Metaplanet Sells 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC), Buys Back 11,000 to Prove Liquidity

A 10,000 BTC Sale That Left Holdings Larger

Nothing on Metaplanet's balance sheet shrank last quarter: the Tokyo-listed treasury company sold 10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and bought back 11,000, ending the third quarter with 44,000 coins as of September 30, a net increase of 1,000. With the Bitcoin price near $85,900 on Monday, that stock of coins is worth roughly $3.8 billion. The company disclosed the round trip in its quarterly filing, and chief executive Simon Gerovich laid out the reasoning on X: the question credit investors and rating agencies put to any Bitcoin company is whether its holdings can actually be turned into cash when obligations fall due. “We answered by doing it,” he wrote. The mechanics were deliberate: Metaplanet sold an amount of Bitcoin exceeding the full outstanding principal of its bonds, borrowings and other interest-bearing liabilities, then held the proceeds in cash without repaying those debts, which remain outstanding on their original terms. Per the filing, liabilities net of cash and dollar stablecoins stood at ¥122.4 billion at quarter end, against sale proceeds of ¥124.7 billion. The debts stayed put; that was the point. The unnamed precedent it cites is an overseas peer whose credit rating gave the asset little weight because the issuer was reluctant to sell. S&P's B- issuer rating for Strategy in October 2025, the first awarded to a Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company, raised the same dollar-liquidity concern, and Strategy has since approved sales of up to $1.25 billion, having sold 6,948 BTC for about $432.5 million by August before resuming buys; Strategy's Bitcoin (BTC) holdings have since reached 848,000 coins. The intent differs from Strategy's, which sells to meet obligations: Metaplanet sold to prove it could, held the cash, and bought back more than it had sold. The demonstration was expensive: coins went out at an average of ¥12.47 million each and came back at ¥13.63 million, roughly 9% higher, so the net addition of 1,000 BTC cost ¥25.2 billion.

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Laid out the reasoning.

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Revised Capital Rules and a Net Interest Play

The quarterly disclosure also revises how Metaplanet intends to run its balance sheet going forward. Under the updated capital allocation framework, Bitcoin (BTC) is expected to hold about 85% to 90% of total assets, with 10% to 15% available for strategic investments spanning acquisitions, yield-bearing securities and asset management. Borrowing against the coin will generally stay below 10% of its net asset value, and ordinary share issuance is reserved for cases where the company's mNAV sits above 1.0 and management judges the dilution favorable to existing shareholders. The revision replaces a pure buy-and-accumulate posture with one that funds purchases from cash flow. A companion measure, the Net Interest Income Strategy, is designed to earn the spread between funding costs and returns on income-generating investments. Gerovich described it as a way to build recurring income, lower the effective cost of capital and, over time, fund additional purchases; the firm's Bitcoin Income Generation business has now booked revenue for eight consecutive quarters. It sits alongside a pending Superplanet transaction and the continuing build-out of Metaplanet Securities, steps he framed as a unified push toward the leading Bitcoin financial institution built on the firm's strategic Bitcoin reserve, a path that distances the company from a simple HODL posture. The stock has grown even as the pace slows: Metaplanet held 30,823 BTC in October 2025 and 44,000 by the end of last month, but the third quarter's net addition of 1,000 was roughly a third of the second quarter's 2,823, itself a cooling from earlier in the year. Gerovich called the group the second-largest listed Bitcoin treasury company in the world, a corporate whale position behind only Strategy. The disposal also carried a U.S. tax effect: because the coins sold had been bought above the sale price, the transaction produced a capital loss for U.S. purposes, and the company preliminarily estimates a deferred tax asset of about $97 million at subsidiaries of its U.S. holding company. That figure is unaudited and may never be recognized; since Metaplanet carries Bitcoin at fair value, the loss creates no new accounting loss.

