Metaplanet Announces Partnership to Bring Bitcoin-Backed Digital Credit to Japan

Metaplanet wants to turn its bitcoin pile into a debt market. On Friday, the bitcoin owner of Japan’s largest company said that it has opened a joint study with three partners to create tokenized credit products backed by bitcoin, a move that pushes the company past simple fundraising and looks at the role of a financial platform.

The research group includes Metaplanet, the yen stablecoin issuer that issues JPYC, the regulated token platform Progmat, and Siiibo Securities, a licensed brokerage that Metaplanet bought last month for 2.1 billion yen, or about $13 million. Siibo becomes Metaplanet Securities on July 13.

Four firms will test whether bitcoin can serve as collateral for debt instruments that pay interest each day. Metaplanet lists this as a product available in the United States but not in Japan.

Digitization, the company said, will allow the exchange and payment of these instruments around the clock, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with rights holders at the owner level, pro-rata interest calculations handled in the software, and redemptions recorded in the public ledger.

Bitcoin-backed credit is a relatively young product category. Public companies holding bitcoin use the asset as primary collateral for debt offerings, and those offerings pay dividends or interest. The design takes a static cash balance and turns it into a cash disposal tool.

Metaplanet was tight-lipped about how fast this was. “The four companies will examine problems in product design, the need for proof-of-concept systems, and the possibility of future releases,” the company said. “At the moment, nothing has been determined about the time of release, terms, yield, product details, distribution methods, or the type of cooperation.”

Why Japan?

The pitch depends on the gap in the Japanese debt market. That market favors large companies that can float public bonds. Mid-sized and growing companies face high costs and heavy operational burdens related to issuance, sales, investor management, interest payments, and redemptions. Many of them remain closed.

Digital credit, Metaplanet says, could open the door for those small firms. The Onchain infrastructure will connect traditional capital markets with blockchain rails, cut out manual labor, and give issuers a way to raise capital that public bond sales have not provided them. If it works, the growing company in Tokyo can raise the debt on a system that lives at any hour and tracks every owner by code.

Each partner brings one piece. Metaplanet and its securities arm will design products that combine bitcoin and credit, sell them to investors, field customer inquiries, and manage the instruments after issuance.

JPYC will test whether its yen-pegged stablecoin can facilitate payments and redemptions through the system. Progmat will provide a managed token layer, which tracks ownership, transfer processes, and wires everything to a stablecoin payment system.

The division of labor maps into the full stack: issuer and licensed distributor, payment asset, and token platform.

Metaplanet’s big plan

The research is in line with a strategy the company calls Project Nova, its plan to build a bitcoin-centric financial platform in Japan. The purchase of Siiibo granted Metaplanet a Type I Financial Instruments Business Operator registration, a license required by Japan to arrange and sell financial products to retail investors.

Siiibo, founded in 2019, operates an online platform for corporate bonds and has supported more than 40 issuers across 100-plus offerings. Metaplanet benefits from that record, as well as a shareholder base of about 250,000 investors to sell to.

Simon Gerovich, president and CEO of Metaplanet, has made changes in a radical way. “We don’t view Bitcoin as a treasury stock, but as the foundation of the next generation of the financial ecosystem,” he said when Siiibo’s deal was announced.

Metaplanet holds 43,000 BTC, which is worth about $2.47 billion. Strategy and Twenty One Capital are the two public holders ranked above it.

Currently, the digital credit system is a set of questions and four companies are willing to learn it. Whether it becomes a product depends on the proof-of-concept work that remains. But the direction is clear: Metaplanet wants its bitcoin to do more than stay in balance. It wants the coin to underwrite the market.