Tether Wants to Merge Twenty One Capital With Strike and Elektron Into One Bitcoin 'Supercompany'

Tether Investments has proposed merging Twenty One Capital with Bitcoin payments firm Strike and mining operator Elektron Energy, a three-way combination that would turn the publicly listed Bitcoin treasury vehicle into what Tether calls the "premier listed Bitcoin company in the world."

The proposal, announced Wednesday, comes from Tether Investments, the independent investment arm of the stablecoin issuer and XXI's majority shareholder. Tether said it intends to vote its shares in favor of a sequential merger: first combining XXI with Strike, then folding the resulting entity together with Elektron Energy. No financial terms or timeline were provided, and the transactions remain subject to further negotiations and shareholder approval.

XXI shares had closed the regular session down 1.7% at $7.83, but jumped to a high of $9.28 in after-hours trading before settling at $8.35, a gain of 6.6% on the day. Jack Mallers, appearing at the Bitcoin 2026 conference in Las Vegas, said he backs the plan. "Simply put, I think it's a great idea," he told the audience, adding that building a full-stack Bitcoin company, not a narrow payments app, was his founding ambition.

Strike Brings 100-Country Reach and Elektron Brings 5% of Global Hashrate

The logic of the deal rests on what each business contributes. Twenty One Capital holds 43,514 BTC, the second-largest Bitcoin position of any public company behind Strategy's 818,334 BTC, but its model is essentially passive: accumulate Bitcoin, increase Bitcoin per share, repeat. Tether's proposal is explicitly about moving beyond that.

Strike brings a profitable, globally licensed financial services platform operating in more than 100 countries, covering Bitcoin brokerage, payments, custody and lending. At Bitcoin 2026, Mallers announced a new volatility-proof Bitcoin-backed loan structure built with Tether, a $2.1 billion credit facility, and a lending proof-of-reserves system, all of which would plug directly into the combined entity's capital markets arm.

Elektron Energy, led by Raphael Zagury, manages approximately 50 exahashes per second of mining capacity, representing roughly 5% of the current Bitcoin network hashrate. It has mined more than 5,500 BTC and operates with all-in production costs below $60,000 per coin, one of the most efficient cost structures among large-scale miners. Tether has proposed Zagury as president of the merged company, pairing his mining and capital markets experience with Mallers' consumer product and brand leadership.

Mallers Outlined a Four-Pillar Model Where Every Dollar of Income Buys More Bitcoin

Mallers used his Bitcoin 2026 keynote to lay out the blueprint in detail. He described a four-pillar structure: a financial services arm covering brokerage, custody, lending, payments and prime services; a Bitcoin infrastructure division spanning energy, power, mining, hardware and hosting; a capital markets operation built around loan-book securitisation, mining revenue securitisation and Bitcoin-backed debt; and an acquisitions arm targeting profitable Bitcoin businesses in software, custody, payments and distribution. The stated goal of the acquisitions function, as displayed on his slide, is to give "every dollar of operating income one job: buy more Bitcoin."

The framing positions the merged company less as a Strategy clone and more as a vertically integrated Bitcoin conglomerate, one that generates its own operating cash flow rather than relying solely on capital markets to fund accumulation. Whether the three businesses can be combined without the deal complexity undermining the operational momentum each has built independently is the question investors will be weighing. For now, the after-hours pop in XXI suggests the market's initial reaction is cautiously positive. The institutional Bitcoin landscape is moving fast, and a deal of this ambition, if it closes, would reshape what a listed Bitcoin company can look like.