# Mallers exits Twenty One as Tether merger collapses > Jack Mallers stepped down as CEO of Twenty One Capital (XXI); Tether scrapped the planned three-way merger with Strike and Elektron as Raphael Zagury takes the helm. - **Source:** https://ptycoin.com/en/posts/2026-07-22-mallers-exits-twenty-one-tether-merger/ - **Published:** 2026-07-22 - **Category:** News - **Author:** Mateo - **Tags:** bitcoin, tether, treasury, corporate, institutional, latam --- **Jack Mallers** stepped down as CEO of **Twenty One Capital (XXI)** on **July 20, 2026**, and **Tether** abandoned the planned three-way combination of Twenty One, **Strike**, and **Elektron Energy**. [Tether's official announcement](https://tether.io/news/raphael-zagury-appointed-as-new-ceo-of-twenty-one-capital-jack-mallers-to-step-down/) names **Raphael Zagury** as the new CEO; Mallers is returning full-time to Strike. ## What changed, in plain terms Twenty One Capital is a public Bitcoin treasury company: it holds Bitcoin on the balance sheet so equity investors can get crypto exposure without holding the coin themselves. [Decrypt](https://decrypt.co/373940/jack-mallers-quits-twenty-one-capital-as-tethers-bitcoin-merger-collapses) and [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/07/21/jack-mallers-steps-down-as-xxi-capital-ceo-as-tether-s-plans-to-merge-three-bitcoin-firms-falls) both report the company still holds about **43,514 BTC**, second among public firms after Michael Saylor's Strategy, and worth more than **$4 billion** at recent prices. Tether International is the controlling shareholder. In April 2026 it floated a larger structure that would have folded three Tether-linked Bitcoin businesses into one listed vehicle: - **Twenty One** for the public treasury and capital-markets face - **Strike** for Bitcoin payments and lending (Mallers' original company) - **Elektron Energy** for mining and operating infrastructure (Zagury's shop) That deal is off. Tether's release is explicit: Strike stays an independent, standalone business, and the companies are no longer contemplating a combination. Twenty One and Elektron may still talk about a two-way path later; nothing is signed. Mallers kept the exit short on X: the decision was hard but right, his life's work remains Bitcoin, and Strike is the company he will build. Zagury, already on XXI's board and interim chair of its audit committee, takes the CEO seat with a very different register. In the same release he said Twenty One "should be measured by the cash flow it generates and the discipline with which it allocates capital," not only by how fast it stacks BTC. ## Why the market cared XXI shares sold off hard on the news. Decrypt clocked a drop of nearly **15%** on Tuesday, with some tape closer to **18%** as the session extended a slide that has already cut the stock more than **80%** from last year's highs. Treasury-company equities often trade as leveraged bets on Bitcoin *plus* a story about who runs the vehicle. Strip the founder narrative and cancel a three-business merger, and the equity reprices faster than the coin does. The strategic split is clearer than the stock chart. Mallers built XXI's public identity around aggressive accumulation and a Bitcoiner brand. Zagury's résumé runs Wall Street (Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs), then fintech and Bitcoin ops: he co-founded **OpenCo**, once among Brazil's larger fintech lenders, and scaled Elektron as a low-cost mining operator. Paolo Ardoino, Tether's CEO, framed the handoff as a move from founding vision to operating standards. ## LatAm is already in the cast This is not a LatAm product launch, but the people and rails are not distant. Zagury's OpenCo chapter is Brazilian corporate history. Strike's payments stack is used in corridors where dollar and Bitcoin remittances compete with bank wires. And Tether's **USDT** remains the dominant dollar stablecoin for freelancing, savings, and treasury experiments across Argentina, Brazil, and much of the region. A Tether-controlled public treasury company changing CEOs and killing a merger is a story about how the largest stablecoin issuer manages its *listed* Bitcoin brand, not only about one U.S. ticker. For readers who use Strike for remittances or hold USDT as a dollar substitute, the operational takeaway is modest: Strike is staying independent under Mallers, so the payments product is not being swallowed into a combined XXI stack this quarter. Twenty One's BTC stack and public-markets strategy now sit with a different operator. Those are separate risk models. Self-custody still sits outside both. Holding BTC in keys you control is not the same product as holding XXI equity or relying on Strike's hosted flows. Corporate reshuffles change who sets capital policy at a treasury company; they do not rewrite how cold storage works. ## What to watch - **Zagury's first strategy update** for XXI: cash-flow targets, buyback vs. BTC accumulation policy, and whether Elektron assets ever fold in. - **Strike product roadmap** under a full-time Mallers: LatAm corridors, lending, and Lightning/stablecoin payment features without the merger overhang. - **XXI share price vs. BTC** over the next few weeks: whether the equity re-couples to the coin or keeps trading the governance discount. Mallers out, Zagury in, three-way merger dead, Strike independent. That is the news. Treat treasury-company equities and payment apps as what they are (corporate products), not as a substitute for coins you control. Not financial advice. --- Source: PTYcoin — https://ptycoin.com/en/posts/2026-07-22-mallers-exits-twenty-one-tether-merger/. Free to read and cite with attribution to ptycoin.com. 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