Metaplanet Sold 10,000 Bitcoin in Q3, Then Bought Back 11,000

Metaplanet sold 10,000 bitcoin during the third quarter and bought 11,000 back at a higher price. The Japanese treasury company disclosed the round trip on 5 October, putting its holdings at 44,000 BTC as of 30 September. It sold at an average of 12,470,098 yen a coin and repurchased at an average of 13,626,928, so the net gain of 1,000 coins cost it 25.2 billion yen. Chief executive Simon Gerovich said the purpose was to show the bitcoin could be turned into cash. The disclosure does not say when inside the quarter the sale happened.

The round trip in yen

The sale raised 124.7 billion yen. Against that sat 122.4 billion yen in net bonds and borrowings, so the proceeds covered the debt with a little to spare, and the company held the cash while leaving the debt outstanding. Decrypt and CryptoPotato both report those figures and both read them the same way. The repurchase ran to roughly 149.9 billion yen. Average cost across the whole 44,000-coin position now sits at 15,555,717 yen, above the sale price and above the buyback price alike. Dollar conversions carried with the story do not agree: one account puts the sale near $790 million while another headlines the buyback at $870 million, and the two imply different exchange rates. Neither states the rate used. The yen figures are the disclosed ones and are the ones carried here.

Gerovich's stated reason

The company did not present this as a change of conviction.

"Rating agencies and credit investors ask one question of a Bitcoin company: can that Bitcoin be turned into cash to meet obligations, and will it be? We answered by doing it," Gerovich said.

He has described Metaplanet as a bitcoin-based financial platform and not a pure accumulation vehicle, and the firm is pursuing a credit rating, which is the audience the exercise was aimed at. A tax leg came with it. Selling below cost produced a capital loss at the company's U.S. subsidiaries and an estimated deferred tax asset of about $97 million, a credit set against future tax bills. Metaplanet labels that figure preliminary and unaudited.

August said no bitcoin was sold

On 13 August, on-chain trackers flagged a movement of 5,014 BTC out of Metaplanet addresses, and Gerovich answered the same day. "We transferred 5,014 BTC between Metaplanet custodial addresses over the past 24 hours. This was a routine custody operation. No bitcoin was sold, and our holdings remain 43,000 BTC," he said then. August falls inside the third quarter. The two statements are not necessarily in conflict, because a September sale would leave the August account intact. We could not establish the sale date from anything published. The valuation of that August transfer is itself unsettled: CoinDesk put it at about $320 million and Cointelegraph at $322 million, and neither addresses the other.

What a rating agency will ask next

Two things close the quarter unresolved. The yield-generation business, which writes options against the holdings, brought in 848 million yen against 1.75 billion in the second quarter; that pair of figures appears in one account read here and nowhere else, so it stands unconfirmed. The second is the price of the demonstration itself. Metaplanet spent 25.2 billion yen to finish September with 1,000 more coins than sitting still would have left it. The company has been reshaping its share structure through the year, cancelling 131 million shares from its executive option pool in one such move. Bitcoin, meanwhile, traded 32% under the record it set a year ago on Tuesday. Whether a rating follows is the test the company set for itself.