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Metaplanet Sets $1.45B Share Sale to Fund Bitcoin Purchases, Treasury Shift

by admin September 10, 2025

In brief

Metaplanet has finalized a $1.45 billion international share sale on Sept. 10.
Most of the proceeds are allocated to Bitcoin purchases and income-generation operations.
The company now holds 20,136 BTC worth $2.25 billion, making it the sixth-largest public corporate holder globally.

Metaplanet is betting bigger on Bitcoin.

The Tokyo-listed firm has locked in a $1.45 billion share sale on Tuesday, marking one of Japan’s largest corporate treasury shifts to date.

Formally priced at ¥553 per share ($3.73), the international share offering will issue 385 million shares, raising a total of ¥212.9 billion ($1.45 billion).

Net proceeds of ¥204.1 billion ($1.39 billion) are allocated almost entirely to Bitcoin, with ¥183.7 billion ($1.25 billion) set for purchases and ¥20.4 billion ($139 million) for income-generation operations, according to a notice determining the issue price.

In the same notice, the company reiterated its rationale for buying Bitcoin, pointing to “elevated levels of national debt, prolonged real negative interest rates, and an ongoing depreciation of the yen” as primary factors that motivated it to begin stacking the alpha crypto in April last year.

The share sale follows a September 1 shareholder vote in Tokyo that approved an overseas issuance of up to 550 million new shares, alongside preferred stock, after Metaplanet’s share price had dropped 54% since mid-June.

The latest filing finalizes the terms of that plan, shifting it from shareholder authorization to formal execution, thereby closing a turbulent summer of financing pressures and a collapsing share price.

Metaplanet currently holds 20,136 BTC valued at about $2.25 billion, following its latest purchase of 136 Bitcoin disclosed earlier this week.

Its holdings position it as the sixth-largest public corporate holder of Bitcoin worldwide, ranking behind Strategy, Marathon, and Twenty One, but ahead of Tesla, Coinbase, and the Trump Media & Technology Group.

While still behind others, Metaplanet’s move emerges as a “signal from Japan that corporate Bitcoin adoption is spreading globally, not just in the U.S.,” Dan Dadybayo, research and strategy lead at Unstoppable Wallet, told Decrypt.

Corporate Bitcoin treasuries are “shifting from experiment to mainstream balance-sheet strategy,” Dadybayo said, adding that with “new accounting rules and ETF normalization,” he expects public companies to hold “over 1 million BTC by year-end.”

Further on by 2027, Dadybayo said more firms “could follow treating Bitcoin as digital gold.”

“All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which has become the company’s most profitable ETF, generating more fee revenue than even its S&P 500 flagship (IVV),” he noted, sharing that IBIT is also the “fastest-growing ETF in history,” after hitting over $80 billion in assets under management, in just over a year of inflows tracking over $52 billion.

With terms now set for execution, the scale of Metaplanet’s raise cements its place in the global conversation on Bitcoin.

“From pension funds to hedge funds, the direction of travel is clear: a deeper integration of Bitcoin into traditional finance,” Dadybayo said.

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September 10, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Epic finally revokes fraudulent V-Buck purchases on Xbox, but a “malfunctioning” refund system only causes more confusion

by admin September 7, 2025

Epic Games has sped up repercussions for Fortnite players who used V-Bucks and refunded them through an exploit on Xbox, essentially getting the in-game currency for free.

As we moved into the weekend, the studio said it had now “fixed a delay” and would be claiming back any items that were bought through currency that had been refunded on Xbox or previously gifted from fraudulent accounts.

Acknowledging the system it uses to revoke items on Xbox between December 2024 and July 2025 “malfunctioned”, the company warned some players “may now see a message that their payment was reversed or refunded and see recent items have been removed, even from transactions from several months ago”.

Thank You, Drive Through. Beavis and Butt-Head Are in the Shop!Watch on YouTube

It comes after some Xbox players abused an exploit through which they could buy V-Bucks through Microsoft, apply them to their accounts, and then refund them.

After clarifying this “does not affect regular purchases on Xbox or any other platform that weren’t refunded”, the Fortnite Status X/Twitter account added:

Update on Xbox refund issue:

Ordinarily, when a player receives a refund of a real-money Fortnite purchase, the purchased items are removed from their account. When V-Bucks are purchased, spent, and refunded, causing the player’s V-Bucks balance to go negative, items most…

— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) September 6, 2025

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“Ordinarily, when a player receives a refund of a real-money Fortnite purchase, the purchased items are removed from their account,” Epic explained. “When V-Bucks are purchased, spent, and refunded, causing the player’s V-Bucks balance to go negative, items most recently purchased and gifted with the refunded V-Bucks are removed from the player’s account and the gift recipient’s account.

