Metaplanet, widely recognized as Japan’s leading Bitcoin treasury company, has announced its plans to become the world’s second largest corporate bitcoin holder by 2027, aiming to use its growing reserves to buy cash-generating businesses.
“We think of it as a bitcoin gold rush,” said Metapanet CEO Simon Gerovich. “We need to accumulate as much bitcoin as we can… to get to a point where we’ve reached escape velocity and it just makes it very difficult for others to catch up.”
Metaplanet, currently the world’s fifth largest corporate bitcoin holder, announced plans last month to aggressively grow its holdings from 15,555 to over 210,000 bitcoin by the end of 2027, an amount equal to roughly 1% of all bitcoin that will exist, valued at nearly $23 billion at today’s prices.
“Then we have phase two… when bitcoin, like securities or government bonds, can be deposited with banks and then they’ll provide very attractive financing against that asset,” Gerovich stated. “We’ll get cash that we can use to buy profitable businesses, cash-flowing businesses.”
Gerovich, who was once a Goldman Sachs banker in Tokyo, has grown Metaplanet’s stock market capitalization to over ¥1 trillion ($7 billion). Its Tokyo-listed shares have surged more than 345% this year after the company shifted its focus in 2024 to operating as a bitcoin treasury firm.
Metaplanet’s strategy follows the playbook of Michael Saylor’s Strategy which has turned into a bitcoin investment vehicle. Strategy holds 597,000 bitcoin and has reached a market valuation of $112 billion, far surpassing the current value of its holdings.
If Metaplanet reaches its 210,000 bitcoin target, it would likely become the second largest corporate bitcoin holder behind Strategy. With only about 1 million bitcoin left to be mined out of the total 21 million, Gerovich expects, “four to six years is probably phase one in this Bitcoin accumulation phase, and then beyond that it becomes incrementally more difficult,” he said.
Gerovich said he would “never” sell any bitcoin and plans to keep raising capital to buy more. He is open to issuing preferred shares but opposes using convertible debt. “I don’t want to have to pay back the money in three, four years’ time and have whether or not we need to repay be linked to an arbitrary share price,” he said.
“I encourage people to short our stock if they don’t believe in the story,” Gerovich concluded.
Source link
