Metaplanet Sold the BTC, Then Bought It Back, Just to Prove It Could 🧾

Metaplanet, the Tokyo-listed Bitcoin treasury company, became the second-largest corporate holder of $BTC during the third quarter after selling 10,000 $BTC and repurchasing 11,000 $BTC, ending September 30 with 44,000 $BTC, according to a company filing and data from BitcoinTreasuries. The group sold the 10,000 $BTC for aggregate proceeds of ¥124.7 billion (about $790 million) and bought back 11,000 $BTC for ¥149.896 billion (about $950 million), with the higher reacquisition price reflecting a rise in the market between the two legs and leaving the company with a net 1,000 $BTC increase over the period. Net liabilities stood at ¥122.4 billion at quarter end against ¥124.7 billion in sale proceeds, and the debts were not repaid, with the cash held to demonstrate liquidity to rating agencies and credit investors.

"Rating agencies and credit investors ask one question of a Bitcoin company: can that Bitcoin be turned into cash to meet obligations, and will it be?" chief executive Simon Gerovich wrote on X. "We answered by doing it." The filing cited "a previously published issuer credit rating of an overseas peer company" as precedent, noting that an issuer reluctant to sell its Bitcoin may find the asset given little weight in a credit assessment; the peer was not named. S&P assigned Strategy a B- issuer credit rating in October 2025, the first awarded to a Bitcoin treasury company, citing low dollar liquidity. Strategy later approved a Digital Credit Capital Framework in June permitting sales of up to $1.25 billion to fund its cash reserve, dividends and buybacks, and had sold 6,948 $BTC for about $432.5 million by August. The firm's chair, Michael Saylor, has recast his position as never being "a net seller" of $BTC rather than never selling, and the company has since resumed purchases, adding 1,665 $BTC at an average price of $85,681 per coin, according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Monday, Metaplanet also introduced a Net Interest Income Strategy and a revised capital allocation policy, keeping $BTC as its core treasury reserve asset at 85% to 90% of total assets while allowing 10% to 15% of assets to move into strategic investments, including mergers and acquisitions and interest-generating assets, with the net interest used to fund further $BTC accumulation and dividend payments. The company framed the move as a way to enhance financing capacity and credit quality to grow $BTC holdings per share through additional acquisitions, and said the model was disclosed in response to shareholder concerns about governance and capital structure.

On Friday, Metaplanet issued five corrected securities filings clarifying that CEO Simon Gerovich does not hold majority voting rights in MMX Ventures, a Metaplanet shareholder. Pseudonymous shareholder Bitcoin Pharaoh responded on X urging the company to name who owns MMX Ventures, clarify the 23.8% stake listed as indirectly held by Gerovich, and identify the two unnamed executives who exercised 18.8 million shares from the Series 10 stock option pool, writing: "Either the indirect holding is his, in which case the deleted sentence was closer to the truth, or it is not, in which case the correction is incomplete."

Metaplanet had drawn shareholder criticism in early September after expanding its Series 10 executive stock option pool almost sevenfold, from 46 million shares to 319.5 million, and on Sept. 11 it announced a 41% cut to the pool, reducing the number of potential shares underlying the rights by 131.3 million, from 319.464 million to 188.19 million, by resetting the conversion ratio from 1:696 to 1:410, the level before its September 2025 international share offering. Gerovich said the change extinguished over $220 million in warrant value and increased $BTC per fully diluted share by about 8.8%. Metaplanet shares closed 2.06% higher at ¥297 on Monday, trimming a year-to-date decline of 26%, with the stock up more than 5.6% over the past five trading days, according to Yahoo Finance.