“Unfortunately, the system we built for this malfunctioned on Xbox between December 2024 and July 2025. During this time, players were receiving refunds, but the refunded V-Bucks and items purchased with refunded V-Bucks remained in the player’s account and gift recipient accounts.”

While Epic accepts that over this period most players “continued using purchasing and refunding in good faith as usual”, some “exploited the situation to make large numbers of purchases, often with many accounts. Some even set up shops to accept payments from players and gifted them items purchased with refunded V-Bucks”.

It’s taken so long to sort the issue, however, that when Epic began processing back-dated refund requests on Xbox on 4th September and confusing players, it’s now “making a correction to distinguish between accounts that made ordinary refund requests, and accounts exploiting the refund system”.

“We’re restoring the items that were removed earlier this week for players who made less than 7 refunds since Dec 2024. It was our fault that we didn’t update the V-Bucks balance in their account immediately as we should have. This will take a few days,” Epic conceded.

“The removed items will stay removed for anyone who received 7 or more refunds, and for items received through gifting from players who made 7 or more refunds during this time. This is the ordinary approach to refunds from our terms of service, and these item purchases were taking advantage of an exploit with the V-Bucks refund system.”

Epic Games recently claimed the return of Fortnite to iOS in the UK is “uncertain” as it’s been unable to bring the Epic Games Store to iOS this year, “if ever”, after the CMA – the UK’s competition regulator – has “deprioritised store competition entirely”, following the lengthy legal battle between Epic and Apple.

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September 7, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Reddit Erupts After Epic Games Belatedly Claws Back “Fraudulent” Fortnite Purchases

by admin September 5, 2025

The Fortnite Battle Royale subreddit caught fire Thursday night as many people reported that they were greeted with a pretty upsetting prompt when they logged into Fortnite, with the game telling them they’d had cosmetic items and/or V-Bucks revoked from their accounts. It was an unusual situation because it happened to so many different people at once, and in some cases removed items that the player had for months. When Epic Games finally commented about the situation on Friday morning, it said the revocations were correct and that there was a bug on Xbox specifically that prevented them from making this fix before now.

We’ve fixed a delay where items that were refunded on Xbox or previously gifted from fraudulent accounts were not immediately removed.
As a result, some players may now see a message that their payment was reversed or refunded and see recent items have been removed, even from…

— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) September 5, 2025

The situation sparked dozens of Reddit threads on Thursday night and Friday morning before Epic publicly acknowledged what was going on. There are still others in these threads and in the replies to that tweet claiming innocence, or that they lost items and currency that they purchased legitimately on other platforms like PlayStation or PC. So it’s possible that this enforcement sweep has caught more players than it should have.

There are a few different scenarios in which Epic will claw back purchased items or V-Bucks, the most obvious being when a person buys V-Bucks and then refunds the purchase either through their credit card company or the platform holder–items they may have bought with those V-Bucks should be removed when the money is charged back, along with the V-Bucks themselves. Apparently, a bug caused some players to keep those V-Bucks even after they refunded them, and that’s one thing Epic is correcting now.

Other things that folks have reported doing to earn Epic’s ire include buying an account loaded with V-Bucks in order to gift items to their main account, changing their Xbox region to take advantage of lower prices in other parts of the world, and buying V-Bucks cards from grey market sellers. With Epic seemingly taking enforcement action against a lot of different people at once over months of infractions, there are many different explanations involved.

Fortnite’s FOMO-based item shop makes this situation even more awkward, because it may not possible for someone who lost some cosmetics to simply re-purchase them legitimately, since most items only appear in the shop for a few weeks per year.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

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Gaming Gear

Report shows 90% of European gaming revenue in 2024 was digital purchases, but only 15% was on PC

by admin August 30, 2025

New data shows gaming revenue has moved almost entirely to digital purchases, at least in Europe, with PC and console purchases dwarfed by mobile gaming. The 2024 All About Video Games report, published earlier this month by Video Games Europe, showed sluggish growth for PC gaming in the EU and signaled the death knell for physical game sales.

According to the report, gaming revenue overall grew 4% in 2024. An overwhelming 90% of that revenue was digital, up 5% from 2023 and bringing physical purchases down to just 10%.

For context, physical purchases made up 20% of European gaming revenue in 2020, meaning physical game sales were cut in half in just four years, including a 5% drop in the last year alone. However, it’s hard to say whether that decline is happening because gamers just prefer digital copies or because fewer games are getting released in physical format.

The shift may also be partly due to the devices people are playing on. The 2024 All About Video Games report showed that mobile gaming accounted for the largest chunk of revenue at 44%, followed by a 38% share for console purchases. PC made up just 15% of gaming revenue in Europe last year, up 1% from 2023. (The remaining 4% was or on-demand/streaming services.)

