Metaplanet expanded its bitcoin treasury aggressively in the first quarter of 2026, acquiring 5,075 BTC and pushing its total holdings to 40,177 BTC as of March 31. The Tokyo-listed company said the cumulative cost of its bitcoin position now stands at approximately $3.92 billion, reinforcing its status as Japan’s largest corporate bitcoin holder and placing it among the biggest public-company holders worldwide.
Q1 Buying Added More Than 5,000 BTC
The company disclosed the first-quarter purchase on April 2, confirming that the acquisition had been completed by the end of March. Metaplanet spent about $398 million during the quarter, with the weighted average purchase price reported in a range of roughly $78,000 to $79,898 per bitcoin. The latest buying continued a treasury strategy the company adopted in April 2024, when it began repositioning itself around bitcoin accumulation.
At the time of the announcement, bitcoin was trading near $66,400. Based on that market price, Metaplanet’s 40,177 BTC were worth about $2.67 billion. Relative to the company’s average cost basis of roughly $97,593 per BTC, that implied an unrealized mark-to-market loss of around 32%. Even so, the company has not indicated that lower spot prices would slow its acquisition pace.
Bitcoin as a Long-Term Reserve Asset
Chief Executive Officer Simon Gerovich has repeatedly presented bitcoin as a strategic long-term reserve asset, particularly in the context of Japan’s inflation backdrop and the weakening yen. Rather than treating short-term price volatility as a reason to pause, Metaplanet appears to be framing market dips as part of a longer treasury-building process. Since the April 2024 pivot, the company has maintained a steady rhythm of accumulation across consecutive quarters.
This positioning is central to Metaplanet’s corporate identity. What began as a smaller hotel and technology operator has evolved into a company increasingly known for its bitcoin balance-sheet strategy. The first-quarter purchase in 2026 further underlined how strongly management is leaning into that transformation.
How Metaplanet Funds Its Bitcoin Strategy
Metaplanet said it finances bitcoin purchases through a combination of equity raises, debt management, and bitcoin-linked income generation. A key part of that income model is options trading conducted against the company’s existing holdings. In the first quarter of 2026, that business generated approximately 2.97 billion yen in revenue.
The company said that when this income is offset against acquisition costs, the net purchase price works out to roughly 11,955,713 yen per BTC. Metaplanet noted that this figure was broadly in line with the quarter’s volume-weighted average bitcoin price on the Bitflyer exchange. The implication is that the treasury strategy is designed not only to accumulate bitcoin, but also to use the growing balance as a base for reducing the effective cost of future purchases.
That self-reinforcing model is a notable feature of Metaplanet’s approach. Options revenue can lower the average net cost of acquired bitcoin, while a larger bitcoin reserve expands the collateral foundation for additional income-generating operations going forward.
Two Capital Raises in One Quarter
To support continued buying, Metaplanet completed two fundraising rounds during the quarter. On January 29, its board approved a combined issuance of 24,529,000 shares and warrants to overseas institutional investors at 499 yen per share, raising approximately 12.24 billion yen. The company then carried out a second issuance on March 16, selling 107,368,000 additional shares at 380 yen per share. That transaction closed on March 31 and brought in about 40.8 billion yen.
In both cases, Metaplanet said the proceeds were directed primarily toward additional bitcoin purchases. While this capital-raising strategy has supported rapid accumulation, it has also had implications for shareholder dilution, which the company tracks through its own internal treasury metric.
Now Ranked Third Among Public Companies
After the Q1 purchase, Metaplanet moved into third place among publicly traded companies by bitcoin holdings. According to the figures cited in the announcement, only Strategy, with 762,099 BTC, and Twenty One Capital, with 43,514 BTC, held more. The new total allowed Metaplanet to overtake MARA Holdings, which held around 38,689 BTC after reportedly selling part of its reserves to manage debt.
The ranking shift is significant because it highlights how quickly Metaplanet has scaled. In less than two years, the company has gone from a negligible holder to one of the most prominent public bitcoin treasury vehicles in the market.
BTC Yield Slows as Dilution Increases
Metaplanet also reported a first-quarter 2026 BTC Yield of 2.8%. The company uses this internal metric to track growth in bitcoin holdings per diluted share. The relatively modest reading reflects the impact of substantial share issuance during the period. By comparison, BTC Yield in the first quarter of 2025 stood at 95.6%, when the accumulation program was at an earlier stage and dilution had a smaller effect on the ratio.
This contrast helps illustrate the trade-off embedded in Metaplanet’s strategy. Raising fresh capital enables faster bitcoin accumulation, but issuing more shares can temper the growth rate of bitcoin exposure on a per-share basis.
From 97.85 BTC to 40,177 BTC
The speed of Metaplanet’s expansion has been striking. The company began buying bitcoin in April 2024 with just 97.85 BTC. By December 2024, it had increased that total to 1,761 BTC. Through 2025, the pace accelerated sharply, and by September 2025 the company’s holdings had climbed to 30,823 BTC. The latest addition in Q1 2026 lifted the treasury to 40,177 BTC.
This trajectory reflects a deliberate and escalating treasury policy rather than opportunistic one-off buys. The quarter’s purchase fits into a broader multi-year campaign aimed at making bitcoin the centerpiece of the company’s reserve strategy.
The 210,000 BTC Goal by End-2027
Metaplanet has set a long-term target of accumulating 210,000 BTC by the end of 2027. That amount would represent roughly 1% of bitcoin’s fixed supply. Reaching that milestone would require the company to sustain a high pace of capital formation and continued execution in its bitcoin-linked income operations over the coming quarters.
The target is ambitious, especially given the scale of bitcoin required to move from 40,177 BTC to 210,000 BTC. Still, the company’s recent growth suggests that management is committed to pursuing that objective through a mix of fundraising, treasury operations, and market-based income strategies.
Share Price and Shareholder Incentives
Metaplanet shares closed at about 302 yen, or roughly $1.89, on April 2, down around 2% intraday. The decline appeared to track broader market movement rather than reflect a distinct negative reaction to the bitcoin purchase announcement.
The company has also tried to align its equity story more closely with its bitcoin narrative by offering bitcoin-linked shareholder perks. These include periodic BTC giveaways and a planned card rewards program targeting 1.6% cashback in bitcoin. Management, including Gerovich, has used social media platforms such as X to promote the strategy and to frame bitcoin as a hedge against fiat currency debasement.
Taken together, the latest purchase, the ongoing fundraising activity, and the company’s long-range target suggest that Metaplanet is not treating bitcoin as a peripheral asset. Instead, it is building a corporate model in which treasury accumulation, bitcoin-derived income, and investor positioning all reinforce one another. Whether that model can scale all the way to 210,000 BTC by the end of 2027 will depend on continued access to capital and the company’s ability to keep executing in a volatile market.