According to Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer, Metaplanet's recent ¥2.1 billion (approximately $13 million) acquisition of Siiibo Securities gave the company a Type-1 Financial Instrument Business Operator license, which typically takes several quarters to obtain from scratch. The market initially underestimated the deal's significance, viewing it as a modest add-on rather than a strategic foundation.
Instead of funding Metaplanet's own bitcoin purchases, the acquired brokerage will serve as the platform for "Bitbonds"—bitcoin-backed bonds yielding roughly 4% to 6% that companies can issue to finance their bitcoin treasury strategies. Metaplanet plans to eventually move these bonds onchain with stablecoin settlement and build a secondary market over the coming years. Palmer wrote that the market still prices Metaplanet as a passive bitcoin proxy while the company is preparing to bootstrap an entire capital market infrastructure around bitcoin.