The slow growth in PC gaming revenue may be due to a 3% drop in the percentage of PC gamers in Europe. In 2023, 46% of gamers reported playing on PC, now down to just 43% in 2024. Meanwhile, console purchases decreased by 3%, despite a 3% increase in the number of Europeans saying they play on consoles.

Basically, PC gaming revenue is up despite fewer people playing on PC while, in the opposite direction, console revenue is down despite more people playing on consoles. The dip in console revenue may have contributed to 2024’s slip in physical game sales, as well.

In addition to revenue data, the All About Video Games report highlighted last year’s top-selling games in Europe: Helldivers 2, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, Command and Conquer Generals, GTA 5, EA FC 25, The Crew 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Hogwarts Legacy, EA FC 24, and Command and Conquer (Bundle). Helldivers 2 and Black Ops 6 also took top spots in Steam’s 2024 top sellers rankings.

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August 30, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Digital purchases made up 90% of European gaming revenue in 2024

by admin August 28, 2025

Gaming sector revenue grew 4% year-on-year (YoY) in 2024 in key European markets, with digital purchases accounting for 90% of total revenue, according to a new report by Video Games Europe and the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF).

The All About Video Games report, published on August 21, 2025, was compiled using data from Ipsos, Game Sales Data (GSD), and members of Video Games Europe and EGDF and examined the European gaming sector’s revenue, employment, and player numbers in 2024.

Data for this report was collected through polling, face-to-face surveys, and by GameTrack’s three key metrics: volume, demographics, and value.

Polling took place across five key European markets: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. 12,000 people were polled per country, between the ages of six and 64, equating to 60,000 people polled in total.

GSD data used in the report was gathered from Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, France, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden.

According to the report, gaming sector revenue increased by 4% in the five major European markets, rising from €25.7 billion ($29.9 billion) in 2023 to €26.8 billion ($31.2 billion) in 2024.

“Europe is now home to 6,000 studios, and 90% of our revenue is digital, highlighting the successful digital transformation of the sector” Hendrik Lesser, EGDF president

The data shows that 90% of that revenue was digital in 2024, a 5% increase YoY, while physical revenue made up 10%, a drop of 5% YoY.

“Europe is now home to 6,000 studios, and 90% of our revenue is digital, highlighting the successful digital transformation of the sector,” EGDF president Hendrik Lesser said.

“Our technologies are also driving innovation across other creative and traditional industries. We offer Europe a unique opportunity: to empower digital citizens, to grow a competitive creative economy, and to lead the global digital transition.

“We ask for recognition of our sector’s distinct needs and strategic growth potential, backed up with the right policy environment to thrive on the global stage.”

When it comes to what device European gamers are playing on, smartphones/tablets take the lead, making up 44% of revenue in 2024, up 3% YoY, and 71% of players, up 3% YoY from 68%.

While console boasts the second-highest device revenue, console revenue ultimately saw a 3% decline, dropping from 41% in 2023 to 38% in 2024. However, the number of console players has risen, up 3% YoY to 59%.

PC and on-demand/streaming revenue saw a slight increase; however, revenue rose 1% for both in 2024 (to 15% for PC and 4% for streaming). Despite this, the percentage of PC players is down 3%, from 46% in 2023 to 43% in 2024.

According to the data, European gamers played for an average of nine hours per week.

Digital revenue saw a 5% increase YoY in 2024 | Image credit: Video Games Europe

The report goes on to reveal the top three selling games for each platform in the five key markets last year. On console, EA FC 25, Call of Duty Black Ops 6, and EA FC 24 dominated, while the top-selling PC games of the year were Helldivers 2, followed by Call of Duty Black Ops 6, and Command and Conquer Generals.

The top-selling app games, on the other hand, were Coin Master, Royal Match, and Brawl Stars.

Elsewhere in the report, data showed that 54% Europeans played video games last year, rising from 124.4 billion in 2023 to 128.3 billion in 2024. Of the five major markets, Germany accounts for the largest portion of players, with 60% of the population playing games last year (35.9 million players).

According to data, 75% of video game players in Europe in 2024 were adults, with an average age of 31, representing no change from the prior year, while women made up 45% of players in Europe (a 1.5% YoY increase)

Despite the large number of layoffs we’ve seen over the last few years, the overall workforce across Europe saw a slight increase of 1.8% YoY, from 114,400 in 2023 to 116,419 in 2024. The percentage of women in the workforce also saw a small increase, from 24.4% in 2023 to 24.9% in 2024.

“Over the past five years, our sector has continued to grow, contributing to Europe’s economy and employing a highly skilled workforce,” said Video Games Europe chair Hester Woodliffe.

“With the right support from policy makers, including [the] EU’s recent skills and education strategy to close the skills gap; recognition of the value of flexible and nimble self- and co-regulation, and with support for innovation, IP creation and new business models… then our sector can aspire to lead globally.”

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August 28, 2025 0 comments