Published: January 8th, 2025
Tokyo-based investment firm Metaplanet Inc. announced plans to increase its holdings of Bitcoin by 470 per cent, with a goal of securing 10,000 BTC by the end of 2025.
Calling the move a continuation of an accumulation strategy first undertaken in April, Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich said the company plans to reach its goal using ‘the most accretive tools available in capital markets.’
‘We broke records during a transformational 2024, expanding our BTC treasury and strengthening our position as Asia’s leading Bitcoin treasury firm," Gerovich wrote in a post on X this past weekend. ‘In 2025 we’re 100% focused on creating even greater value for our shareholders.’
In a December 23 regulatory filing, Metaplanet listed its current its Bitcoin holdings at 1,761.98 BTC or USD 173.5 million. The firm made a series of purchases last year with an average acquisition of roughly USD 75,000 each.
The last purchase of 619.70 BTC marked its largest single buy yet, representing about 35 per cent of its total Bitcoin hoard. The firm started in April 2024 with a purchase of 97.8 BTC, adding rapidly to it over six months and then accelerating its buys in the final quarter of 2024.
The filing also showed that BTC yield, which compares the Bitcoin a company owns to its total shares, jumped from 42 per cent to 300 per cent in the final months of 2024, meaning the firm purchased Bitcoin at a faster rate than it issued new shares.
In September of 2023, MicroStrategy, the world’s number one corporate holder of Bitcoin, announced a new acquisition of the market’s topcryptocurrency. In an SEC filing the firm said it and its subsidiaries had bought approximately 5,445 Bitcoin in early August of that year.
The total cash value was listed at USD 147.2 million. At the time, Bitcoin was trading hands at approximately USD 27,051 per coin.
With that purchase, MicroStrategy had stuffed its vault to roughly 158,245 BTC. An analysis by CoinGecko put the average purchase price at circa USD 29,580. Using figures provided in the filing, the aggregate purchase price paid by MicroStrategy for its BTC holdings was USD 4.67 billion.
While the company’s continuing accumulation of Bitcoin supports its public pronouncements in support of the asset, calling it both a store of value and an appreciable long-term asset, the ongoing chill affecting crypto markets at the time also pushed its BTC balance sheet into the red. That was especially true of historical buys the firm made when Bitcoin was riding high near the USD 60,000 mark.
As if on cue, Bitcoin was down 1.6 per cent on the day of the announcement, trading just north of USD 26,090. That would value the total Bitcoin held by MicroStrategy at circa USD 4.1 billion.
In June of this 2024, the firm purchased 12,330 BTC for USD 346 million. The average purchase price for one coin at the time was USD 29,667. MicroStrategy began its cryptocurrency acquisition in August of 2020, with co-founder and CEO Michael Saylor saying that the firm's main motivation was to hold BTC as an inflation hedge.
Earlier in 2022, Saylor said the company remained committed to its approach, which was (and remains) to keep buying and holding Bitcoin over the long term. ‘What’s important for us is to be transparent, responsible and consistent.’
Saylor and MicroStrategy have often been at the forefront of institutional BTC adoption, paving the way for risk-averse corporates and traditional finance players to extend their Bitcoin exposure.
When forex traders went bear-ish on BTC in March 2020, a major corporate buy from MicroStrategy played a huge part in returning liquidity to crypto markets. It kicked off a slow but steady appreciation that accelerated in 2021, sending BTC's above USD 60,000.
When Elon Musk purchased Twitter in April of 2022, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor offered Musk congratulations via Twitter, quoting the American Constitution’s first amendment, which guarantees that governments can't place limits on free speech.
Saylor's very public show of support amid controversy about how Musk would run the social network helped drive up the price of DOGE (then rumored to become a form of payment on Twitter) by 24 per cent.
Traditional finance definitely needed to be won over. At the start of 2022, analysts at Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan Chase said in a note to investors that Bitcoin would struggle to convince institutional investors thanks to its high volatility.
Bank analysts said they saw 'significant barriers’ to BTC adoption in the coming months.
Bitcoin's uneven price history made it five times more volatile than gold. On a more upbeat note, analysts at the Wall Street giant said that the slide in crypto prices happening at the time was 'less worrying than the depths it sunk to April 2021.' Prices had plummeted and brought the combined crypto market cap down by billions in a one seven-day period.
'We believe that Bitcoin's biggest challenge in the coming months will be overcoming is its inherent volatility. Frequent, short duration cycles of boom and bust make increased institutional buy-in unlikely.
The note said that BTC, which was down 43 per cent from an all-time high of USD 69,000 reached in November 2021, was also more volatile than gold by a factor of five. That belies the claims of many cryptocurrency commentators who frequently refer to BTC as 'digital gold,' offering hedge protection against inflation similar to what the yellow metal has traditionally provided to investors.
Two reports released in September of 2021 captured a steady rise in the level of interest crypto had garnered from traditional investors.
A survey by Nickel Digital Asset Management in London found that more than 80 per cent of wealth managers, institutions, and hedge fund executives with current crypto exposure planned to grow their digital asset holdings in 2022.
