Metaplanet, popular as Japan’s MicroStrategy, announced its decision to issue its 13th Series of Ordinary Bonds, and raise a total of $25 million for fresh Bitcoin purchases. Through its EVO FUND, the company has been periodically issuing bonds by drawing a leaf from Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin playbook. The announcement led to a quick 12% surge in the stock price during today’s trading session, moving closer to 500 JPY.
Metaplanet Prepares for Massive Bitcoin Purchases
Via its ordinary bonds, Japanese firm Metaplanet announced raising $25 million at 0% earmarked for the acquisition of Bitcoin. Redemption of the bonds will be funded through proceeds generated from the exercise of the 15th to 17th Series of Stock Acquisition Rights, reported the firm.
Furthermore, company CEO Simon Gerovich announced the company’s latest Bitcoin acquisition, revealing the purchase of 555 BTC for approximately $53.4 million at an average price of $96,134 per coin.
This addition brings the firm’s total Bitcoin holdings to 5,555 BTC, acquired at a cumulative cost of around $481.5 million, averaging $86,672 per Bitcoin. Since the beginning of 2025, Metaplanet has been on an aggressive BTC acquisition spree, moving fast and close to its target of having 10,000 BTC in treasury by the end of 2026.
Additionally, the firm is quick in its overseas expansion, opening a Miami office last week. Today’s announcement of Bitcoin purchases has led to a 12% surge in the Metaplanet stock price, which is already up by 33% since the beginning of 2025.
‘Circle is not for sale, ‘ the USDC stablecoin issuer has clarified amid the ongoing rumors of a Coinbase or Ripple buyout. While the crypto industry was recently abuzz with talks of a possible sale, the stablecoin firm has denied the report. Furthermore, it continue pursue its plans of an Initial Public Offering (IPO), and a possible listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) later this year. Circle Rejects $5 Billion Ripple Takeover Bid Previous reports suggested that blockchain firm Ripple offered $5 billion in a takeover bid for stablecoin firm Circle. However, during the negotiation process, the USDC issuer had denied the bid of $4-$5 billion from Ripple, stating that it was too low and insufficient. While Ripple reportedly remains interested in pursuing a deal, it has yet to decide on making a revised proposal. Meanwhile, the USDC issuer continues to prioritize its plans for an IPO. In… Read More at Coingape.com
The BNB Chain has officially completed the Lorentz mainnet hard fork, marking a significant technical leap forward for both BNB Smart Chain (BSC) and OpBNB.
With the upgrade, the network reduces BSC block times to 1.5 seconds, while OpBNB now boasts 0.5-second blocks. This makes it one of the fastest Layer-2 (L2) networks.
BNB Chain Completes Lorentz Hard Fork
The Lorentz upgrade is expected to significantly improve transaction confirmation speed, enable more responsive decentralized applications (dApps), and enhance the overall user experience.
“Welcome everyone to experience a faster and smoother BNB Chain,” the network stated.
The Lorentz upgrade builds on momentum from the Pascal hard fork, which laid the groundwork for this new era of performance improvements.
These upgrades aim to position BNB Chain as a top-tier ecosystem for developers and users seeking high throughput and low latency.
“Lorentz at 1.5s blocks? Solana already does 0.4s. But Maxwell is at 0.75s… BNB’s roadmap is evolution on crack,” one user quipped.
Despite this news, BNB’s price is up by a modest 0.29% in the last 24 hours. As of this writing, it was trading for $608.22.
While BNB Chain enjoys smooth progress, Ethereum’s upcoming Fusaka hard fork is mired in internal controversy. Specifically, the now-scrapped EVM Object Format (EOF) upgrade has become contentious.
Originally slated to be part of Fusaka, EOF aimed to modernize Ethereum’s virtual machine (EVM) architecture. This could make future upgrades easier and improve developer tooling.
However, in a post on Monday, April 28, Ethereum Foundation executive Tomasz Kajetan Stańczak clarified that EOF would not be part of the upcoming May 7 Pectra upgrade. Further, its inclusion in Fusaka is under debate.
“The Pectra upgrade does not include EOF, nor intended to include EOF. Everything on Pectra is going as planned for the May 7th release,” Stańczak articulated.
Fate of Ethereum’s EOF on the Balance
In a follow-up post, Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko confirmed EOF’s removal from Fusaka, citing concerns over complexity and potential delays.
“EOF was removed from the Fusaka network upgrade today,” Beiko stated.
The decision followed contentious developer calls. Strong disagreements emerged over whether the EOF was technically necessary or merely a symbolic improvement.
“EOF is probably dead due to a lack of rough consensus. This is a massive milestone… symbolic of Ethereum evolving toward maximal consideration of user impact,” said Storm, a data researcher at Paradigm.
Some developers voiced concerns that EOF added too much complexity and risked future maintainability. Others argued that dropping EOF represents a shift toward prioritizing user-centric governance over rigid adherence to prior technical roadmaps.
Supporters of EOF believe it would have made Ethereum’s core system cleaner and more modular. Such an outcome would align with the Ethereum Foundation’s broader vision of the platform as the “world computer of humanity” and an “infinite garden” that supports sustainable, decentralized growth.
Still, with Fusaka now targeted for Q3 or Q4 2025, likely in September or October, the Ethereum community will continue debating what constitutes necessary innovation versus over-engineering.
In the short term, the contrast between BNB Chain’s aggressive technical advancements and Ethereum’s philosophical debates reflects two approaches to blockchain evolution. While one focuses on speed and optimization, the other targets resilience and social consensus.
