You know that feeling when a room goes quiet right before something big changes?
That’s what this looks like in Japan right now. Nomura, Daiwa, and SMBC Nikko — the kind of names that usually move slowly and safely — are stepping into crypto trading, but in a very “grown-up” way: aimed at corporate and institutional flow, not flashy hype.
The part that really made me sit up: SMBC Nikko already created a dedicated DeFi Technology Department starting February 1, 2026. That’s not a headline move — that’s internal plumbing, teams, risk controls, systems.
Two numbers tell the story. These three firms together sit around $48B in market value, and the talk is a full crypto-trading rollout around end-2026 — slow enough to do it “by the book,” fast enough to matter.
Layer in Japan’s policy drift toward making it easier for banking groups to offer crypto services (and even discussions around lowering crypto tax treatment), and you can see the direction: crypto in Japan is getting treated less like a side quest and more like a proper financial lane.
One takeaway: when Japan’s biggest brokerages start building crypto desks like they build bond desks, liquidity stops being a rumor and starts becoming infrastructure.