Twenty One Capital has named Raphael Zagury its new chief executive officer, marking a leadership change seven months after the Bitcoin treasury company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
Zagury replaces founder Jack Mallers, who is stepping down to focus on Strike, his Bitcoin payments company.
Commenting on the transition, Mallers said: “I’m grateful to everyone at XXI and everyone who believed in what we built. Serving Bitcoiners has always been the mission, and that doesn’t change. Strike is where I carry it forward.”
Twenty One, based in Austin, Texas and trading on the NYSE under the ticker XXI, said it plans to focus on becoming an institutional-grade operating company. The company said it wants to be evaluated on cash flow generation and capital allocation discipline, not only on the amount of Bitcoin it holds.
It also said it intends to 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.”
In a statement, Zagury said: “My job is to build the operating company around [Twenty One], with the discipline, governance, and executional rigor of an institution. 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 exits XXI
According to Bitcointreasuries.net, the company is the second-largest public Bitcoin treasury. Twenty One was created through a joint effort involving Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank, and it holds 43,514 BTC, worth about $2.8 billion at current prices.
Twenty One debuted last year through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners, a blank-check company affiliated with financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald.
Mallers said: “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.”
The backers behind the company span both traditional finance and crypto. Tether is the largest stablecoin issuer, Bitfinex is a crypto exchange, SoftBank is a Japanese multinational investment holding company, and Cantor Fitzgerald is a Wall Street firm previously led by Howard Lutnick, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump and the current U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Zagury background and strategy shift
Zagury founded and leads the team behind Elektron Energy, a large-scale Bitcoin mining and infrastructure business. Earlier in his career, he served as a managing director at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, and as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. He also co-founded OpenCo, which at one point ranked among Brazil’s largest fintech lenders.
The leadership change also arrives with a change in deal strategy. In April, Twenty One floated a plan to combine the firm, Strike, and Elektron Energy into a single Bitcoin-native platform covering financial services, mining infrastructure, capital markets, and treasury operations.
According to Bloomberg, that deal has been scrapped. Twenty One also confirmed that Strike will remain a standalone business and is no longer part of any merger plan.
The story was first published by Bitcoin Magazine and written by Mathew Di Salvo and Micah Zimmerman.