Metaplanet Inc.—known as “Japan’s MicroStrategy” on Crypto Twitter—has outperformed every other company on the Japanese stock market since the start of the week.
Over the past two days, shares of Metaplanet have risen 50% in value, moving from 41 JPY at Monday’s close to 90 JPY as of Wednesday. That’s two consecutive trading sessions of Metaplanet reaching its maximum daily gains, as enforced by the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE).
Following in the footsteps of MicroStrategy (MSTR), the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, Metaplanet’s new primary corporate objective is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible.
“We believe this to be the most valuable thing we can do for our shareholders,” said Metaplanet’s Director of Bitcoin Strategy, Dylan LeClair, to Decrypt. “We will explore various options for acquiring additional Bitcoin, including any opportunities present in capital markets that we view as accretive.”
Metaplanet has been halted at a max daily gain of +¥30 (+50%), and for the second day in a row, is the best performing stock in Japan. 🇯🇵#TSE3350 $BTC pic.twitter.com/Y9F8IAsyyR
— Dylan LeClair 🟠 (@DylanLeClair_) May 22, 2024
One of those opportunities, announced Monday, includes increasing its number of authorized shares by 300%, a tactic already leveraged multiple times by MicroStrategy. New share sales allow the company to raise money to accumulate more Bitcoin, turning Metaplanet into a makeshift Bitcoin ETF for Japanese investors—but with no fee.
“We plan to continue buying Bitcoin, no matter the short-term exchange rate fluctuations, given the asset’s absolute scarcity; a stark contrast to the reality of perpetually weakening political currencies,” LeClair added.
Bitcoin is up 193% against the JPY over the past year, tapping a new all-time high against the fast-debasing currency on Monday.
As with MicroStrategy in August 2020, Metaplanet’s stock immediately exploded after announcing its Bitcoin treasury strategy last month, with its market cap rising from 2 billion JPY (about $13 million) in early April to 14.63 billion JPY (about $93.4 million) today.
“When it comes to Metaplanet, just like with Bitcoin, best strategy is [to] just buy it,” tweeted Mark Yusko, CEO and CIO of Morgan Creek Capital on Wednesday. Yusko is on Metaplanet’s Board of Directors.
Metaplanet is currently only available on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, walling out investor access in the United States. However, Arnab Naskar—co-founder of STOKR, which recently helped tokenize MSTR shares on the Liquid network—recently expressed interest in doing the same for Metaplanet, which could expand its access to crypto users globally.
Let’s do it.
— Arnab Naskar @stokr (@Arnab_Naskarr) May 22, 2024
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.