XXI News & Events

Tether International's buyout of SoftBank's stake in Twenty One Capital reshapes the governance of the most ambitious bitcoin treasury vehicle yet assembled, concentrating control in the hands of a bitcoin-native operator as the company works toward a proposed three-way merger with Strike and Elektron Energy. Meanwhile, Nakamoto Inc. opted for the aggressive end of its board-authorized range on a reverse split needed to preserve its Nasdaq listing, BitGo Holdings brought regulated Lightning Network rails to enterprise clients. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with "Crypto Currents," daily from The Fly. Join us at 2 PM ET for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio.TETHER TIGHTENS GRIP ON XXI:Tether International, issuer of stablecoin USDT, has acquired SoftBank'sentire ownership stake in Twenty One Capital, the filing revealed. The transaction triggered the resignation of SoftBank's board representatives at Twenty One Capital, consolidating governance under Tether ahead of the company's proposed three-way merger with Strike and Elektron Energy to form what it describes as a unified bitcoin treasury, financial services, mining, lending, capital markets, and M&A platform, per. SoftBankhad been one of the marquee institutional names attached to Twenty One Capital at formation, lending the venture credibility with traditional equity investors. Its exit narrows the institutional breadth of the cap table and concentrates ownership squarely in the bitcoin-native camp, a shift that reframes Twenty One Capital as a Tether-controlled vehicle rather than a multi-stakeholder coalition. Investors tracking the emerging bitcoin treasury company category should note that Twenty One Capital's governance structure now more closely resembles that of a strategic holding company than a diversified institutional partnership.BITCOIN TREASURY GOVERNANCE:Twenty One Capital also used its announcement to outline its integrated operating strategy, describing a platform designed to combine bitcoin treasury accumulation with financial services, a lending desk, capital markets capabilities, and acquisition activity under one roof, theconfirmed. The company frames itself as building "the bitcoin company," language that positions it explicitly as a full-stack financial institution anchored to bitcoin rather than a passive holding vehicle.The combination of Tether's tightened ownership and this operational blueprint puts Twenty One Capital in direct conceptual competition with Strategyas the template for a publicly traded bitcoin-native operating company. The key distinction is that Twenty One Capital is building active business lines around bitcoin rather than relying solely on treasury appreciation, a model that introduces both more revenue upside and more execution risk than a pure-play accumulator.NAKAMOTO REVERSE SPLIT:Nakamotoannounced a 1-for-40 reverse stock split effective May 22, the announcement confirmed. The action reduces shares outstanding from approximately 696.1M to approximately 17.4M and is expressly intended to regain compliance with Nasdaq's $1.00 minimum bid price requirement, per the. Stockholders had previously authorized a ratio anywhere from 1-for-20 to 1-for-50, and management chose the more aggressive end of the range.BITGO LIGHTNING LAUNCH:BitGo Holdingsintegrated Lightning Network bitcoin payment rails into its Crypto-as-a-Service platform through a partnership with Voltage, the company disclosed in a. The service enables fintechs, exchanges, and consumer apps to embed near-instant, low-cost bitcoin payments through BitGo Holdings' OCC-supervised, 50-state-licensed infrastructure, combining regulated custody with Lightning settlement in what the company describes as a purpose-built enterprise offering.The significance is the regulated wrapper. Lightning Network integrations are common among pure-play crypto firms, but access through an OCC-chartered, nationally licensed custodian lowers the compliance barrier for banks, brokers, and fintech platforms that cannot or will not touch unregulated providers. That positions BitGo Holdings to compete for institutional bitcoin payment mandates that would be out of reach for unlicensed alternatives.PRICE ACTION:As of time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $77,423.10, while ether was trading at $2,135.50,.

The company said, "Twenty One Capital (XXI) is building a Bitcoin-native public company designed to give investors differentiated exposure to Bitcoin. XXI's strategy is to bring together Bitcoin treasury, financial services, mining, and capital markets into a single operating platform focused on recurring revenue, capital-efficient Bitcoin accumulation, and long-term value creation. Tether International, XXI's controlling shareholder, announced that it has acquired SoftBank Group's (SFTBY) stake in XXI, further aligning the company's shareholder base to advance its long-term Bitcoin strategy. At the closing of the transaction, SoftBank Group's representatives on the XXI Board of Directors stepped down in accordance with XXI's shareholder agreement...With Tether's deepened commitment, Twenty One enters its next phase with strong shareholder alignment and a clearer path to advance the operating vision it was created to pursue. Twenty One remains focused on becoming the premier listed Bitcoin company in the world: a public company that moves beyond treasury exposure alone by combining Bitcoin treasury, financial services, mining, lending, capital markets, and strategic consolidation into one integrated platform. The Company believes this approach can create a new model for Bitcoin-native public companies, with operating businesses and recurring revenue opportunities designed around long-term Bitcoin accumulation as the central objective."

