SBI Crypto, the digital asset arm of Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings, will close its Bitcoin mining pool on July 31, removing roughly 21.46 exahashes per second from the network and marking one of the largest voluntary pool shutdowns in recent memory. The same week, India’s central bank doubled down on its push to wall off the banking sector from crypto entirely, while Russia’s central bank governor confirmed the digital ruble remains on track for a September 1 rollout despite European sanctions.
The developments span three of Asia’s most consequential crypto markets, each charting a starkly different regulatory path. Japan continues loosening its framework for institutional adoption even as one of its flagship mining operations exits. India edges closer to a prohibition-adjacent stance. Russia presses forward with state-controlled digital money that Brussels has already tried to kneecap.
Japan Loses 2.24% of Global Hashrate as SBI Exits Mining
SBI Crypto announced Wednesday that it would stop accepting mining shares at the end of July, ending a five-year run. Data from SimpleMining shows the pool currently holds the 12th spot globally by hashrate, contributing about 2.24% of total Bitcoin network share.
The company offered no explanation for the closure. Its brief statement asked miners to keep directing hashrate to the pool until the final day so that payouts could be calculated correctly before operations cease. “We would sincerely appreciate your continued support by mining with us until the final day of operation,” the announcement read.
SBI’s exit follows a broader pattern of pool consolidation and strategic reshuffling. Earlier this year, seven mining pools controlling 75% of Bitcoin hashrate announced support for Stratum V2, signaling a shift in how block construction responsibilities are distributed. SBI Crypto was not among that group.
At 21.46 EH/s, the hashrate leaving SBI’s pool is roughly equivalent to the entire Bitcoin network’s capacity in late 2018. Where those miners redirect their machines will likely benefit incumbents like Foundry, AntPool, and F2Pool. The redistribution should not affect Bitcoin’s security model, but it does concentrate hashrate further among the top ten pools.
RBI Tells Lawmakers: Keep Banks Away From Crypto
India’s Reserve Bank of India (RBI) presented its position to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance on Thursday, urging lawmakers to maintain a clear separation between the banking sector and cryptocurrency.
According to a report from The Economic Times, RBI Deputy Governor Rohit Jain and Executive Director P. Vasudevan delivered a background note warning that applying traditional regulation to crypto could “legitimize speculative assets and create a false perception of safety among users.” The central bank reportedly said prohibition remained a recognized policy option and recommended preventing the use of crypto in payments and settlements.
That framing stops short of an outright ban, but only just. The RBI has historically taken a dim view of private digital assets, attempting to prohibit banks from servicing crypto businesses in 2018 before the Supreme Court struck down that circular in 2020. This latest push revisits familiar terrain with updated justifications.
Critically, the RBI drew a distinction between crypto and tokenized securities. Tokenized government bonds, corporate debt, and other regulated financial instruments should not face the same restrictions, the central bank argued, so that policymakers do not inadvertently hinder tokenization. That carve-out suggests India may pursue a bifurcated approach: greenlight asset tokenization under existing securities law while continuing to squeeze retail crypto exposure.
India ranked among the top five countries for estimated crypto transaction volume in Chainalysis’s 2024 Geography of Cryptocurrency report, driven largely by retail participants. A banking sector firewall would complicate fiat on-ramps and off-ramps, pushing users toward peer-to-peer markets and offshore exchanges.
Russia’s Digital Ruble Launch Set for September 1
Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina, told state media outlet RIA Novosti that “everyone is ready” for the digital ruble to launch on September 1. The CBDC will debut as a complement to the physical and bank-deposit ruble, initially accepted by financial and credit institutions.
The timeline tracks with guidance the central bank issued last year. What has changed since then is the sanctions environment. European Union authorities announced preemptive restrictions on the digital ruble in April, citing Russia’s “war of aggression against Ukraine.” The sanctions aim to prevent EU entities from transacting in the CBDC and signal that Moscow will not easily use the digital ruble to circumvent existing financial restrictions.
Whether those sanctions bite depends on how Russia deploys the currency. A CBDC used primarily for domestic retail payments offers limited sanctions evasion potential. One integrated into cross-border settlement with sympathetic trading partners (China’s e-CNY, for instance) poses a different question. Nabiullina’s comments did not address international interoperability.
For context, Russia’s CBDC pilot began in August 2023 with a small group of consumers and merchants. The September 1 date represents a full public rollout, roughly three years after China’s e-CNY pilots became the most widely used CBDC globally.
OFAC Sanctions 134 ISIS-K Wallets, Tether Freezes 131
The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added 134 cryptocurrency wallet addresses to its Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list on Wednesday, identifying them as belonging to terrorist group ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K).
Stablecoin issuer Tether moved quickly, freezing balances associated with 131 Tron addresses. The remaining three addresses were on the Monero network. Monero’s privacy-by-default architecture means Tether cannot freeze those funds (and likely cannot even identify what balances they hold).
Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis noted in a Wednesday report that ISIS-K has historically solicited crypto donations through websites and messaging platforms. The latest OFAC action follows a June 22 round of sanctions targeting three individuals and six entities across Europe, the Middle East, and West Africa, including Syria-based MSB Bitcoin Xchange and Turkish MSB Spider.
The pattern underscores a recurring theme in illicit finance: sanctioned actors gravitate toward assets that are harder to freeze. Tron-based USDT remains popular for its low fees and fast settlement, but Tether’s centralized freeze capability turns that convenience into a liability when OFAC comes calling. Monero’s inclusion on the SDN list is largely symbolic, given the practical difficulty of enforcing any freeze.
Metaplanet Tops 43,000 BTC After Q2 Accumulation
Japanese investment company Metaplanet disclosed Thursday that it acquired 2,823 Bitcoin during the second quarter at an average price of roughly 12.71 million yen, or about $78,850 at current exchange rates. The purchase pushed the company’s total holdings past 43,000 BTC, acquired for approximately $4.1 billion.
The Q2 buy-in price sat below Metaplanet’s previous average cost basis, pulling the overall acquisition cost down to about $95,117 per Bitcoin from $96,258. The company also reported roughly $10.95 million in revenue from its Bitcoin income generation strategy, though it did not detail the mechanics of that yield.
Metaplanet’s treasury approach mirrors that of MicroStrategy (now Strategy), which pioneered the corporate Bitcoin accumulation playbook. For a comparative snapshot of public companies holding BTC on their balance sheets, see our Bitcoin Treasury tracker.
The company has moved aggressively to expand beyond passive Bitcoin holdings. In June, Metaplanet acquired Siiibo Securities for $13 million, aiming to build yield products that tap into Japan’s $7.4 trillion household savings pool. That acquisition suggests Metaplanet views itself less as a static Bitcoin vault and more as a financial services firm with BTC as its core asset.
At 43,000 BTC, Metaplanet now holds roughly 0.2% of Bitcoin’s current circulating supply. The company ranks among the largest public-company Bitcoin holders outside the United States, trailing Strategy’s roughly 500,000 BTC hoard but operating in a regulatory environment that has grown increasingly accommodating toward institutional crypto exposure.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency has progressively clarified rules around crypto custody, trading, and now corporate treasury use. That backdrop helps explain why SBI’s mining pool closure feels less like a regulatory retreat and more like a strategic reallocation, perhaps toward the tokenization opportunities the RBI just told India to protect.
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