Metaplanet Cuts Series 10 Share Pool by 41%, Erasing $220M in Warrant Value

Metaplanet is cutting the potential share count under its Series 10 stock acquisition rights by 41%, from 319.464 million to 188.19 million shares, according to a Friday X post from chief executive Simon Gerovich. The Japanese Bitcoin treasury company is also scrapping a plan to hand up to 90,000 of those rights to a long-term employee incentive vehicle. Both the size of the cut and the withdrawal of the employee grant are confirmed independently by The Block and Cointelegraph, which cited the same CEO statement.

The mechanism behind the reduction is a reset of the conversion ratio from 1:696 back to 1:410, the level in place before Metaplanet’s September 2025 international share offering. Shares already issued through prior exercises stay in shareholders’ hands; the cut applies only to shares available through future exercises. Gerovich said the change extinguishes more than $220 million in warrant value and lifts the company’s Bitcoin holdings per fully diluted share by roughly 8.8%.

What triggered the reversal

The option pool had grown from 46 million shares to 319.5 million, a figure Metaplanet fixed on August 18. Some shareholders pushed the company to cancel all 273 million of the additional potential shares created by that expansion, arguing the dilution was excessive relative to the company’s Bitcoin treasury strategy.

Metaplanet’s response goes beyond the headline cut. All unvested rights now face tighter exercise restrictions, vesting in three equal tranches across 2029, 2030 and 2031. The company also said it will build a new executive compensation program with a global compensation consultant, replacing the withdrawn employee warrant scheme entirely rather than adjusting it.

VanEck’s head of digital asset research, Matthew Sigel, called the adjustment a “meaningful concession” that better aligns management with shareholders, according to his own Friday X post cited by Cointelegraph. Gerovich’s history with the pool is part of the backdrop: on August 31 Metaplanet disclosed that he personally exercised rights to acquire 92,000 shares under Series 10, and said he recused himself from the board’s deliberations on the broader changes.

What’s confirmed and what isn’t yet

The 41% pool cut, the scrapped employee grant and the new vesting schedule appear across both outlets tracking this story, which is the bar Cryptaur treats as corroborated. Two figures sit outside that overlap. The Block reported that Metaplanet shares fell about 17% over two trading sessions this week, a data point not independently repeated in Cointelegraph’s account and worth flagging as single-sourced for now. Cointelegraph separately reported that Metaplanet plans to form a $1 million Hong Kong subsidiary for trading in Bitcoin, equities and credit products, a detail that does not appear in the visible summary from The Block.

Neither gap changes the core of the story. It means readers should treat the pool restructuring as verified fact and the stock-drop figure and the Hong Kong subsidiary plan as reported by one outlet each, pending further confirmation.

Why the ratio reset matters for holders

For shareholders tracking Metaplanet as a Bitcoin proxy, the metric that matters is Bitcoin per fully diluted share, since that figure determines how much BTC exposure each share ultimately represents once all outstanding rights are exercised. An 8.8% increase in that ratio, if it holds through the 2029-2031 vesting window, directly reduces the dilution overhang that had drawn shareholder objections since the pool’s expansion was fixed on August 18.

The next scheduled test of the new terms comes when the first tranche of restricted rights becomes exercisable in 2029.

Sources

• theblock.co
• cointelegraph.com