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Metaplanet presses ahead with bitcoin purchase plans as shares slide

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Metaplanet presses ahead with bitcoin purchase plans as shares slide

Simon Gerovich, CEO of Metaplanet (3350), doubled down on the company’s bitcoin buying strategy even as shares in Asia’s largest publicly traded holder of the cryptocurrency fell.

In a Friday post on X, Gerovich said Metaplanet would “steadily continue to accumulate bitcoin, expand revenue and prepare for the next phase of growth.” He thanked shareholders who continued to back the company despite bitcoin’s downward trend: The largest cryptocurrency has lost more than 47% of its value since touching a record high in October and fell 14% on Thursday alone.

Metaplanet’s stock has struggled alongside bitcoin, ending the week at 340 yen ($2.16) after falling roughly 82% from a high of 1,930 yen in June. On Friday, the stock fell 5.6% following bitcoin’s slump after Asian trading hours the day before.

The Tokyo-based company’s “555 Million Plan” aims to reach 100,000 BTC by the end of 2026 and 210,000 BTC by 2027. Its bitcoin holdings have climbed from 1,762 BTC at the end of 2024 to 35,102 BTC now, worth about $2.5 billion at current prices.

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The investment is deep in the red, with an average acquisition cost of about $107,000 per bitcoin, according to its analytics page, and a current price of $66,270. The company has roughly $280 million in outstanding debt, according to the dashboard.

Globally, Metaplanet ranks as the fourth-largest publicly traded holder of bitcoin. Strategy Inc. (MSTR) ranks first with 713,502 BTC, MARA Holdings (MARA) is second with 53,250 BTC and Twenty One Capital (XX1) is third with 43,514 BTC, according to bitcointreasuries.net.

Metaplanet announced Jan. 29 that it planned to raise up to 21 billion yen to fund additional bitcoin purchases and pay down debt. It plans to raise the funds through the sale of 24.53 million new common shares at 499 yen each, along with stock warrants aimed at select investors.

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Crypto World

Lido DAO Mulls $20M LDO Buyback to Boost Token Price

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Lido DAO Mulls $20M LDO Buyback to Boost Token Price

Lido’s decentralized autonomous organization is considering a one-off $20 million buyback of its governance token to address so-called price dislocation, which is at “historically depressed levels” relative to Ether, according to the DAO. 

The proposal, submitted Friday, seeks permission to swap 10,000 Lido Staked Ether (stETH) tokens, currently worth $20 million from the DAO’s treasury for Lido DAO (LDO), arguing that LDO is undervalued.

“This is not a routine fluctuation. It represents one of the most significant dislocations between LDO’s market price and its underlying protocol fundamentals in the token’s history.”

A token buyback of this size could boost the price of the token, which has fallen roughly 96% from its all-time high. In November, a Lido DAO member pitched an automated buyback mechanism for LDO to improve the token’s price. However, that proposal hasn’t been implemented.

LDO’s change in price relative to ETH since 2024. Source: Lido DAO

Lido DAO pointed out that LDO is trading at a steep discount to Ether (ETH) at a ratio of 0.00016, roughly 63% below its two-year median.

This is despite the protocol holding the top spot of the Ethereum liquid staking market, with a 23.2% share of staked Ether, according to Dune Analytics data. The protocol’s dominance has even been flagged as a centralization risk to the network in previous years.

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Share of Ethereum network validators. Source: Dune Analytics

Related: Ethereum builders propose ‘economic zone’ to tackle L2 fragmentation 

LDO is currently trading at $0.30, down 95.9% from its $7.30 high set in August 2021, according to CoinGecko data. LDO’s $255 million market cap makes it the 141st largest token by value at the time of writing.

“That dislocation is not justified by a proportional deterioration in protocol performance,” Lido DAO said. 

Lido DAO proposes buying stETH in batches

Lido DAO proposed buying up to 10,000 stETH in smaller batches of 1,000 to buy LDO. 

Lido DAO said it would use limit orders or adopt a dollar-cost averaging strategy to avoid market volatility. 

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