August 24 – August 30 (Published September 2nd)
PERSPECTIVES by Steve Payne
36 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $476M
Rolling 3-Month Average: $319M
Rolling 52-Week Average: $414M
Deals Over $50M: 0
A very slow August for private crypto financings closed with a big week, and SBI Holdings keeps extending the crypto buildout we flagged in our July 6–12 Private Financing Snapshot. That report covered SBI leading EDX Markets’ $76M Series C and going solo on Gauntlet’s $125M round, and framed SBI as building “connective tissue” between Japanese and broader Asian traditional finance and onchain infrastructure.
Two SBI moves announced last week push that strategy further into Southeast Asia. On August 24, SBI led a $68M Series C in Fasset, a Los Angeles-based stablecoin neobanking platform, at a $1B valuation. Fasset operates the emerging-markets-focused Own Network, regulated infrastructure linking banks, payment providers, and other financial institutions across more than 100 banking corridors. It plans to use the funds for corridor banking, stablecoin settlement, and tokenized-asset tools. Four days later, SBI invested $270M in Ajaib, an Indonesian multi-asset platform, taking a roughly 20% stake in what is Indonesia’s largest tech round since 2022. Ajaib offers equities, bonds, funds, crypto, stablecoins, and FX, plus OTC stablecoin settlement for institutional clients.
Both deals follow the playbook we described in July: pair stablecoin rails with equity stakes in regional platforms. SBI Chairman Yoshitaka Kitao tied Ajaib explicitly to SBI’s “APAC Digital Economic Zone,” its stated goal of building a network of exchanges across Southeast Asia. Fasset adds the cross-border settlement plumbing, plus a previously announced Malaysian digital bank venture with SBI. Combined with SBI’s existing stakes in Coinhako (Singapore) and B2C2 (UK), the group now has direct holdings across four Asian markets plus payment-corridor infrastructure.
Several open questions remain: whether Fasset gets the same kind of product integration SBI has signaled for Ajaib, how Coinhako and B2C2 fit into this expanding regional network, and whether SBI is building a genuinely integrated Asian digital-asset platform or simply accumulating strategic stakes across the region.
