view to Ripple’s broader footprint. “When it comes to Ripple Lab’s total valuation which obviously include its ecosystem that Ripple has created, that would be enormous,” he wrote. “SBI owns more than 9 % of that much.”
While Kitao did not put a dollar figure on SBI’s stake, the 9% number sets a clean valuation yardstick. If SBI’s Ripple ownership were worth more than $10 billion, Ripple’s implied valuation would need to exceed roughly $111 billion, because $10 billion divided by 0.09 equals about $111.1 billion.
Put differently, at a $90 billion Ripple valuation, a 9% stake would be about $8.1 billion; at $50 billion, it would be about $4.5 billion. The threshold for “more than $10 billion” is therefore not a subtle rounding error, it requires a triple-digit billions valuation for Ripple.
SBI also participated as an investor in Ripple’s $200 million Series C financing announced in December 2019, a round that included SBI alongside other backers, one of the clearer public datapoints showing continued equity exposure as Ripple raised capital.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.46.
