New Twenty One Capital CEO: The ‘Free Money’ Bitcoin Treasury Playbook Is Fading
New boss, new vibe. Raphael Zagury, who just stepped in as CEO of Bitcoin-focused public company Twenty One Capital, says the old trick—issuing shares above NAV to buy more Bitcoin and banking on that premium forever—isn’t a guaranteed cash cow anymore. His plan? Stop relying on market premiums alone and build actual businesses that can generate cash around the company’s Bitcoin balance sheet.
What Twenty One is changing
In a recent filing, Zagury described the above-NAV share issuance model as more of a temporary market quirk than a sustainable strategy. As more companies copy the playbook, he expects those premiums to shrink and eventually settle closer to fair value. In plain English: don’t expect free money to keep flowing just because you add BTC to a treasury.
So what’s the backup plan? Twenty One’s refreshed priorities include buying or building operating companies, beefing up capital-markets capabilities, crafting Bitcoin-backed financial products, and launching a lending platform designed around Bitcoin. The idea is to make these businesses accretive relative to Bitcoin holdings—meaning any new venture should improve returns when measured in BTC, not just dollars.
The company’s filings show it held 43,514 BTC as of March 31, but that same filing also showed no operating revenue and a loss from operations. Translation: the cash-generating engine is still a plan on a whiteboard rather than a line item on a balance sheet.
Zagury used mining as an example of a potential cash engine—kind of like how insurance underwriting once fed capital into Berkshire Hathaway’s investment machine. He’s involved with a mining outfit called Elektron Energy, but any combination there is preliminary and far from guaranteed. Also worth noting: leadership shuffled recently after Jack Mallers resigned as CEO and director, and a previously discussed tie-up with Strike won’t be moving forward.
Why it matters (and the fine print)
The crux of Zagury’s argument is two-fold. First, premiums from share issuance above NAV are a market inefficiency, and inefficiencies tend to fade as more players pile in. Second, shareholder returns shouldn’t rely solely on this premium—companies must find other engines of value, ideally ones that produce cash and reduce volatility versus holding Bitcoin outright.
Sounds neat on paper, but it’s not a slam dunk. Building and integrating operating businesses is hard, capital-intensive, and risky. Mining margins are currently tight, and any deal that trades Bitcoin for an operating asset has to actually improve Bitcoin-denominated returns to meet the bar set by management. Zagury emphasized matching Bitcoin with lower volatility could be a win, and that outperforming BTC over the long run would require either extraordinary opportunities or risky leverage.
Bottom line: Twenty One is trying to turn a treasury playbook into an operating-company playbook. That’s an interesting pivot, but for now it’s a strategy in motion—full of good intentions, a handful of examples, and a bunch of execution risk. Keep an eye on which deals actually close and whether the new businesses start showing up on future financials.
