Major Bitcoin Treasury Company—Twenty One—Emerges, Fed Softens Stance on Bitcoin for Banks, Bitcoin Shows Resilience During Market Volatility
News Block #85 (04/28/2025)
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Twenty One: A New Bitcoin Treasury Company Enters the Arena
One of the big stories of the past year has been the acceleration of corporate Bitcoin adoption.
And this past week? The usual suspects were busy.
Semler Scientific scooped up another $10 million worth of Bitcoin — they now hold more than 3,300.
Metaplanet has been on an absolute buying spree — stacking nearly 500 Bitcoin this week alone and crossing the 5,000 mark.
And of course, there’s Strategy—it just added 6,556 Bitcoin for $555 million last week and announced another 15,355 Bitcoin purchase for $1.42 billion on Monday morning.
Over the last six months, Strategy has accumulated around 395,000 bitcoin. That's nearly 66,000 bitcoin per month!
To give you some perspective, the Bitcoin network is only minting about 13,500 bitcoin per month right now.
Strategy continues to stack relentlessly, regardless of price. And honestly, given all its success, it’s been surprising to see so little competition since it first adopted a Bitcoin treasury strategy.
But...I think that’s about to change.
This past week, a new large player officially entered the arena.
Last Wednesday, stablecoin giant Tether, longtime crypto exchange Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald — a leading brokerage and investment bank — and SoftBank — the $180 billion Japanese investment powerhouse — announced they’re teaming up to create a new company called Twenty One Capital, or simply Twenty One, built “to accumulate Bitcoin.”
And the company will be led by Strike CEO Jack Mallers, who has big plans for Twenty One. Listen to what he had to say about the launch on Bloomberg:
Exciting, right? So, here’s a quick breakdown of how this new company plans to create value for its shareholders.
And here is how it came together: Tether and Bitfinex, which are owned by the same parent company, will allocate 31,500 Bitcoin to Twenty One, making it the majority owner. Meanwhile, SoftBank will invest an additional $900 million, giving it a significant minority stake.
Instead of going through the long and expensive IPO process, Twenty One will merge with a Special Purpose Acquisition Company—or SPAC—called Cantor Equity Partners or CEP, which is sponsored by Cantor Fitzgerald.
Now, a SPAC is basically a blank check company—a shell corporation explicitly created to merge with a private company and take it public, skipping the drama and costs of a traditional IPO.
So by merging with CEP, Twenty One instantly becomes a public company and can start executing on the Strategy playbook — ASAP.
In addition, Cantor Fitzgerald is helping Twenty One raise another $385 million through a convertible bond offering and $200 million through a private placement—all to acquire more Bitcoin.
When all is said and done, Twenty One expects to launch with around 42,000 Bitcoin, which would immediately make it the third-largest public Bitcoin treasury in the world.
Wow — so it sounds like Strategy finally has some real competition.
Twenty One checks all the boxes:
It has Tether’s profitability and technological expertise. ✅
It has Cantor Fitzgerald’s institutional rolodex and capital markets expertise. ✅
It has SoftBank’s massive war chest and a portfolio of companies with which to collaborate. ✅
It also has Jack Mallers, the perfect leader to drive awareness and build momentum. ✅
Twenty One has a roadmap to provide Bitcoin education and content, build Bitcoin financial services, and offer Bitcoin-related lending and debt products.
So basically, it sounds like the plan is to eventually become a Bitcoin bank.
But Michael Saylor seems unfazed by the news. He even congratulated Jack Mallers on X and said during Bitwise’s Bitcoin for Corporations event: “Competition is great.”
What’s interesting is that leaked slides from Twenty One’s pitch deck show the team explicitly positioning itself as a “better Strategy.”
They describe Twenty One as a "pure-play Bitcoin-native company," purpose-built for Bitcoin investors and financial product development.
Now, I’m not sure who will ultimately have the upper hand. Strategy already has a huge headstart and the largest bitcoin treasury by far. However, Twenty One is focused purely on Bitcoin and benefits from not having the costs and overhead associated with an unrelated legacy business.
But one thing is clear: the real winners will be Bitcoin and all Bitcoiners.
We’ve already mentioned the impressive speed and scale at which Strategy has accumulated Bitcoin.
And now, with players like Twenty One entering the fray, it’s like another Strategy — or even a small nation-state — stepping into the market to start buying a lot of Bitcoin.
Sam Callahan pointed out that U.S. public companies are currently sitting on about $3.7 trillion in cash and cash equivalents — cash that is just melting away in value.
Only about 1.6% of U.S. corporate cash has been allocated to Bitcoin, and Strategy makes up more than 80% of that figure.
It just underscores how early we are in this corporate Bitcoin adoption trend.
But we could be reaching an inflection point with players like Twenty One entering the picture.
The corporate adoption race is officially on.
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Fed Withdraws Some Anti-Bitcoin Guidance for Banks
Moving on to the regulatory front, we continue to see evidence that regulators are doing a complete 180 on Bitcoin compared to the last several years.
This shift is mainly due to new leadership in the White House and within key agencies.
President Trump has appointed several pro-Bitcoin leaders, most notably the new SEC Chairman, Paul Atkins, who now takes over for Gary Gensler, who…let’s say…won't be missed by the industry.
Atkins is known for being a Bitcoin supporter, and in his first public appearance, he took the time to mention the industry. Listen to this:
Let’s take a moment to appreciate this. The head of the SEC is now promising a rational and coherent approach to digital assets and is making the development of a clear regulatory framework a “top priority.” In the past, the lack of regulatory clarity deterred investors, but now, things are becoming clearer by the day.
