Over the past quarter, the most notable market signal from Japan-based Metaplanet was not a single Bitcoin purchase, but a pause.
The Tokyo-listed company, which spent much of 2025 actively acquiring Bitcoin, has not issued any “additional purchase notices” since October 1st.
Retail industry observers feared a loss of faith, but the silence masked significant financial turmoil that caused Metaplanet's market net asset value (MNAV) to briefly fall below 1.0.
For corporate financial instruments, a MNAV below 1.0 indicates fundamental inefficiency. This means the company's stock is trading at a discount to the raw value of Bitcoin on its balance sheet.
When this reversal occurs, buying Bitcoin on the open market becomes mathematically inferior to buying back your own discounted stock.
With this in mind, the company's management quickly recognized this arbitrage framework. So they redesigned their capital stack, moving away from direct accumulation and pivoting from simple purchases to active leverage and equity management.
Leverage pivot
Since the MNAV turmoil, the company has carried out a major liquidity review. Metaplanet has secured a $100 million loan backed by a portion of its existing Bitcoin holdings of 30,893 Bitcoin, with the express purpose of doubling its accumulation during a market downturn.
At the same time, it fundamentally changed the company's defenses by introducing a $500 million line of credit dedicated to its share buyback program.
When MNAV falls below parity, every share that Metaplanet retires effectively increases the remaining investors' Bitcoin per share ratio more efficiently than outright Bitcoin purchases.
This is the hallmark of a mature financial operator rather than a passive holding company.
By combining this defense with a $100 million Bitcoin-backed loan, Metaplanet is layering risk and amplifying profits. Borrowing a stack to buy more of the underlying asset is a classic “loop” strategy used by aggressive crypto-native funds, but is rarely seen in Japanese corporate governance.
This shows that CEO Simon Gerovich is willing to tolerate higher volatility in exchange for maximizing the size of the Treasury before the next supply shock.
The strategy suggests that the October-December hiatus was a period of rigorous balance sheet restructuring. Management needed to free up liquidity trapped in cold wallets to fund the next round of growth.
With the line of credit in place, the company is effectively armed with the ability to buy both its own stock and Bitcoin on any given trading day, depending on where the deepest value lies.
EGM obligations
The structural foundations for this new invasion were laid down on December 22nd.
Speaking after the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM), Gerovich confirmed that investors had approved all five management proposals. These resolutions provide the necessary legal and mechanical rails to execute the company's complex new roadmap.
The first proposal was the most important for immediate capital allocation. Shareholders approved the transfer of capital stock and reserves to 'other capital surplus'.
In layman's terms, this accounting maneuver frees up distributable capital, allows the company to pay preferred stock dividends, and creates headroom for the stock buybacks needed to complete the MNAV discount.
The second proposal would increase the number of authorized shares of Class A and Class B preferred stock from 277.5 million shares to 555 million shares in each class.
This significant increase in headroom creates a “shelf” where Metaplanet can quickly raise capital without having to call future shareholder meetings. This effectively gives management a blank check to grow the balance sheet as quickly as institutional demand allows.
The remaining proposals are redesigns of preferred stock itself. The Class A shares, now called “MARS” (Metaplanet Adjustable Rate Securities), have transitioned to monthly floating rate dividends.
This design aims to stabilize the price of financial instruments and make them more attractive to investors with conservative incomes.
Meanwhile, Class B shares have been restructured to pay quarterly dividends and, more importantly, include a call reserve that the issuer can exercise at 130% after 10 years.
It also gives investors a put option if the IPO does not take place within one year. This provision strongly hints at future listing ambitions and potential liquidity events, perhaps in the US market.
Meanwhile, perhaps the most powerful catalyst for the future of the metaplanet arrived not from Tokyo, but from Oslo. Norges Bank Investment Management, the world's largest sovereign wealth fund with $2 trillion in assets, had expressed unanimous support for all five of Metaplanet's proposals.
A sovereign wealth fund of this size voting in favor of a recapitalization expressly aimed at accelerating Bitcoin accumulation is a watershed moment for the asset class.
This indicates that institutional investors are beginning to view Bitcoin's financial strategy as a legitimate corporate governance structure rather than a “shadow banking” anomaly.
The road to 100,000BTC
With governance approvals secured and credit facilities opened, the “pause” has effectively ended. This reorganization paves the way for Metaplanet to pursue its declared “North Star” goal of owning 100,000 BTC.
Fueled by a combination of EGM obligations and Norges Bank approval. Engine will be given a $100 million loan and a $500 million buyback facility.
Metaplanet has gone from being a company buying Bitcoin with cash flow to being a financial engineer using every tool in the corporate finance manual, including share buybacks, asset-backed financing, and structured preferred stock to maximize exposure.
Fundamentally, the market should expect the filing pace to resume at a higher pace. However, the nature of the application is subject to change. If the MNAV discount widens, stock buybacks will be carried out dynamically, and if the premium returns, spot purchases of Bitcoin will be actively carried out.
The silence of the past three months was not a hesitation. It was the sound of the company reloading.
