Jack Mallers Quits Twenty One Capital as Tether's Bitcoin Merger Collapses
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- Jack Mallers resigned as CEO of Twenty One Capital to return to Bitcoin payments firm Strike, which will remain a standalone company; Mallers posted on X that "my life's work remains Bitcoin. My Bitcoin company is Strike."
- Tether's plan to merge Twenty One, Strike, and Elektron Energy into a single publicly traded Bitcoin company has been abandoned, per Bloomberg; Twenty One and Elektron remain in early discussions about a separate two-way deal.
- XXI shares fell nearly 18% on Tuesday, extending a decline of more than 80% from last year's highs—the stock has ranged from a 52-week high of $31.51 to a low of $4.81.
- Twenty One still holds 43,514 BTC on its balance sheet—worth more than $4 billion at current prices—ranking it second among public companies for Bitcoin holdings behind Michael Saylor's Strategy.
- Raphael Zagury, founder of Elektron Energy and a former vice president at Goldman Sachs, has been named new CEO, saying Twenty One "should be measured by the cash flow it generates and the discipline with which it allocates capital"—a sharp pivot away from Mallers' aggressive accumulation ethos.
- The company listed on the NYSE in December 2025 through a SPAC merger co-founded by Mallers and Tether; in May 2026, Tether bought out SoftBank's roughly 25% stake, a position the Japanese firm had originally acquired for $999.3 million.
Why it matters: Twenty One still holds 43,514 BTC worth more than $4 billion but is pivoting from Mallers' aggressive accumulation to Zagury's cash-flow discipline—a philosophical reset that mirrors the institutional discipline long associated with Strategy. The failed three-way merger kills Tether's ambition to consolidate Bitcoin mining, payments, and treasury operations under one stock, while the 80%+ slide from the $31.51 high shows the market had already been losing confidence before Mallers' exit.
