Twenty One Capital falls 20% at debut; CEO: not a treasury
Shares of Twenty One Capital (XXI) fell 20% on their debut after the Bitcoin-focused company completed a merger with blank-check firm Cantor Equity Partners.
The stock opened on Tuesday at $10.74, below the $14.27 closing price recorded on Monday for Cantor’s special purpose acquisition company prior to the merger. On Wednesday, Twenty One Capital closed at $11.42, down 19.97% over 24 hours, before rising 2.2% after-hours to $11.67. Based on outstanding shares, the company’s market capitalization was about $4 billion.
The listing was among the year’s closely watched crypto market debuts. The company is backed by stablecoin issuer Tether, crypto exchange Bitfinex and Japan’s SoftBank Group. Jack Mallers, founder and CEO of the Bitcoin platform Strike, was named Twenty One’s CEO. The firm holds over 43,500 Bitcoin valued at more than $4 billion, ranking third among public companies behind Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings, according to BitcoinTreasuries.NET.
No public operating plan yet; CEO says it’s “not a treasury”
Twenty One has not publicly detailed its operating business or launch timeline, but Mallers told CNBC that it’s “not a treasury company.” “We don’t want the market to think of us and price us as just a treasury asset,” he said. “We do have a lot of Bitcoin, but we’re also building a business.”
“We’re building an operating company, we’re bringing a lot of Bitcoin products to market with the intent to have cash flow,” Mallers said, adding he sees “many opportunities in brokerage, exchange, credit and lending.”
Mallers did not provide specifics on the planned products, saying, “These things, we’ll come out with them sooner rather than later.”
The United States has seen a wave of crypto treasury companies list this year, following a model popularized by Strategy, in which firms buy and hold crypto and raise capital to fund further purchases.
Investor interest in these holding companies rose earlier this year as Bitcoin reached a high in October, but a subsequent market pullback has weighed on shares of crypto-exposed firms.
Mallers said he expects his and Tether’s track record, along with his conviction in Bitcoin, to support Twenty One. “We see Bitcoin as the forest through the trees,” he told CNBC. “It is the opportunity, and no one is seemingly focused on it. The story of this equity is to focus solely on Bitcoin and deliver value to shareholders primarily through Bitcoin.”
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