Bitcoin Japan, a subsidiary of the Asian answer to strategy Metaplanet, announced that it has entered into a financing agreement to begin purchasing the leading cryptocurrency for its treasury.
The Tokyo-based publicly listed company said on Thursday that it had agreed to a convertible bond deal with EVO Fund to raise 9.66 billion yen ($59.5 million). The deal will see the company spend more than 662 million yen – or more than $4 million – on its first Bitcoin transaction.
Bitcoin Japan works on bitcoin-related media, data platforms and events to promote understanding of Japan’s leading cryptocurrency and “contribute to the development of its ecosystem globally,” according to its website.
Its parent company, Metaplanet, is a publicly traded company that follows in the footsteps of Nasdaq-listed Strategy — formerly MicroStrategy — by purchasing Bitcoin and holding it on its balance sheet. I started buying the asset for the first time in 2024.
Metaplanet is one of the largest Bitcoin vaults in the world, with 43,000 cryptocurrencies worth more than $2.8 billion in its vaults. Its stock is currently down more than 50% year to date.
Treasury problems
Bitcoin Japan’s announcement comes at a time when treasury companies are seeing their shares decline. Last year, the business model of buying and holding Bitcoin and other digital assets with excess funds suffered from falling cryptocurrency prices.
Strategy, the largest and oldest Bitcoin treasury, has seen its Nasdaq-listed shares plummet by nearly 80% over the past year.
Publicly traded companies in 2025 were quick to announce their purchases of digital assets in hopes of boosting their stock prices. This strategy worked, but since the market decline, a number of companies in this space were forced to sell part of their holdings as the price of Bitcoin fell.
But companies are still accumulating during the downturn — and companies like Bitcoin Japan see the current market price of the leading asset as an opportunity to start a crypto treasury.
Regulatory push
While Japan has long been a hub for crypto enthusiasts — former major bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox was based in Tokyo before the 2014 hack and subsequent closure — lawmakers are now working to regulate the asset class.
Japan’s parliament last week passed an amendment to the law to designate crypto assets as “financial assets,” making the assets subject to stricter regulations, ultimately paving the way for products like Bitcoin exchange-traded funds to debut in the Asian country.
The regulation is likely to enter into force within a year, according to Reuters I mentionedQuoted from NHK News.