The bitcoin treasury model faces a stress test as Tether bets consolidation can revive it, while MARA redraws the mining playbook by planting roots in Ohio's energy corridor. Across traditional finance, JPMorgan installs a settlement-layer architect at Kinexys, Meta rolls stablecoin payouts to creators, and earnings season finds Mastercard and Broadridge leaning hard into tokenization as a growth anchor, even as crypto-exposed equities absorbed a punishing session led by Robinhood's revenue miss. Stay up on the crypto news that matters with "Crypto Currents," daily from The Fly. Join us at 2 PM ET for your essential briefing on the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency on FlyCast radio.TETHER PUSHES XXI CONSOLIDATION:Tether Investments proposed that Twenty One Capital(XXI)merge with Strike and Elektron Energy, a bitcoin(BTC-USD)mining firm, in a move timed to the Bitcoin 2026 Conference in Las Vegas,Bloombergreported late Wednesday. The three-way combination would unite bitcoin treasury holdings, mining infrastructure, financial services, lending, and capital markets under a single listed company, according toa Tether press release. Tether named Jack Mallers, who already leads both Twenty One Capital and Strike, to head the combined entity, and proposed Elektron's Raphael Zagury as president, a pairing of mining and capital markets experience with consumer bitcoin product leadership. Elektron manages approximately 5% of the current Bitcoin network's computing power at all-in production costs below $60,000 per coin. Twenty One Capital shares climbed nearly 8% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.Twenty One Capital went public in December through a SPAC backed by Tether, Bitfinex, and SoftBank Group(SFTBY). Its shares had fallen 31% since the NYSE debut, underperforming bitcoin's own 18% decline over the same period. The merger pitch reflects the limits of the pure-treasury playbook popularized by Strategy(MSTR), adding operating businesses with recurring revenue to rebut the criticism that treasury vehicles offer nothing a direct bitcoin purchase cannot. The more immediate equity read-through centers on index inclusion timing and whether a larger, operationally richer vehicle compresses or widens the NAV premium relative to Strategy.MARA SECURES OHIO ENERGY CAMPUS:MARA Holdings(MARA)signed a definitive agreement to acquire Long Ridge Energy and Power LLC from FTAI Infrastructure(FIP)for a total transaction value of approximately $1.52B, including roughly $1.16B of assumed debt, pera company press release. The asset includes a 485 MW combined-cycle natural gas plant in Hannibal, Ohio, on approximately 1,600 acres along the Ohio River, with full campus capacity projected to exceed one gigawatt after additional buildout. The deal requires FERC and Hart-Scott-Rodino clearance and is targeted to close in Q3 2026.The acquisition marks a structural break from an asset-light bitcoin accumulation model toward vertical integration of energy and compute. Owning dispatchable gas generation removes MARA's single largest operating cost variable while the riverside acreage creates room for co-located AI and high-performance computing alongside mining, a combination that could attract long-term offtake contracts from data center tenants. A rerate of the asset base away from a pure bitcoin treasury discount framework may follow if management secures such revenue.JPMORGAN APPOINTS KINEXYS CHIEF:JPMorgan Chase(JPM)hired Oliver Harris, a former Goldman Sachs(GS)digital asset executive who later founded real-estate tokenization startup Arda, to lead its Kinexys blockchain division as the bank deepens its digital asset strategy,CoinDeskreported Wednesday. Harris has argued that tokenizing assets alone does not create liquidity and that deeper structural change requires a global settlement layer merging money, assets, and data on a single blockchain platform. He described Kinexys's purpose as building the foundation of the next era of market structure and said that technology and regulation are now mature enough for institutions to move beyond isolated blockchain experiments toward overhauling core clearing and settlement infrastructure. This evolution comes despite CEO Jamie Dimon, head of one of the world's largest financial institutions, having previously dismissed crypto as having "no intrinsic value."META LAUNCHES STABLECOIN PAYOUTS:Meta Platforms(META)has begun rolling out USD Coin(USDC-USD)payouts to select creators in Colombia and the Philippines, allowing eligible users to link a wallet and receive earnings on the Solana(SOL-USD)or Polygon networks,. The program is supported by Stripe, which will handle crypto tax reporting for users. The initiative marks Meta's return to stablecoin payments after its Libra project was shuttered in 2022 and, with more than 3B users across its platforms, positions Meta's adoption of blockchain payment rails as a meaningful proof-of-concept for stablecoin disbursements at consumer scale.TOKENIZATION IN TRADITIONAL FINANCE:Mastercard(MA)reported Q1 net revenue of $8.4B, up 16% year-over-year, per itsearnings release, and called out the planned acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm BVNK as the primary vehicle for digital payments expansion. Broadridge Financial Solutions(BR)posted Q3 recurring revenue up 7% and adjusted EPS of $2.72, up 11%, raised full-year guidance, and cited tokenization of financial assets as a core forward growth driver, per itsfiling. Treasury management startup Stable Sea integrated WisdomTree's(WT)tokenized U.S. Government Money Market Digital Fund, which carries $857.64M in assets and a 3.43% daily yield, into its corporate cash management platform, perCointelegraph.PRICE ACTION:As of time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $76,350.48, while ether was trading at$2,262.96,according to price data from TipRanks.