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  • 💥 Live by the mNAV, Die by the mNAV? 🇯🇵 The Metaplanet Story: From Crisis to a Bitcoin Standard 🚨 Strategy Raises $2.47B with Launch of STRC Preferred Stock

💥 Live by the mNAV, Die by the mNAV? 🇯🇵 The Metaplanet Story: From Crisis to a Bitcoin Standard 🚨 Strategy Raises $2.47B with Launch of STRC Preferred Stock

G’day Bitcoiner,

Here’s the week in Bitcoin treasuries.

💥 Live by the mNAV, Die by the mNAV?

🇯🇵 The Metaplanet Story: From Crisis to a Bitcoin Standard

🚨 Strategy Raises $2.47B with Launch of STRC Preferred Stock

💥 Live by the mNAV, Die by the mNAV?

Bitcoin Treasury Companies: Ticking Time Bomb or Balance Sheet Breakthrough?

“Some of these guys are LARPing as Strategy. That doesn’t make it so.”
— @Checkmatey

Bitcoin treasury companies - led by Strategy, Metaplanet, and now dozens of new entrants - are quickly becoming one of the most polarizing narratives in Bitcoin.

These are companies that hold Bitcoin on their balance sheets, often trade at a premium to their BTC per share, and use that premium to issue equity, buy more BTC, and repeat the cycle.

Is this brilliant financial engineering? Or just 1929-style reflexivity all over again?

The debate exploded on X this week - with @Checkmatey, @adam3us, @PunterJeff, and Be Water offering deep and sometimes opposing takes.

mNAV - market-value net asset value - is the ratio of a company’s market cap to the value of its BTC holdings.

Example:
If a company holds $100 in BTC per share and trades at $200, it’s valued at 2x mNAV.

That enables the company to:

  • Issue stock at $200

  • Buy BTC at $100

  • Increase BTC per share - a reflexively bullish, accretive trade

As long as the premium holds, it’s a flywheel.
If it breaks, it can be a feedback loop in reverse.

⚠️ Checkmatey: “You’re not Saylor. Stop pretending.”

@Checkmatey launched the first volley:

“My concerns relate to the vast majority of the TCos pretending to be Saylor, but without the liquid deep markets for their debt and options to back it up.”

“LARPing as Strategy doesn’t make it so.”

He clarified that he’s long and constructive on Strategy, but warned that many new entrants are taking on debt backed by BTC holdings without cash-generating businesses or robust capital stack flexibility.

That’s a problem in a bear market.

“Interest payments don’t care about narratives.”

The leading treasury companies like MSTR and Metaplanet currently have:

  • Strong, low debt-to-equity balance sheets

  • Cash flow–generating businesses

Only MSTR has weathered a full Bitcoin bear market. The rest? Still untested.

🧙 Adam Back: “This is a $200T arbitrage.”

Blockstream CEO @adam3us weighed in:

“It’s not a bubble - it’s a structural arbitrage opportunity.”

He sees BTC treasury companies as part of the global repricing of money - a $200T+ rotation from fiat collateral to hard assets.

His view: Use the arbitrage. Ride the wave. The system is being rebuilt in real time.

🧠 Jeff Walton: “Bitcoin treasury companies are 21st century insurers.”

@PunterJeff offered an even broader frame:

His argument:

  • Bitcoin is pristine collateral

  • Treasury companies are building balance sheet strength

  • They’re not chasing yield - they’re preserving solvency

“Balance sheet financial strength > expectation of future cash flows.”

For Jeff, BTC TreasCos are not memes - they’re institutional insurance architecture for the digital age.

🚀 Dot-Com Deja Vu or the $11 Trillion Bitcoin Boom?

Enter American HODL.

He made one of the boldest claims yet:

He’s not talking about retail mania. He’s talking about an institutional, balance-sheet-driven melt-up - where corporations, pension funds, and sovereigns compete to acquire the world’s only digital monetary asset with absolute scarcity. $11 trillion of capital chasing Bitcoin.

Is this hyperbole? Maybe. But some serious analysts don’t think so.

🔍 InvestAnswers chimed in:

📚 Be Water: “This is the 1929 investment trust bubble - with memes.”

