Nick Vitalis used his keynote at Mining Disrupt Miami to make a practical argument. Large banks were moving toward digital assets, he said, and what they needed was not a price forecast but proof that the assets could fit inside their controls, their audits and their existing systems. SBI, the Japanese financial group he worked for, was building the pieces to supply that.
Vitalis, VP Product & Business Development at SBI Crypto, spoke at Mining Disrupt Miami 2021, held July 20–21, 2021. Bitcoin traded at $32,125 when the session was recorded. On October 20, 2026, it was $81,690.
Sixteen Years at Goldman Sachs
Vitalis introduced himself as a New Yorker whose career had been in financial services. He said he gave 16 years to Goldman Sachs, starting in New York in a range of roles before moving to Asia. He began in technology, then moved to the business side, and listed trading, portfolio management, risk management, operations, controls, marketing and sales among the areas he had worked in or at least touched.
About five years before the talk, he said, a former Goldman colleague who was working at SBI drew him in. SBI is listed in Japan, and he said it was doing interesting work in digital assets, not concentrated on one area but building an ecosystem around them.
What Digital Assets Fix for Banks
His subject was institutionalization, a word he joked he was not sure existed. He pointed to traditional banks moving into the space, naming Citi, Goldman and JPMorgan, and said SBI wanted to help them build out what they needed. Digital assets, he said, were changing how business is done across sectors, from finance to transportation and healthcare.
He started from a principle he brought from his old firm, that the client's interests come first, and tied it to a Japanese saying that, in his loose translation, holds that the customer is god.
There's a lot of problems that are there with the classical financial market space that we think digital assets as a whole as a class really tend to solve
Nick Vitalis · 2:42
The two problems he named first were transparency and reconciliation. Institutional players, he said, were finally starting to see that digital assets handle both well, and that better access to other markets and to private capital would follow over time.
Whether it's on the endless number of reconciliations that people have to do and I've done a fair amount of them and I can tell you they're not fun
Nick Vitalis · 3:01
On security, he raised the common objection that crypto is exposed to attacks and hacks. He agreed that it is, but said that from a regular perspective the risk is small, and that he spent much of his time explaining how far security had improved and how SBI was working to raise the bar. On cost, he called the gain obvious: a wire that once took a day or two to arrive could now settle instantly, which he described as mind-shaking and revolutionary.
The Demands Coming to Mining
He pointed to signs of adoption. Goldman was setting up a trading desk and a digital assets division again, and MicroStrategy and Tesla had invested. Those firms, he said, were still asking the same questions about risk management: how to hedge, and how to control value at risk.
Ultimately at the end of the day we're using shareholders money we have an accountability to it even for the hedge funds themselves
Nick Vitalis · 5:03
He granted that much of the rise in volumes shown on industry charts came from Bitcoin's higher valuation, but said the number of Bitcoin transactions was growing as well, along with other asset types. That growth, he said, would put demands on the whole industry, and mining would feel them too.
He listed those demands. Regulators and clients would expect more oversight, security and controls, with certification and verification that firms could show their auditors. Banks would want digital assets to work with their existing systems, so that Bitcoin could sit beside an equity or fixed income product for their customers. And fees would come down over time, including for custody, a business SBI was active in and one he called a race to zero.
The last item was industry standards. Each operator, he said, ran its business fairly differently, with little regulation, oversight or industry association at the time, and he expected that to change.
Inside SBI's Digital Asset Group
Vitalis then described SBI as a publicly traded financial conglomerate that had operated in Japan for about 20 years, with more than 20 offices around the world. He called it the number one retail online broker, with more than 24 million clients trading with it. What it lacked five years earlier, he said, was digital assets, so it formed new units, including a digital asset holdings arm and SBI Crypto.
Those units covered capital markets work, which he listed as prime services, lending, asset management and funds, and technology services such as mining pools. SBI mines for itself and had done so for about five years, he said, with operations in the US, Europe and Asia that it was still expanding. It also ran its own custody.
Investing, he said, was where SBI began. Across digital assets, blockchain and AI technologies, it had put more than two billion dollars into funds it raised. He said those investments served its own returns, and also filled gaps where another company had stronger technology.
We have the best in class processes and controls but if we do find someone else that does then that's a partnership that we want to really cater towards and enhance
Nick Vitalis · 9:00
The Pool and the Wallet
He closed with two products on show at the SBI booth. SBI Crypto pool, he said, was built for the firm's own business after it had used other pools with mixed results, and it focuses on fair payout of shares, low fees and certifications. A promotion at the time meant zero pool fees, and he invited miners to the booth to hear about better terms.
SBI Wallet, the company's custody platform, was built to institutional grade. Vitalis said SBI used it for its own proprietary business first and was beginning to offer it to others. His list of what banks would ask for, from controls they could show an auditor to fees falling toward zero, was framed as a forecast for the industry rather than a picture of where it stood in 2021.