Startale Group, a Singapore-based crypto infrastructure firm, and SBI Holdings, a Japan-based financial group, have announced a strategic joint venture to launch an onchain trading platform focused on tokenized stocks and real-world assets (RWAs).
The duo said in a statement on Friday that this partnership positions the alliance at the forefront of the global tokenized stock revolution, capitalizing on the explosive momentum created by Robinhood’s recent launch of tokenized stocks and major crypto exchanges like Kraken, Bybit, and Gemini expanding their tokenized stock offerings.
The joint venture directly addresses the massive $18.9 trillion tokenized asset market opportunity projected by 2033, with the aim to bring about institutional-grade onchain trading infrastructure globally.
The partnership comes as 2025 is being recognized as “the year of institutional adoption in crypto, with DeFi playing a pivotal role in reshaping traditional finance”.
SBI Holding and Startale aim to take this concept further with true 24/7 onchain trading capabilities and cross-border settlement infrastructure with lower fees.
The joint venture has secured milestone-based committed funding to fuel development and market expansion, with capital deployment structured across strategic milestones to ensure disciplined execution and sustainable growth towards commercial launch.
“The whole financial market is moving from an offchain environment to onchain,
“We believe that the tokenized stock revolution is the largest opportunity and onchain trading is the next frontier,” said Sota Watanabe, Founder of Startale Group.
While traditional markets remain closed 70 percent of the time, he noted the firm’s platform will enable continuous, programmable trading of tokenized stocks, including US and Japanese native stocks, with near-instant settlement capabilities.
“This isn’t just about digitizing existing assets, it’s about creating entirely new financial primitives that merge the trust of traditional equities with the composability and accessibility of DeFi,” he added.
According to the statement, the platform will leverage cutting-edge blockchain infrastructure aiming to offer 24/7 tokenized stock and other financial assets trading; near-instant cross-border settlements; fractional ownership; composable financial products.
The eventual aim is to create a tokenized world where all the value can flow freely, said the statement.
“A structural transformation is currently underway in global financial markets, characterized by the on-chaining of RWAs—in other words, the tokenization of real world assets,
“As tokenized RWAs enable 24/7 real-time settlement and achieve unprecedented liquidity and capital efficiency, the convergence of traditional finance and DeFi will likely accelerate,” commented Yoshitaka Kitao, Representative Director, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of SBI holdings.
He predicted that this movement will eventually lead to the digitalization of capital markets themselves, including exchanges.
“By capturing this trend and by leveraging our corporate ecosystem together with Startale’s blockchain technology, we have great expectations for creating a new decentralized platform,
“This platform will be highly interoperable, always open, accessible to anyone, and designed to meet the needs of users worldwide in the global market,” he added.
The joint venture also addresses critical market gaps identified in traditional tokenized stock offerings.
Unlike existing platforms that operate during limited hours or serve restricted geographies, this new infrastructure will provide full time global access with institutional-grade security and compliance frameworks specifically designed to meet the needs of a global market, ensuring interoperability and accessibility for users worldwide.
Leveraging Startale’s proven blockchain infrastructure and SBI Group’s corporate ecosystem spanning finance and digital space, the platform will feature advanced account abstraction; institutional custody solutions; frictionless retail onboarding; real-time compliance monitoring.
This business alliance is structured around the establishment and operation of two specialized joint venture companies with clear mandates: one entity will be responsible for core technology development, while the other will handle the planning and execution of brand and business expansion strategies, said the statement.
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