Community Trust ScoreVerified
SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities are rolling out in-house investment trusts for Bitcoin and Ethereum. Japanese retail investors won’t need a crypto exchange account or a separate wallet anymore — just their existing brokerage login.
The products are structured funds, basically a wrapper that gives customers exposure to $BTC and $ETH without actually holding the coins. SBI Securities plans to distribute its version through SBI Global Asset Management, and the target is ambitious: nearly ¥5 trillion — roughly $32 billion — in assets under management within three years. Rakuten Securities is going a different route, focusing on letting customers trade directly through its smartphone apps. Both firms already run licensed crypto exchanges in Japan, so the infrastructure isn’t new. They’re just connecting the pipes to the retail brokerage side, which is where most ordinary Japanese investors already live.
Not a small bet.
Who Else Is Watching This Space
SBI and Rakuten aren’t alone. A survey cited in reporting on the sector found that Nomura and Daiwa are among the major traditional finance firms considering similar products — once Japan’s regulatory framework gets finalized. That last part matters. Neither firm has launched anything yet, and the whole industry seems to be waiting on the Financial Services Agency.
The FSA is reportedly working on rules that would let investment trusts and exchange-traded funds hold crypto assets under the Investment Trust Act. That’s a meaningful change. Right now, crypto sits outside the standard investment product framework that governs stocks and bonds. The FSA is also looking at reclassifying cryptocurrencies as financial instruments under Japan’s Financial Instruments and Exchange Act — a shift that would bring insider trading bans and mandatory annual disclosures for issuers. Stricter, yes. But also more legitimate in the eyes of institutional money.
Spot crypto ETFs could follow if that framework lands. Market projections put potential inflows at around $6.4 billion if spot ETFs get the green light. No confirmed date, but the direction seems clear.
What This Means for Retail Investors
For regular Japanese investors, the pitch is pretty simple. You don’t have to learn how a crypto wallet works. You don’t have to open a new account on an exchange you’ve never used. You just buy the trust through the same brokerage app you already use for stocks or mutual funds.
That’s genuinely useful for a lot of people. Crypto’s onboarding process has always been a friction point — seed phrases, private keys, exchange verification steps. Investment trusts cut all of that out.
But there are trade-offs. These products come with management fees, which direct crypto ownership doesn’t. And there’s counterparty risk — you’re trusting the fund structure and the brokerage, not just holding the asset yourself. For hardcore crypto holders, that’s kind of the whole point they’d argue against. For everyone else, probably fine.
The fee structure will likely determine how fast adoption moves. If SBI and Rakuten price these competitively, they could pull in a lot of investors who’ve been curious about $BTC and $ETH but never took the step. If fees are too high, that argument falls apart fast.
Japan’s retail investor base is large and historically cautious. Mutual funds and brokerage accounts are familiar. Crypto exchanges, for many older or less tech-savvy investors, aren’t. Wrapping $BTC and $ETH in a familiar product format is probably the most practical way to move that demographic.
Japan’s Regulatory Shift in Context
Japan has been one of the more active regulatory environments for crypto globally, going back years. The FSA licensed exchanges early, required segregation of customer funds, and responded to exchange hacks with tighter oversight. That history gives the current push some credibility — it’s not a sudden pivot, it’s a continuation.
The reclassification effort is the bigger structural move. Treating crypto as a financial instrument rather than a miscellaneous digital asset changes how firms can hold it, how they must disclose it, and what rules apply when things go wrong. Insider trading bans, specifically, are a signal that regulators want crypto markets to behave more like equity markets. Whether that’s good or bad depends on who you ask, but it’s clearly where Japan is headed.
Nomura and Daiwa watching from the sidelines makes sense. They want to see the final rules before committing. Once the FSA publishes a finalized framework, expect that list of interested firms to get longer fast.
SBI Global Asset Management is the vehicle SBI Securities is using for distribution. The ¥5 trillion target over three years is aggressive — that’s a real number, not a vague aspiration. Whether the market delivers that depends on how the FSA moves, how fees get set, and whether Japanese retail investors actually want $BTC and $ETH in their brokerage accounts once the option is real and in front of them.
Rakuten’s app-first approach is a different bet on the same thesis — that convenience drives adoption more than anything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are SBI Securities and Rakuten Securities launching for crypto?
Both firms are launching in-house investment trusts for Bitcoin and Ethereum, letting Japanese retail investors access $BTC and $ETH exposure directly through their existing brokerage accounts without needing a separate crypto exchange.
How big is SBI’s asset target for its crypto trust products?
SBI Securities, distributing through SBI Global Asset Management, is targeting approximately ¥5 trillion — around $32 billion — in assets under management within three years.
