Public Keys: GameStop Bitcoin Flop, BlackRock ETF Euphoria and Metaplanet’s Sprint

Public Keys is a weekly roundup from Decrypt that tracks the key publicly traded crypto companies.

This week: GameStop sinks after buying a boatload of Bitcoin, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF continues flying high, and Metaplanet makes a potentially risky sprint to amass a lot of BTC very quickly.

GameStop Bitcoin flop

GameStop found out this week that sinking half a billion dollars into Bitcoin isn’t universally flattering for share prices.

The video game retailer spent $512 million on Bitcoin earlier this week, and the GME share price climbed as high as $35.78 the morning the BTC buy was announced. But it fell sharply the same day and still hasn’t recovered.

GME closed Friday at $29.80—nearly 17% lower than that short-lived Wednesday peak. Now, don’t get us wrong: The revival of Trump tariff trouble has dealt a blow to crypto assets and securities alike.

But GME was deep into its post-Bitcoin buy slide before an appeals court ruled that Trump’s tariff policies would remain in place.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter—the only Wall Streeter who still officially covers GME—told Barron’s that he’s not sold on GameStop being an attractive buy because of its Bitcoin ambitions.

“It doesn’t make sense to me that [GameStop] would be a ‘better’ steward of Bitcoin holdings,” he said.

Pachter pointed out that the retailer is in no position to weather having a large portion of its treasury sitting in a volatile asset. For example, if Bitcoin were to drop 30% to about $70,000—a price it’s seen as recently as October—that would leave GME with an unrealized loss equal to its past four quarters of operating income.

Interestingly, in April, Strive CEO Matt Cole highlighted purported infighting at GameStop over its Bitcoin strategy. But his advice that the company buy as much Bitcoin as it can, as quickly as possible, hasn’t aged particularly well.

IBIT euphoria

The BlackRock Bitcoin Trust, or IBIT, pulled in more than $6.22 billion in net deposits this month to make this its best month on record—and that’s before the closing bell has rung on the last trading day in May.

It helps, of course, that Bitcoin flirted with and then set a few new all-time high price marks.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pointed out on X that it’s not a typical trajectory for a newly launched fund.

“IBIT on fire lately, now has $72B in assets which ranks it 23rd overall, absolutely bonkers for a one-year-old,” he wrote.

The fund has been so dominant that it’s accounted for 90% of all spot Bitcoin ETF flows in the past month.

As a group, the twelve ETFs account for more than 6% of the circulating 19.8 million Bitcoin supply. But at $70.2 billion, IBIT accounts for 55% of the total $126 billion worth of assets under management by the issuers.

But the milestone underscores what critics like Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) say is a unique risk: There are only four different custodians used by the issuers to hold the Bitcoin that backs ETF shares.

“This concern is amplified by the fact that none of the custodians are banks,” he wrote in a statement in February. At the time, he cited the SEC’s recently rescinded Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121.

Despite the rule being rescinded, there hasn’t been much change in the lineup.

Many of the issuers—including BlackRock, Grayscale, WisdomTree, Franklin Templeton, and Valkyrie—use Coinbase Custody. The Invesco and Galaxy fund uses Galaxy as its custodian, but some of that BTC gets routed to Coinbase as a sub-custodian.

BlackRock added Anchorage Digital as an additional custodian for its IBIT and ETHA funds in April. Fidelity self-custodies the BTC backing shares of its Fidelity Bitcoin Trust, or FBTC, which is the next-largest fund.

Metaplanet sprints—but at what cost?

Japanese Bitcoin treasury company Metaplanet is running, not walking, towards its goal of acquiring 10,000 BTC by the end of the year. That’s over $1 billion worth at the current price.

With another buy earlier this week, Metaplanet now holds 7,800 Bitcoin.

But that has, very literally, come at a cost to the company: Its debt-to-equity ratio has climbed to 8.43, according to Reuters. For context, the same ratio for Strategy—the company it’s trying to emulate—was 0.24 as of March 2025.

There aren’t many comparisons we could make that would leave Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin juggernaut looking conservative after acquiring some $60 billion worth of BTC, but this is one of them.

If Metaplanet’s game plan works out, then it could amplify returns for investors. But if Bitcoin tanks, then it could blow up spectacularly.

Other Keys

• New HQ for COIN: San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie welcomed crypto exchange Coinbase back to the city. The crypto exchange is moving into Mission Rock after closing its headquarters four years ago because of a shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. That shift was pricey. The company revealed in a shareholder letter that it paid $25 million to exit its lease early.
• Table stakes: The SEC staff says that staking crypto to earn rewards—either directly or through a third-party custodian or protocol—does not constitute a securities offering. But as welcome as that news may be, it’s worth noting the new guidance hasn’t yet been enshrined in SEC rules. Translation: Don’t go looking for your BlackRock Ethereum Trust, or ETHA, shares to start paying staking rewards any time soon.
• Olé for alts: Newly public trading platform eToro made a dozen crypto assets available for trading, including XRP, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu. The company trades under the ETOR ticker on the Nasdaq. The company made its debut at $69.99 per share—a big bump from its IPO price of $52—but has since retraced to $59.20 by Friday’s close.

Edited by Andrew Hayward