Twenty One Capital ($XXI) Slumps 20% On Debut As Strive Plans $500M Offering To Buy More Bitcoin

Bitcoin treasury firm Twenty One Capital ($XXI) plummeted 20% during its first day of trading yesterday as Strive launched a $500 million preferred stock offering to acquire more BTC. 

With backing from stablecoin issuer Tether, Bitfinex and Japan’s Softbank Group, Twenty One Capital was one of the most anticipated public debuts in the crypto sector this year.

Twenty One Capital share price (Source: Yahoo Finance)

The company was listed via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) merger with Cantor Equity Partners and installed Strike founder Jack Mallers as CEO. It regained some lost ground in after-hours trading with a 4.4% pump

Twenty One Capital “Not A Treasury”

While it has been in the digital asset treasury (DAT) market for less than a year, the company is already ranked as the third-largest corporate BTC holder globally. 

Twenty One Capital BTC holdings (Source: Bitcoin Treasuries)

According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, it holds 43,514 BTC on its balance sheet, ranking it just below crypto miner MARA Holdings and corporate crypto treasury giant Strategy. 

Even with its substantial BTC holdings, Mallers told CNBC in a Dec. 9 interview that the company is “not a treasury.” 

“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.

The CEO stopped short of sharing Twenty One Capital’s exact plans, but did say that he sees “many opportunities in brokerage, exchange, credit and lending.”

When pressed for more information, Mallers said that the plans will be announced “sooner rather than later.” 

Strive Announces $500M Offering To Buy More Bitcoin

While Twenty One Capital tries to recover from a rocky debut, Strive has announced a $500 million stock sales program to double down on its Bitcoin-purchasing strategy.

The publicly traded asset manager and Bitcoin treasury company was co-founded in 2022 by American entrepreneur and politician Vivek Ramaswamy.

In a Dec. 9 statement, Strive said that it intends to use the net proceeds from the sale for “general corporate purposes.” This includes, among other things, “the acquisition of Bitcoin and Bitcoin-related products and for working capital.” 

Strive is currently the 14th-largest corporate BTC holder with 7,525 coins on its balance sheet.

Similar to Twenty One Capital, Strive entered the DAT space this year after it announced a pivot to a BTC treasury through a public reverse merger in May. Strive agreed to acquire Semler Scientific in September, which positioned it as one of the largest corporate holders of BTC. 

Saylor Pitches $50 Trillion Plan To UAE

Both Twenty One Capital and Strive are following the Bitcoin-buying same playbook pioneer by Michael Saylor’s Strategy, which started acquiring Bitcoin in 2020 through a variety of debt financing instruments.

Earlier this week, Saylor proposed digital banking products that he believes could lead to up to $50 trillion in capital inflows. 

Speaking at the Bitcoin MENA event in Abu Dhabi, Saylor said that countries could use overcollateralized BTC reserves and tokenized credit instruments to create regulated digital bank accounts, which he says will be able to offer higher yields than traditional deposits. 

He outlined a structure in which digital credit instruments would make up roughly 80% of a fund that the products would be tied to. This would then be combined with a 20% allocation to fiat currency and a 10% reserve buffer to help reduce volatility, he said.