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Metaplanet raising $3.7 billion to buy bitcoin

Meanwhile, spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $301 million in outflows in August.

At an extraordinary general meeting on Monday, Metaplanet shareholders approved three resolutions, including increasing the total number of authorized shares to 2.5 billion and new provisions for perpetual preferred shares. This will enable Metaplanet to raise up to 555 billion yen ($3.7 billion) in preferred shares and use the proceeds to acquire more bitcoin.

Metaplanet also announced it had acquired 1,009 bitcoin for $112.2 million. The Japanese company, which now holds 20,000 bitcoin, surpassed Riot Platforms, becoming the sixth-largest corporate bitcoin holder.

Despite Metaplanet’s excitement, bitcoin ETFs finished August in the red, recording outflows of $301 million for the month. Ethereum ETFs saw $3.95 billion in inflows in August as the funds picked up momentum.

There was good news for some over the Labor Day weekend, especially for one lucky solo bitcoin miner who mined block 912,632 for a $340,441 haul.

Meanwhile, other treasuries added to their reserves:

  • Michael “Whoever Gets the Most Bitcoin Wins” Saylor announced that Strategy purchased 4,048 bitcoin for $449.3 million. The largest corporate bitcoin holder now has 636,505 bitcoin acquired for $46.95 billion.

  • French semiconductor company Sequans Communications acquired 34 bitcoin, now holding 3,205 bitcoin.

  • Diversified holding company Hyperscale Data announced it will add $20 million in bitcoin to its balance sheet, partly financed from its recently announced at-the-market offering of its common stock. The company’s subsidiary, Sentinum, owns and operates a data center mining several digital assets and offers AI colocation and hosting services.

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Crypto industry lifts on news of Iran ceasefire

News of a ceasefire between the US and Iran has sent cryptocurrencies and digital asset equities rallying, with privacy-focused token Zcash jumping 27% in the last 24 hours and leading market gains.

The price swing, which helped boost the total crypto market capitalization by 4.8% in the period, has resulted in $474.7 million in short positions liquidated worldwide, data from CoinGlass shows.

Since the ceasefire was announced:

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$11.4B

The FBI revealed in a Monday press release that Americans submitted 181,565 complaints of schemes involving cryptocurrency and reported losses totaling around $11.4 billion last year, a 22% increase from 2024.

The age range most affected were people older than 60. Those in this category had the highest crypto complaint count at 44,555 with losses at $4.4 billion, per the annual report from the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a division of the FBI tasked with gathering intelligence on cybercrime.

One cybercrime the report pointed to was cryptocurrency investment fraud, which are sophisticated long-term scams using psychological manipulation, an appearance of legitimacy, and exploitation of cryptocurrencies to deceive victims into investing large sums of money. 

“These scams are largely perpetrated by organized criminal enterprises based in Southeast Asia using victims of human trafficking as forced labor to run the scam operations,” per the report. 

The FBI report comes as the crypto ecosystem is still reeling from a recent $270 million exploit that was planned six months in the making, a change from the initial estimate of multiple weeks.

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Aave sinks as another service provider leaves

The native token of the largest lending protocol in DeFi has shed roughly $163 million in market capitalization, dropping nearly 11% over the past 24 hours, after news that another service provider is leaving. 

Chaos Labs on Monday announced it was stepping down as a risk manager for the Aave DAO, citing concerns over V4 of the protocol and the recent exit of other core contributors. 

The risk management firm, which has been contributing to Aave since November 2022, decided to end its engagement with the protocol in part because of a “fundamental misalignment on how risk should be managed at Aave,” Chaos Labs CEO and founder Omer Goldberg said on X. 

The V4 protocol introduced a new smart contract code base. “When that architecture is rewritten from scratch, the risk infrastructure must follow. As a result, while the scope changed materially, the resourcing did not. Aave Labs may be comfortable with those trade-offs. We are not,” Goldberg stated.  

Chaos Labs’ termination comes after service providers Aave Chan Initiative and Bored Ghosts Developing Labs announced leaving due to centralization concerns with Aave Labs, which is headed by the protocol’s founder, Stani Kulechov. 

In response to Chaos Labs’ recent decision, Kulechov said, “There is no disruption to the Aave Protocol, its smart contracts, asset listings, or network deployments.” Kulechov added that Aave was not supportive of several elements of Chaos Labs’ initial proposal, such as a higher-risk management payment of $8 million. 

Aave has a total value locked of over $24 billion. V4 went live at the end of March and has seen around $10 million in deposits in the first week.

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