Tokyo-listed Metaplanet has issued its 20th series of zero-coupon ordinary bonds, raising 8 billion Japanese yen, roughly $50 million, with every yen earmarked for Bitcoin purchases, according to an April 24 regulatory filing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The entire offering was taken up by EVO FUND, the Cayman Islands-based investment arm of Evolution Financial Group and the sole subscriber to every Metaplanet bond tranche since the company pivoted to a Bitcoin treasury model in April 2024.
The bonds carry no interest, no collateral, and no guarantee, with principal repaid at par on maturity in April 2027. EVO FUND may request early redemption on five business days’ notice, and Metaplanet may redeem in part or full if it completes future financings with the same investor, turning the 20-tranche sequence into a rolling, zero-cost credit line.
The 20th bond in a relentless accumulation machine
Friday’s raise is the latest move in what has become Asia’s most aggressive corporate Bitcoin accumulation program. Metaplanet held 40,177 BTC as of March 31, 2026, a stack assembled at a cumulative cost of approximately $3.92 billion, placing it third among all publicly listed companies globally, behind Strategy and Twenty One Capital.
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In Q1 2026 alone, the firm added 5,075 BTC through two private share placements and options income from selling derivatives against its existing holdings.
Metaplanet announced the raise on its official X account: “Metaplanet Issues 8 Billion JPY in 0% Ordinary Bonds to Purchase Additional $BTC.”
Shares were down approximately 3.69% at the time of writing, per Yahoo Finance. The company said the issuance is expected to have only minimal impact on its consolidated fiscal 2026 results and pledged to disclose any material developments promptly.
From budget hotels to Bitcoin: a company reborn
Metaplanet was not always a crypto heavyweight. The company originally operated as Red Planet Japan, running a budget hotel chain across the country from 2013.
When COVID-19 devastated Japanese tourism in 2020, CEO Simon Gerovich, a former Goldman Sachs derivatives trader and a Bitcoin follower since 2012, proposed a radical pivot: liquidate the hotel portfolio, recapitalize with Bitcoin, and become Japan’s first dedicated Bitcoin treasury company.
Inspired by Michael Saylor’s playbook at MicroStrategy, now rebranded as Strategy, Metaplanet made its first Bitcoin allocation of approximately 1 billion yen ($6.5 million) in April 2024, starting with just 97.85 BTC.
The hotel subsidiary was wound down one month later. What followed was one of the fastest corporate transformations in recent Japanese market history: by the end of 2024, Metaplanet’s stock delivered more than 2,000% returns in yen terms, making it the best-performing publicly listed equity in the world that year. Revenue for fiscal 2025 surged 738% year-over-year, with Bitcoin options premium income accounting for nearly 95% of total revenue.
Buying through a $619M paper loss and short-seller pressure
The strategy has not been without pain. Bitcoin hit an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025 before retreating sharply, and Metaplanet reported a fiscal 2025 net loss of 95 billion yen ($619 million), driven almost entirely by a $666 million valuation markdown on its Bitcoin stack under Japanese accounting rules.
The company has spent periods as the most-shorted stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with short sellers questioning whether EVO FUND’s continued backing can hold as Bitcoin volatility persists.
Gerovich has consistently argued that net income is the wrong lens for a Bitcoin treasury company. His preferred metric, Bitcoin per diluted share, rose more than 500% in 2025, and the company’s equity ratio stood at 90.7% at year-end, with liabilities fully covered even under a hypothetical 86% Bitcoin price decline.
Metaplanet also secured a $500 million credit line backed by its Bitcoin holdings as a further buffer against extreme market conditions.
100,000 BTC in sight, and Japan’s macro makes the model possible
Friday’s raise brings Metaplanet one step closer to a shareholder-approved target of 100,000 BTC by end-2026 and 210,000 BTC, roughly 1% of Bitcoin’s fixed 21 million supply, by end-2027.
To support that ambition, the company recently raised approximately $255 million from global institutional investors through a separate equity placement, with fixed-strike warrants that could push total new funding to around $531 million.
The zero-interest bond structure is no accident. Japan carries a national debt-to-GDP ratio above 260%, near-zero interest rates maintained by the Bank of Japan, and a yen that has lost significant purchasing power against the US dollar in recent years.
In that environment, raising capital at 0% is structurally viable, while holding yen cash offers negligible real returns. Gerovich has framed Bitcoin as the logical hedge against Japan’s structurally broken treasury landscape, and EVO FUND, anchoring every single tranche, has now signaled that conviction 20 times over. Bitcoin was trading near $77,800 at the time of reporting.
