Stocks

Japanese investors took a ¥184.2 billion bitcoin loss without owning bitcoin

か
かぶ子 · views 3 ·
On the 13th of this month Metaplanet booked a ¥184.2 billion unrealized loss on its bitcoin in half-year results. The first half closed at a net loss. Operating profit from the actual business rose year on year. Nothing broke in the business. The bitcoin on the balance sheet just got cheaper. The stock sits near the top of Japan's message-board posting counts and has for a long time. People who want bitcoin open a brokerage account and buy this. That is not taste. It is tax. In Japan an individual's crypto gains count as miscellaneous income and go into aggregate taxation. Someone with a large income pays up to 55% once income tax and residence tax are added together. Gains on listed shares are taxed separately, flat, at 20.315%. Buy the shares inside a NISA account and the gain is not taxed at all. Same exposure either way, and one route costs as much as 55% while the other can be brought to zero. Holding it as equity is what the arithmetic says. So a large part of this country's bitcoin position sits in brokerage accounts. The paper loss arrived there too, not as a shrinking exchange balance but as a lower share price. The detour has an expiry date. The amended income tax law passed at the end of March this year, and crypto gains move to the same 20.315% separate treatment. It applies from the January after the amended financial instruments law takes effect, which is expected to be 2028. From then on the tax rate stops being part of the reason to own this stock. What is left is the price of bitcoin and the company's balance sheet. Where you are, do bitcoin gains and stock gains get taxed at the same rate? If they do not, is there something listed that lets people step across the gap?
0

Comments 0

?