$87,331 Ceiling Scores 92/100

The ranking is now official: Metaplanet confirmed the quarterly figures on October 5, and per BitcoinTreasuries the 44,000 BTC put the company second among listed Bitcoin holders, ahead of third-ranked Twenty One Capital by 486 coins. As of its July 2 second-quarter disclosure, when holdings stood at 43,000 BTC, Metaplanet was third and trailed Twenty One Capital by 514 coins, so the quarter's net addition flipped the order. The company again framed the sale-and-repurchase sequence, 10,000 BTC sold for ¥124.7 billion and 11,000 BTC repurchased at an average of ¥13,626,928 for a total of ¥149.9 billion, as a live demonstration that its holdings can be converted to cash when needed, part of a push to secure a credit rating and widen funding channels through bonds and preferred shares.

The policy shift lands amid governance friction. On Friday, Metaplanet issued five corrected securities filings clarifying that CEO Simon Gerovich does not hold majority voting rights in MMX Ventures, a shareholder in the company, after the expansion of the Series 10 executive option pool to 319.5 million shares drew criticism in early September. On Sept. 11, the company cut the pool by 41% to 188.19 million shares by resetting the conversion ratio from 1:696 to 1:410, a change it said extinguished more than $220 million in warrant value and lifted Bitcoin per fully diluted share by about 8.8%. Pseudonymous shareholder Bitcoin Pharaoh pressed in an X post for disclosure of who owns MMX Ventures and the two unnamed executives who exercised 18.8 million shares from the pool. Asset manager VanEck has argued much of the dilution already occurred and urged a shareholder-approved compensation plan. The stock closed Monday's Tokyo session at 0.80x its Bitcoin NAV, per tracking site mNAV.com.

The Net Interest Income Strategy has a funding engine of its own: proceeds raised through preferred share and BitBond issuances would be channeled into income-producing assets, with preferred shares issued by other Bitcoin treasury companies as the main target, and the company expects to borrow cheaper than peers because its securities unit reaches Japanese investors directly, yen rates are low, and a completed Super League investment would open U.S. capital markets. The pending Super League deal would commit 2,100 BTC and has yet to close. The filing also tempers expectations elsewhere: Metaplanet said it will pursue a credit rating to widen bond and preferred share funding but cannot guarantee it will obtain one, and it disclosed an overall average Bitcoin cost basis of roughly ¥15.56 million per coin at quarter end, still above the ¥13.63 million repurchase price.

The company's own filing put dollar figures on the round trip: 10,000 BTC sold for approximately $789.2 million, then 11,000 BTC bought back for $948.7 million at an average of $86,246 per coin in the third quarter of 2026. Metaplanet framed the sale as more than a formality, stating it was intended to strengthen confidence in the group's creditworthiness and broaden access to future financing through corporate bonds and preferred shares, with the ultimate objective of increasing its Bitcoin holdings. "The sale in the Transactions was not merely a formal disposal of bitcoin," the filing said. The stock rose in Monday trading; it is down year-to-date but up over the past month as Bitcoin rallies.

(as of 04:47 UTC) COINOTAG's proprietary 42-indicator composite S/R scoring engine rates the $87,711.61 resistance at 87/100, driven by Fibo 0.000, R3, a leverage cluster and Murrey 8/8; the $86,962.57 shelf scores 64/100 from HVN 5, PDH, VWAP +2SD and Gann -45. Below spot at $84,133.94, the $83,825.40 level is the strongest support at 82/100 on EMA 20, S2, Fibo 0.114 and SW8L, with $75,763.46 also STRONG at 72/100 on EMA 100, EMA 200, Fibo 0.382 and the Ichimoku Cloud Top. Funding runs at -0.0014%, open interest at $16.42 billion and the long/short account ratio at 1.44, with 59.1% of accounts long. RSI at 56.39 and a bearish MACD signal leave the uptrend intact, and Fear & Greed sits at 71, Greed. A close above $87,711.61 opens the $90,688.93 zone; losing $83,825.40 shifts focus to the $79,380.25 support. Full detail in our technical analysis. Either way, Metaplanet's 44,000 BTC are sitting still.