SBI Holdings Chairman and Chief Executive Yoshitaka Kitao has answered the question hanging over one of the world's most closely watched cryptocurrency bets with a single word. Asked on X whether he still trusted XRP, the Japanese financial group's top executive replied: "YES." The Nov. 12 post, written in English rather than the Japanese that dominates his social media feed, landed as the token traded near $1.02 and extended a slide that has worn down even long-term believers.

XRP has surrendered 18% in October alone and sits more than 70% below its record high of $3.65. Over the past week the coin has lost another 13%, and sentiment gauges point to widespread fear among traders. The drawdown has fueled criticism of Ripple, the company behind the token, with holders questioning whether the firm has done enough for the asset that made it a household name in crypto.

Kitao's reply was not an isolated gesture. It caps a decade in which SBI has woven XRP into businesses spanning banking, brokerage, insurance and digital assets. The group owns roughly 9% of Ripple Labs, a stake Kitao has described as a hidden asset that could be worth considerably more than the $10 billion in XRP that market chatter once attributed to SBI. "Not $10 billion in XRP, but around 9% of Ripple Labs," he wrote on X in February. "So our hidden asset could be much bigger."

The relationship dates to 2016, when SBI joined Ripple's Series B financing round and the two companies formed the joint venture SBI Ripple Asia, with SBI holding about 60% and Ripple the remaining 40%. A consortium of more than 60 Japanese banks was assembled to test blockchain-based payments, and in 2018 SBI launched the MoneyTap interbank transfer app while its exchange, now SBI VC Trade, began offering XRP trading. Kitao joined Ripple's board in 2019, and the following year SBI started paying shareholder benefits in XRP.

SBI stayed the course through Ripple's legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which began in December 2020 and ran into 2025. Its payment arm, SBI Remit, adopted Ripple's On-Demand Liquidity service, which uses XRP to reduce the pre-funding needed for cross-border transfers, with the Japan-Philippines corridor a particular focus. In August 2025, SBI VC Trade and Ripple agreed to bring the RLUSD stablecoin to Japan; two months later SBI put $200 million into Evernorth, a treasury company holding XRP. The exchange now serves more than two million accounts.

Note: SBI holds approximately 9% of Ripple Labs and about 60% of SBI Ripple Asia.

At SBI's quarterly briefing on Nov. 2, Kitao drew a line between the two largest cryptocurrencies by market value. Bitcoin, he said, is bought mainly to be held, while XRP's worth is bound up with its use in payments and its business ecosystem. He has separately called blockchain the most revolutionary innovation of the century.

That framing matters for how investors read the chairman's latest comment. SBI's exposure is not a passive trading position but an operating commitment: a stake in Ripple, a stablecoin distribution business, a remittance corridor built on Ripple's rails and a shareholder perk that puts XRP in the hands of Japanese retail investors. A sustained decline in the token therefore cuts at both the group's balance sheet and the story it tells about its digital-asset strategy.

The market backdrop remains difficult. XRP's slide has outpaced the broader crypto market in recent weeks, and the frustration among holders has been aimed squarely at Ripple's leadership rather than at SBI. Kitao's endorsement, delivered in the plainest possible terms, offers the community a signal that its most prominent institutional backer has not wavered even as the price chart has.

Whether that conviction is vindicated depends on adoption rather than sentiment. SBI has spent years building payment and settlement infrastructure around XRP, and the chairman's argument rests on that utility eventually being reflected in the token's value. For now, the price says otherwise. But for investors weighing SBI's crypto exposure, the message from the top is that the strategy remains unchanged.

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