Metaplanet, the Tokyo-based company that pivoted from hotels to Bitcoin, is now valued at less than the Bitcoin it holds.
The Japanese company began buying Bitcoin in April 2024, saying it wanted to become Japan’s MicroStrategy by being the first major listed crypto treasury in the country. Its stock rallied in popularity during the first four months or so, hitting an all-time high in mid-June and another in August, as traders flooded in, betting on Bitcoin and Metaplanet’s vision.
But that bullish run didn’t last.
Metaplanet’s shares have since plunged by about 70%, bringing its market value and debt combined to a point where it is below the total worth of its Bitcoin stash. The company’s own metrics showed an mNAV of 0.99 earlier this week, meaning the market now values Metaplanet at less than its crypto reserves.
Metaplanet loses investor trust as Bitcoin stock fever cools
The whole idea behind companies like Metaplanet, known in the industry as digital asset-treasury firms, or DATs, was to give stock investors exposure to Bitcoin without needing to touch actual tokens. It became a trend. Over the summer, most of these companies traded at a premium to their holdings. But that phase is done.
Now, firms like Metaplanet are struggling. Buying has slowed down. Stock prices are falling. The hype is gone. Mark Chadwick, a Japan equity analyst who writes on Smartkarma and previously worked at Jefferies, said this looks like a bubble bursting. “I still see this crypto treasury stock decline as a popping of a bubble,” Mark said. He also pointed out that while the euphoria has cooled, some Bitcoin believers might see this as a good moment to buy the stock cheap.
Metaplanet’s own website shows it now holds more than 30,000 Bitcoin, valued at around $3.4 billion. To keep expanding its crypto portfolio, the company’s shareholders recently backed a proposal to issue preferred shares, a hybrid form of equity and debt. In September, it raised about $1.4 billion through an international equity sale aimed at funding further Bitcoin purchases.
Crypto markets rocked by Trump’s tariff threat and record losses
On Friday, traders suffered a record $19 billion in liquidations, wiping out leveraged positions across multiple exchanges. The chaos began after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans for 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, sending global markets into panic.
For several tense hours, crypto markets echoed traditional finance’s worst instincts, a rush to exit. An altcoin index tracking smaller tokens beyond Bitcoin and Ether dropped up to 40% in minutes as liquidity vanished. The meltdown exposed old problems that keep haunting the industry: excessive leverage, poor liquidity, and the way exchanges report liquidations.
A technical glitch on Binance made things worse, but the exchange later said it paid $283 million in compensation to affected users but insisted the error didn’t trigger the historic market crash.
Nearly $20 billion worth of positions were liquidated across exchanges, according to data from Coinglass, though we’d like to point out that the real figure was likely higher since Binance limits how often it reports liquidations.
Investigations later focused on Binance and decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid. Coinglass reported that over $10 billion in leveraged bets were wiped out on Hyperliquid and another $2.4 billion on Binance.
“Hyperliquid is a blockchain where every order, trade, and liquidation happens onchain,” Jeff Yan, the platform’s co-founder, said in an X post on Monday. “Anyone can permissionlessly verify the chain’s execution, including all liquidations and their fair execution for all users.”
For an industry that spent the past three years trying to restore confidence following the catastrophic collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Friday was an ugly reminder of how tenuous those gains are.
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