Metaplanet, an investment firm based in Japan, has experienced a surge in its shares, rising by 158% in the past week and becoming the top gainer among Japanese stocks. Currently priced at 93 Japanese yen, the share price has increased by 127% in the last two days alone. This rapid growth has triggered circuit breaker trading halts on the Tokyo Stock Exchange multiple times within the past week. The market cap of Metaplanet is now approaching $1 billion, equivalent to 14.8 billion Japanese yen at current prices.
According to the rules of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, stocks listed with a share price below 100 Japanese yen are subject to a maximum daily increase of 30 Japanese yen. Metaplanet has exceeded this limit for two consecutive days. Dylan LeClair, the firm’s Director of Bitcoin Strategy, acknowledged this impressive performance, stating that Metaplanet has been the best-performing stock in Japan for two consecutive days.
Since announcing its Bitcoin investment strategy on April 8, Metaplanet has acquired 117.7 Bitcoin, currently valued at $7.2 million. As a result, its stock has risen by 389%. Following the footsteps of MicroStrategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin shareholder, Metaplanet revealed that it intends to utilize a diverse range of capital market instruments to strategically enhance its bitcoin reserves, as stated in a press release on May 13.
The firm’s decision to invest in Bitcoin is driven by the desire to mitigate the impact of Japan’s escalating debt burden and the rapid depreciation of the Japanese yen. Metaplanet views this move as a direct response to the persistent economic pressures in Japan, such as high government debt levels, prolonged periods of negative real interest rates, and the resulting weakness of the yen. Metaplanet emphasized that Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio of 261% is the highest among developed countries, while the Japanese yen has depreciated by over 34% against the US dollar since the beginning of 2021. In contrast, Bitcoin has witnessed a nearly 190% increase against the Japanese yen in the past year.
It is important to note that Metaplanet is currently only available for trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, limiting access for US investors. However, Arnab Naskar, one of the founders of security token platform STOKR, has expressed an intention to tokenize Metaplanet shares on the Bitcoin layer-2 network Liquid, similar to how MicroStrategy stock has been tokenized.
Source:
Arnab Naskar
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