On top of that, we also saw a positive development from the Federal Reserve this week.
The Fed announced it’s withdrawing its guidance on crypto and stablecoin activities that previously discouraged banks from engaging with the industry. This includes rescinding a 2022 supervisory letter that effectively acted as a ban by requiring banks to notify the Fed before proceeding with crypto activities and other guidance from 2023.
With this move, all three major banking regulators—the FDIC, the OCC, and now the Fed—have removed the guidance that had hindered banks from engaging with digital assets for years. In other words, banks now have the green light to get into Bitcoin.
In the statement, the Fed wrote, “As a result, the Board will no longer expect banks to provide notification and will instead monitor banks' crypto-asset activities through the normal supervisory process.”
So, the Bitcoin industry will now be treated like any other industry, without discrimination. Well... at least that's how it reads. But not everyone is convinced.
Senator Cynthia Lummis called the Fed's actions "lip service," pointing out that, unlike the OCC and FDIC, the Fed still considers reputational risk in its supervision practices and selectively blocks access to Fed master accounts.
Custodia CEO Caitlin Long also highlighted that the Fed didn't rescind all of its anti-crypto guidance from 2023, indicating that one policy statement from January of that year remains in place that calls Bitcoin “unsafe and unsound.”
So, while this is a move in the right direction, it's not a total win. More work still needs to be done. But should we be surprised that the Fed is the last regulator still putting up barriers to Bitcoin adoption?
In a way, the Fed's failure to fully comply with Trump’s Executive Order to stop discrimination against the Bitcoin industry reveals its true feelings toward it. It’s threatened by it, and can you really blame them?
If I printed 40% of all dollars in existence in the last five years, and caused inflation to soar to multi-decade highs and credibility to sink to an all-time low, I’d feel threatened by a non-sovereign, inflation-resistant monetary alternative too.
This is especially true when many Americans are feeling the impact of their harmful policies. A recent survey from Talker Research found that nearly half of Americans have lost all hope for reaching their savings goals.
In this environment, it’s only natural for people to eventually look for better ways to store their value. With Bitcoin, we are watching free market competition return to money itself…may the best money win.
Wall Street is Taking Notice of Bitcoin’s Resilience
To wrap up this News Block, let's revisit a theme we've been exploring over the past few weeks: Bitcoin's emerging role as a safe haven asset.
Since Trump’s tariff announcements, Bitcoin has been one of the best-performing asset classes at a time when the correlations between U.S. stocks, bonds, and the dollar have reached their highest level since at least 2019.
In other words, Bitcoin has performed well when everything else went down together…a signpost that it can act as a diversifier in a portfolio.
This price action has not gone unnoticed by Wall Street. Bitcoin Munger shared a report on X from respected research firm Bernstein highlighting Bitcoin’s resilience, calling its performance “striking.”
In addition, Citigroup published a market update praising Bitcoin’s resilience during the market turmoil. It wrote, “Bitcoin's performance during certain financial-stress periods—i.e., SVB turmoil, Sept 23 U.S. bond term-premium rise, and recent market volatility—warrants attention as a potential indicator of its maturing adoption and purpose as an asset class.
Although it has only been a short period…make no mistake. This is a big deal. Right now, Bitcoin’s outperformance is flashing on every money manager’s screen and perhaps making them rethink what they thought they knew about Bitcoin.
If Bitcoin continues to outperform, expect many institutional investors to start changing their tune on this new institutional-grade asset.
Until next week, keep stacking.
- Nat
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NEW: T.J. Miller on Hollywood's Bitcoin Blind Spot, Celebrity vs Wealth, and Why There's No Second Best
Actor and comedian T.J. Miller joins Natalie in this hilarious and thought-provoking episode of Coin Stories. Topics discussed include:
How he came to learn about Bitcoin
Being married to a Bitcoin maxi
T.J.’s friendship with the Winklevoss twins, Michael Saylor, and other prominent Bitcoiners
Why haven’t other celebrities adopted Bitcoin?
The hurdle of dedicating 50+ hours to learn about Bitcoin
How broken money/fiat has impacted Hollywood and filmmaking
Make sure to listen to my latest Coin Stories episodes, including Frank Corva, John Deaton, and Becca Rubenfeld.
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Links to Items Mentioned in this Issue:
Semler Scientific Buys $10 Million Worth of Bitcoin
Metaplanet Now Holds 5,000 Bitcoin
Metaplanet Buys Another 330 Bitcoin
Strategy Buys Another $555 Million Worth of Bitcoin
Leaked Slides from Twenty One’s Pitch Deck
Leaked Slide from Twenty One’s Pitch Deck
Thread Explaining Twenty One’s Business
Paolo Ardoino’s Tweet On Twenty One
Cantor Fitzgerald Announcement of Twenty One
FT: Twenty One Capital Launches
Sam Callahan’s Post on Corporate Cash
Paul Atkins Signals Sharp Shift in SEC Policy
SEC Chair Atkins’ Comments on Digital Assets
The Fed Removes Guidance on Crypto-assets
Fed Retracts Guidance Discouraging Banks
Fed Statement on Removing Previous Guidance
Survey on Americans Giving Up On Savings
Senator Cynthia Lummis’s Tweet on Fed Actions
Fed Defies Trump and Keeps Anti-Crypto Guidance
Bloomberg: Bitcoin Acting Like a Safe Haven
Stock, Bond, and Dollar Correlation is Spiking
Citigroup’s Market Update on Bitcoin’s Resilience
Bernstein’s Market Memo on Bitcoin’s Outperformance