The Be Water team, through their Speculative Attack trilogy, made the boldest historical comparison:

“Today’s BTC treasury companies are modern-day versions of 1920s investment trusts — reflexive, premium-fuelled vehicles that can collapse just as fast as they rise.”

They point to:

  • mNAV premiums

  • Accretive issuance

  • Leverage

  • Sentiment-based valuations

  • And fragile capital structures

They draw a direct line from Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation (1929) to today’s BTC treasuries.

But here’s the catch…

🧾 Not So Fast — There’s One Crucial Difference

Be Water’s comparison may be instructive - but not fully fair.

Unlike the trusts of 1929, Bitcoin treasury companies are not layering leverage on equity-on-equity speculation. They are leveraging the most pristine collateral ever known: Bitcoin.

There is no holding company pyramid scheme. No synthetic ETFs. No rehypothecated sub-assets - that we know of!

BTC treasury companies are often simple: equity + BTC + (sometimes) debt. And in the case of Strategy and Metaplanet — very conservative debt-to-equity ratios.

The risk lies not in the concept, but in execution.

When newer entrants take on aggressive debt, with limited liquidity, no operating revenue, and BTC-backed margin risk — the structure becomes fragile.

That’s where the 1929 parallels get dangerous.

So yes - history may rhyme.

But Bitcoin isn’t a 1929 investment trust. It’s scarce, self-custodied, and incorruptible.

The real question is whether today’s BTC treasury companies understand what they’re holding - and structure accordingly.

Short ₿its 🌟

🇯🇵 The Metaplanet Story: From Crisis to a Bitcoin Standard
Once on the brink, Metaplanet reinvented itself with a Bitcoin treasury strategy - transforming a balance sheet crisis into a blueprint for corporate financial resilience. Now, it's Japan’s MicroStrategy-in-the-making. Deep dive on the Metaplanet story by Leon Wankum

🚨 Strategy Raises $2.47B with Launch of STRC Preferred Stock

Strategy (MSTR) has priced its new STRC perpetual preferred stock at $90 per share, raising $2.47 billion to fuel further Bitcoin acquisitions and bolster its war chest. With a 9% initial dividend and a flexible rate structure, STRC gives Strategy a new lever to scale its Bitcoin balance sheet — while keeping shareholders close to par.

🇯🇵 Another One: Kitabo Adds Bitcoin to Its Balance Sheet
70-year-old textile firm Kitabo is pivoting from thread to digital gold, allocating ¥800M ($5.4M) to Bitcoin as part of a full-scale treasury reset. Citing years of financial strain, Kitabo joins Japan’s growing corporate wave following the “Strategy strategy” pioneered by Metaplanet. Cross-border payments, lending yield, and currency hedging? Kitabo’s spinning a whole new yarn.

🇬🇧 The Smarter Web Company just scooped up 225 more BTC  - adding $26.4M to its stack at an average of $118K per coin. With 1,825 BTC now on the books, the UK firm ranks 26th globally among public Bitcoin holders. They've still got £1M in dry powder ready to deploy.

📊 Semler Scientific Adds 175 BTC and Unveils Bitcoin Dashboard
Semler just boosted its treasury to 5,021 BTC with a $20.8M purchase - funded via ATM equity sales—at an average of $119K per coin. With a 31.3% BTC yield YTD and nearly $119M in unrealized gains, Semler is making its Bitcoin strategy radically transparent with a new public dashboard.

Tweet of The Week

Podcast of The Week

🎙️ Bitcoin Treasuries in the Spotlight
In the latest Bitcoin Mastermind with Joe Carlasare, Jeff Ross, and American HODL, Preston Pysh dives deep into Q2’s rally, the evolving role of Bitcoin Treasury companies, and how global liquidity and leverage shape BTC’s price action. From macro forces to stablecoin regulation, this is essential listening for anyone tracking Bitcoin’s growing presence on corporate balance sheets.

If you have questions about how Bitcoin could help you or your business, please don’t hesitate to reach out for a free 30-minute consultation 🕒. We're here to help you navigate the future of Bitcoin 💡

Thanks for reading! We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s edition and look forward to seeing you next week! 👋


Daniel 

for Bitcoin on Balance

32 York Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia