Metaplanet has made significant headlines by finalizing an international share sale amounting to $1.45 billion, a move that underscores its growing commitment to Bitcoin. The announcement was made on September 10, marking it as one of Japan’s largest corporate treasury transformations to date.
The Tokyo-listed company set the share price at ¥553 ($3.73) per share, intending to issue a staggering 385 million new shares, resulting in total proceeds of ¥212.9 billion ($1.45 billion). Of this sum, net funds around ¥204.1 billion ($1.39 billion) have been earmarked predominantly for Bitcoin-related investments. Specifically, ¥183.7 billion ($1.25 billion) will be allocated for Bitcoin purchases, while ¥20.4 billion ($139 million) is planned for income-generation operations—a strategy that showcases Metaplanet’s ambitious approach to its financial future.
The rationale behind this decision is tied to the challenging economic climate in Japan, characterized by “elevated levels of national debt, prolonged real negative interest rates, and an ongoing depreciation of the yen.” These factors were critical in prompting Metaplanet to start accumulating Bitcoin back in April 2022. The recent share sale follows a pivotal shareholder vote on September 1, which authorized the issuance of up to 550 million new shares and preferred stock. This decision came after a substantial 54% decline in Metaplanet’s share price since mid-June, reflecting the company’s need to stabilize and innovate amid volatile market conditions.
Following the completion of its share sale and recent acquisitions, Metaplanet now holds 20,136 Bitcoin, valued at approximately $2.25 billion. This positions the company as the sixth-largest public corporate holder of Bitcoin globally, trailing behind well-known entities such as Marathon and Strategy, yet leading the likes of Tesla and Coinbase.
The company’s bold move is being interpreted as a sign that the corporate adoption of Bitcoin is gaining traction globally, not just in the U.S. Dan Dadybayo, research and strategy lead at Unstoppable Wallet, indicated that this shift from experimentation to mainstream strategy reflects a broader acceptance of Bitcoin within corporate financial frameworks. He anticipates that innovative accounting practices and the normalized exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will encourage public companies to collectively hold over 1 million BTC by year-end.
Compounding this trend is the astonishing success of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which has quickly become the most profitable ETF from the firm, with over $80 billion in assets under management within a year, fueled by more than $52 billion in inflows.
As Metaplanet successfully transitions to a strategy that embraces Bitcoin, the larger implications suggest a tightening integration of Bitcoin into traditional finance, potentially setting the stage for a wave of corporate entities to reconsider how they manage their assets in the coming years.
