Jack Mallers stepped down as CEO of Twenty One Capital, announcing his return to Bitcoin payments firm Strike—which will remain an independent company.
Tether's plan to merge Twenty One, Strike, and Elektron Energy into a single publicly traded Bitcoin giant has been abandoned.
XXI shares fell nearly 18% on Tuesday, extending a decline that has taken the stock down more than 80% from its highs of last year.
Jack Mallers has stepped down as CEO of Twenty One Capital, and investors didn't take it well.
Shares of the Bitcoin treasury company—a publicly traded firm that holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet, letting regular investors gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without buying it directly—dropped nearly 15% on Tuesday.
Mallers co-founded Twenty One alongside Tether—the issuer of USDT, the world's most widely used dollar-pegged stablecoin (a digital token that holds a fixed value of one dollar and functions as the backbone of crypto trading)—and listed the company on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2025 through a SPAC merger. A SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, is a blank check shell firm created specifically to take other companies public faster than a traditional IPO allows.