SBI CEO Calls Ripple Stake A ‘Hidden Asset,’ Hints It Could Be Much Bigger
SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao pushed again on a viral declare that the Japanese monetary group holds $10 billion value of XRP, arguing as a substitute that SBI’s extra consequential publicity sits in its fairness place in Ripple Labs, a stake he urged the market could also be underappreciating.
The alternate started after an X account described SBI as “a serious associate of Ripple” and “holder of $10 billion in XRP,” tying the declare to SBI’s rising footprint in Asia via the acquisition of Coinhako, a regulated crypto platform based mostly in Singapore. Kitao replied immediately, disputing the framing and pointing to SBI’s possession in Ripple moderately than a headline XRP quantity.
“Not $10 bil. in XRP however round 9% of Ripple Lab. So our hidden asset may very well be a lot greater,” Kitao wrote in a Feb. 15 put up.
SBI CEO Dials Up Ripple Valuation Speculation
Kitao’s response successfully reframed the dialog from balance-sheet token stock to private-market possession. Rather than validate a particular XRP determine, he emphasised SBI’s stake in Ripple Labs, a element that issues as a result of fairness worth is in the end a operate of Ripple’s total valuation, not the spot price of XRP.
In a separate put up the identical day, Kitao went additional, explicitly tying his view to Ripple’s broader footprint. “When it involves Ripple Lab’s whole valuation which clearly embrace its ecosystem that Ripple has created, that will be huge,” he wrote. “SBI owns greater than 9 % of that a lot.”
Community member “BankXRP” amplified the implications by referencing recent reports that place Ripple’s valuation at “$50B+,” arguing that such a mark would put SBI’s 9% stake at “$4.5B+,” with “huge future upside because the CEO hints.”
While Kitao didn’t put a greenback determine on SBI’s stake, the 9% quantity units a clear valuation yardstick. If SBI’s Ripple possession have been value greater than $10 billion, Ripple’s implied valuation would want to exceed roughly $111 billion, as a result of $10 billion divided by 0.09 equals about $111.1 billion.
Put otherwise, at a $90 billion Ripple valuation, a 9% stake could be about $8.1 billion; at $50 billion, it will be about $4.5 billion. The threshold for “greater than $10 billion” is subsequently not a refined rounding error, it requires a triple-digit billions valuation for Ripple.
Notably, SBI’s roughly 9% place seems to be the product of a long-running strategic relationship moderately than a single headline commerce: SBI’s personal investor supplies describe the Ripple relationship as having been “established” in September 2012, with the group later investing in Ripple in March 2016 after which deepening operational ties via the SBI Ripple Asia joint venture (SBI 60%, Ripple 40%) launched in May 2016.
SBI additionally participated as an investor in Ripple’s $200 million Series C financing introduced in December 2019, a spherical that included SBI alongside different backers, one of many clearer public datapoints displaying continued fairness publicity as Ripple raised capital.
At press time, XRP traded at $1.46.
