'Yes': SBI CEO Yoshitaka Kitao Answers XRP Holder Doubts in One Word

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Key takeaways

SBI Holdings CEO Yoshitaka Kitao answered yes when asked if he still trusts XRP.
SBI has maintained a close partnership with Ripple since 2016.
SBI owns approximately 9 percent of Ripple Labs and works with them on various crypto services.

Yoshitaka Kitao, head of Japanese financial group SBI Holdings, answered “YES” when asked point-blank whether he still trusts XRP.

The question came from an X user. The user wrote that the past few weeks had been “truly exhausting” for XRP holders, and said that token holders feel that Ripple has left them behind.

Kitao answered in English. Most of his recent posts on X are in Japanese, and the rest of them are reposts of other accounts.

Background of the SBI and Ripple partnership

Kitao previously worked as an executive at Nomura Securities and later served as CFO of SoftBank. In 1999, he founded SoftBank Investment, which later became SBI Holdings. Today, SBI includes banks, brokerage, and insurance businesses, as well as crypto services.

The partnership began in 2016. SBI joined Ripple's Series B round and launched a joint venture with Ripple, SBI Ripple Asia. SBI owns about 60% of the venture, and Ripple owns the remaining 40%.

The same year, SBI Ripple Asia set up a consortium of Japanese banks to test Ripple's technology for payments, and the consortium later grew to more than 60 banks.

In 2018, SBI launched the interbank app MoneyTap. The same year, SBI's crypto exchange, now called SBI VC Trade, started operations with XRP trading. In 2019, Kitao joined Ripple's board of directors.

Recent developments and investments

From 2020, SBI began handing the token out to shareholders as bonuses, and the payment service SBI Remit launched remittances using it with on-demand liquidity (ODL), including in the major Japan-Philippines corridor.

SBI kept working with Ripple during the SEC lawsuit against the company, which lasted from December 2020 until 2025.

Back on February 15, 2026, in rare long-form tweets in English, Kitao denied rumors that SBI holds $10 billion worth of XRP: “Not $10 billion in XRP, but around 9% of Ripple Labs. So our hidden asset could be much bigger.” By his account, the combined valuation of Ripple Labs and its ecosystem is “enormous,” and SBI owns more than 9% of all of it.

Kitao also talked about XRP at SBI's quarterly briefing on November 2, 2026. He said that investors buy Bitcoin mostly to hold it, and that the value of XRP depends on its use in payments and business ecosystems.

In August 2025, SBI VC Trade and Ripple agreed to bring the RLUSD stablecoin to Japan. In October 2025, SBI also invested $200 million in Evernorth, a company that holds XRP in its treasury. By now, SBI VC Trade has more than two million accounts.

At press time, XRP is trading at $1.02.

Source: u.today

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