SBI Holdings is issuing ¥10B in tokenized bonds that pay investors in XRP across a three-year schedule. Here's what that actually means structurally.
SBI Bonds That Pay Investors in XRP — Here's How
There's a version of XRP adoption that happens on crypto Twitter — price targets, ETF flows, legal updates. And then there's the version that happens inside regulated financial infrastructure, quietly, in ways that don't announce themselves with much fanfare.
What SBI Holdings filed last week in Tokyo belongs to the second category.
The company is issuing its first-ever security token bonds — ¥10 billion ($64.5M), targeting retail investors — and the product is structured so that every eligible bondholder receives XRP equal to their subscription amount shortly after purchase. Beyond that initial distribution, additional XRP rewards are locked in for each interest payment date in March 2027, March 2028, and March 2029.
The bonds are A-rated. SBI Securities is the sole underwriter. Mizuho Bank handles administration. Secondary trading starts March 25 on Osaka Digital Exchange's proprietary START system. None of this is happening in a grey area — it's a regulated debt instrument, filed with the Kanto Local Finance Bureau, running entirely on the ibet for Fin blockchain platform developed by BOOSTRY rather than through Japan's conventional securities depository.
What I find most interesting is how this changes the demand profile for XRP. Spot market demand is reactive — it moves with sentiment, news cycles, and macro. Structured product demand is different. It's scheduled. It's tied to legal obligations. When SBI sources XRP to fund those 2027, 2028, and 2029 distributions, that's not discretionary buying. That's contractual flow.
The flip side — which analysts at AInvest flagged — is that XRP rewards eventually vest and can be sold. If retail bondholders convert immediately on each distribution date, you get periodic supply windows. If they hold, the net effect stays constructive. Nobody knows which way that breaks at scale.
SBI CEO Yoshitaka Kitao clarified recently that the firm holds equity in Ripple Labs — roughly a 9% stake — not XRP tokens directly. That matters because it means to fund these distributions, SBI has to source XRP from the market. Which means there's real, committed demand sitting behind this product, spread across a three-year window.
It's a small issuance relative to XRP's market cap. The direct flow impact is probably marginal in the short run. But the precedent — an A-rated Japanese financial institution embedding XRP into a scheduled, multi-year distribution structure inside a regulated product — is a different kind of signal than most adoption headlines carry.