Metaplanet added a net 1,000 BTC in the third quarter, taking its treasury to 44,000 bitcoin as of September 30, the Tokyo-listed company confirmed on October 5 through outlets including CoinDesk. The unusual path there is the story: the firm sold 10,000 BTC during the quarter, then bought 11,000 back at higher prices.
The sale-and-repurchase was a liquidity test, not a trading operation. Metaplanet temporarily held the proceeds in cash to show it could cover outstanding interest-bearing debt, though the debt was not repaid. It then re-entered the market and paid more per coin than the sale generated, ending the quarter up just 1,000 BTC net. The company presented the round trip as evidence that a treasury of this size can be converted into cash quickly enough to meet obligations if markets turn.
Critics will point out that the demonstration cost real money, since repurchases happened at prices above the sales. Supporters argue the opposite case: showing liquidity under controlled conditions is cheaper than discovering its absence during a debt-driven panic. For a company whose stock trades as a leveraged bitcoin proxy, that argument has a real audience. Shares of treasury firms tend to fall faster than bitcoin itself when credit questions surface, and the fastest cure for a credit question is cash on hand.
Equity discipline alongside the coin count
The quarter also included belt-tightening on the shareholder side. Metaplanet cut its Series 10 executive stock option pool by 41 percent, removing over $220 million in warrant value and lifting bitcoin per fully diluted share by roughly 8.8 percent. Asset manager VanEck has argued that dilution from earlier option raises had already largely occurred, so the cut is smaller in effect than the headline suggests. Still, boosting the per-share bitcoin metric matters to a stock whose core appeal is that each share claims a growing slice of the treasury.
CEO Simon Gerovich has described the ambition as building a bitcoin-based financial institution rather than a passive holding vehicle. The quarter’s announcements push that framing further than anything before it. The option cut and the income strategy point the same direction: fewer ways to enlarge the denominator, more ways to enlarge the numerator.
The Net Interest Income Strategy
Alongside the holdings update, Metaplanet introduced what it calls a Net Interest Income Strategy. The company will put roughly 10 to 15 percent of total assets into strategic investments, principally preferred securities issued by other bitcoin treasury companies. Bitcoin remains the core reserve asset at 85 to 90 percent of the balance sheet. The stated goal is to earn returns above Metaplanet’s own funding costs, with the spread used to service debt, fund dividends and buy more bitcoin. Details appeared in reports from Gate News and NewsCord.
Management says its Bitcoin Income Generation business has produced revenue for eight consecutive quarters. The company also plans to pursue a formal credit rating, which would put its borrowing costs and treasury policy under external examination for the first time.
A crowded and unproven field
The preferred-securities strategy puts Metaplanet in the same pond as the US treasury companies it would lend to. Strategy, the largest holder of all, spent $176.3 million this week repurchasing its own STRC preferred stock while adding only 334 BTC, its smallest weekly buy of 2026. That is a signal worth reading: the preferred layer of these structures can wobble, and issuers sometimes have to support their own paper.
Metaplanet’s bet is that yields on that layer stay wide enough to beat its borrowing costs. If spreads narrow, the income thesis shrinks. If a major issuer stumbles, the value of the securities Metaplanet holds shrinks with it. The strategy concentrates risk in exactly the sector the company already operates in, which is either the natural hedge or a doubling-down, depending on your view.
What the bitcoin market makes of it
Bitcoin traded near $86,000 on Monday, up close to 1 percent on the day, after failing to hold a breakout above $85,000 late last week. Bond yields and macro data have been blamed for the stall, and the Fed’s October 28 decision looms over the whole market. Treasury company buying has been one of the steadier sources of demand in 2026, which is why a slowdown at any major holder draws attention. Strategy’s 334-coin week was read that way, and Metaplanet’s net 1,000 coins represents the same pattern in miniature.
The market context frames the new strategy too. Investing in preferred stock of other treasury companies works best when those issuers are stable and their paper trades below par. Many of the smaller US treasury companies have seen their shares fall far below the value of their holdings this year, and their preferred securities price accordingly. Metaplanet is betting on distress yields inside its own industry. That can be lucrative. It can also be how a treasury company ends up owning a lot of paper in companies that wished they had kept the bitcoin instead.
There is a precedent for the discomfort. US regulators spent much of 2026 probing how stablecoin and treasury structures propagate risk between issuers, and the A7A5 ruble stablecoin case showed how quickly flows shut off when a token loses trust. Preferred paper from treasury issuers has no deposit insurance and no deep secondary market. Liquidity in that stack is a fair-weather friend, which is precisely why the yields look attractive.
For shareholders, the arithmetic is easy to state and hard to verify. More income means the company can add bitcoin without issuing new equity, and support for bitcoin per share depends on exactly that. The next quarterly report will show whether the strategy’s first income lines arrive as promised, and whether the 44,000 coin figure keeps climbing at the old pace or settles into something slower.