SoftBank, one of Japan’s most powerful corporate institutions, is reportedly in talks with Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald to launch a $3 billion Bitcoin fiscal car scheduled for public listing. According to Bloomberg, the structure is expected to be capitalized in Bitcoin (rather than Fiat), with SoftBank contributing $900 million, tethering $1.5 billion and Bitfinex $600 million.
If finalized, the entity will start at about 32,000 BTC, which will be the ranking of the world’s top five Bitcoin-held public companies. This will also mark a significant expansion of the corporate strategy that has redefined capital formation: the Bitcoin fiscal model.
Why companies turn to Bitcoin
The idea of ​​holding Bitcoin on the balance sheet has gone beyond edge theory. For more and more listed companies, Bitcoin is becoming the underlying capital asset – a kind of capital that not only retains purchasing power, but also accelerates the acquisition of new forms of capital.
This shift is clearest in the case of strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which pioneered the modern Bitcoin Treasury strategy. As CEO Phong Le explained in his MIT Bitcoin Expo keynote: “We outperformed the entire Nasdaq, the entire S&P 500, the entire Mag Seven…, we outperformed the entire Bitcoin.”
The outcome of the strategy is not driven by speculative timing. They are powered by structure. The company reimagines its balance sheet as a capital engine – raising funds, deploying them to Bitcoin, and fully transparent about its holdings in a near-realistic time.
Le believes that many companies’ underperformance is not due to execution failures, but because they are still trapped in outdated financial models that are favorable to FIAT, prioritizing defensive postures, and ignoring the speed advantage of digital capital.
SoftBank follows Japan’s Bitcoin finance rising Metaplanet
While SoftBank’s potential move is attracting attention, Japan already has a benchmark.
In 2024, Metaplanet Inc. delivered one of the most compelling corporate transformations in the global market. The company was once a struggling hotel operator, involved Bitcoin treasury strategy and became the best performing stock in the world, adding 100 times the market capitalization.
Metaplanet will not only accumulate Bitcoin. It rebuilds the capital structure around it – using Bitcoin to drive debt issuance, equity increase and fiscal partial allocation. Its performance starts tracking not EPS, but BTC production: The percentage increase in Bitcoin holdings relative to fully diluted stocks.
By Q1 2025, Metaplanet’s BTC yield is 15.3%, with a target of 35% per quarter. The market response is to reposition the company’s Bitcoin per share performance.
Metaplanet proves that the Bitcoin treasury model works in Japan and can be expanded. Its success opens the door for large companies to step in further and expand their strategy.
SoftBank’s role in expanding its company’s Bitcoin treasury
SoftBank brings no novelty to this growing company category, it has a wide range of scope.
The $900 million Bitcoin distribution accounts for only $32.9 billion in cash and nearly $200 billion in net asset value, accounting for only 2.7% of SoftBank’s reserves. But through a publicly-owned company structure grown in Bitcoin, it has become a high visibility signal for global markets.
The proposed joint venture (unlike ETFs or synthetic funds) is a Bitcoin local operating company designed for the public equity market. It enables investors to obtain the risk of Bitcoin through traditional channels, while creating new opportunities for capital formation through BTC-backed financial instruments.
In Japan, this structure will also fill a key gap where there are currently no spotted bitcoin ETFs. It will become the easiest tool for Bitcoin exposure in the country.
SoftBank will not enter unknown territory. It will expand a proven institutionalized model of broader market access and deeper liquidity to enable the capital strategy that has reshape the company’s financing.
The moment of defining Bitcoin treasury strategy
If completed, SoftBank’s move would be one of the largest Bitcoin treasury deployments in the company’s history and by far the most important Bitcoin deployment.
It shows that Bitcoin is no longer an experimental reserve, it is programmable capital. It allows companies to convert idle balance sheet assets into productive strategic capital platforms.
The era of Bitcoin Treasury in the company is underway. SoftBank has a balance sheet, reputation and infrastructure that can further adopt it, thus reshaping a model that has been reshaping the capital market from the inside out.
