Bitcoin treasury Twenty One Capital has named Raphael Zagury as its chief executive officer, a leadership change that arrives seven months after the firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Zagury succeeds founder Jack Mallers, who is stepping down to focus on his Bitcoin payments company, Strike.
Speaking on the transition, Mallers said, “I’m grateful to everyone at XXI and everyone who believed in what we built,” said Jack Mallers. “Serving Bitcoiners has always been the mission, and that doesn’t change. Strike is where I carry it forward.”
Austin, Texas-based Twenty One, which trades under the ticker “XXI” on the NYSE, said it would focus on becoming an institutional-grade operating company that’s judged on cash flow generation and capital allocation discipline, not just its Bitcoin holdings.
It added that it would build and acquire high-quality operating businesses that “leverage Twenty One’s balance sheet while maintaining disciplined capital allocation at the parent company and create a long-term ownership model inspired by Berkshire Hathaway.”
“My job is to build the operating company around [Twenty One], with the discipline, governance, and executional rigor of an institution,” Zagury said in a statement. “I believe our business will perform best when we also focus on the cash flow we generate and the rigor with which we allocate capital, not only by the Bitcoin we hold.”
Mallers leaves XXI
The firm, the product of a joint effort by Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank, is the second biggest public Bitcoin treasury, according to Bitcointreasuries.net, with a total of 43,514 coins — or $2.8 billion in Bitcoin at today’s prices.
It debuted last year through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, a blank check company affiliated with financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
“XXI was built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners. During my role as CEO, we defined a vision for a Bitcoin-native financial enterprise. As I focus my efforts fully at Strike, I look forward to watching the next phase of growth at XXI,” Mallers said.
The companies behind it are a mix of traditional finance giants and crypto companies: Tether is the biggest issuer of stablecoins and Bitfinex is a crypto exchange. SoftBank is a Japanese multinational investment holding company and Cantor Fitzgerald is a Wall Street firm previously headed up by U.S. President Donald Trump ally and Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick.
Zagury founded and leads the team behind Elektron Energy, a large-scale Bitcoin mining and infrastructure business.
Before that, he held roles as a managing director at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, and as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. He also co-founded OpenCo, at one point among Brazil’s largest fintech lenders.
The change at the top comes with a shift in deal strategy. In April, Twenty One had floated a plan to consolidate the firm, Strike, and Bitcoin miner Elektron Energy into a single Bitcoin-native platform spanning financial services, mining infrastructure, capital markets, and treasury. Twenty One confirmed that Strike will now remain a standalone business and is out of the running for a merger.
According to Bloomberg reporting, that deal has been scrapped.
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