Another Bitcoin Treasury Is Coming To Wall Street
Key Takeaways
- Shares of Cantor Equity Partners—a blank check company headed by the son of President Trump’s commerce secretary—continued to soar after announcing plans on Wednesday to form the world’s third-largest corporate Bitcoin treasury.
- Cantor will merge with Twenty One, which will own 42,000 bitcoin and be majority-owned by stablecoin issuer Tether and its affiliated exchange Bitfinex.
- Twenty One follows in the footsteps of Michael Saylor’s Strategy, the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin.
Wall Street’s getting a new Bitcoin treasury.
Shares of Cantor Equity Partners (CEP)—a blank check company headed by Brandon Lutnick, son of President Trump’s commerce secretary—soared 50% on Thursday, a day after it announced a deal to take “Bitcoin-native” Twenty One, “a newly formed entity,” public via SPAC merger. The stock has risen more than 200% since Wednesday’s announcement.
Twenty One is expected to go public with more than 42,000 bitcoin, the third-largest corporate bitcoin treasury in the world. The company will be majority-owned by stablecoin issuer Tether and its affiliated exchange Bitfinex, which are supplying 31,500 bitcoin. Investment holding company SoftBank has agreed to purchase some of Tether’s shares to take “significant minority ownership.”
In a pitch to private investors, the company said it would “leverage its Bitcoin to generate returns for shareholders and benefit from Bitcoin’s potential for price appreciation.”
The Trump administration was one element of the company’s pitch. In March, Trump ordered the creation of a bitcoin reserve and has advocated for Congress and federal agencies to develop a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.
Twenty One follows in the footsteps of Michael Saylor’s Strategy (MSTR), formerly MicroStrategy, which in recent years has morphed from a company that makes software to a company that issues stock to collect Bitcoin. Beyond accumulating Bitcoin, Twenty One says it plans “to accelerate Bitcoin adoption” at the corporate and sovereign level through media operations and develop “Bitcoin-related financial and advisory services.”
The company will be led by Jack Mallers, the founder and CEO of Strike, a payments platform. Mallers, the company said, is “one of Bitcoin’s most influential advocates” and “was instrumental” in El Salvador’s decision to become the first country to recognize Bitcoin as fiat currency.