Five months ago, SoftBank's name on the deck helped Twenty One Capital launch as a public Bitcoin company. Today, SoftBank is gone, and Tether bought it out.
The move tightens Tether's grip on one of the largest public Bitcoin treasuries in the world.
Tether International - the controlling shareholder of Twenty One Capital, which trades as XXI on the NYSE - announced on May 20 that it has acquired SoftBank's full stake. SoftBank's representatives left the board at the close of the deal.
SoftBank's slice was equivalent to about 10,500 Bitcoin, and the companies didn't share the price.
For context on the asset, Twenty One Capital itself only went public in December 2025 through a SPAC merger with Cantor Equity Partners. It debuted holding more than 43,500 BTC, roughly $4 billion at launch, which made it one of the largest corporate Bitcoin holders in the world.
Even after SoftBank's exit, Tether and Bitfinex still control the rest of XXI's cap table, and Bitfinex's stake is unchanged at closing.
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The buyout looks less like a routine cleanup and more like a setup for what comes next. Tether has already proposed merging XXI with Jack Mallers' Strike platform and a firm called Elektron Energy.
That three-way combination would create a full-stack Bitcoin company - treasury, mining, lending, and payments under one roof - with cleaner governance now that SoftBank's seats are off the board.
XXI's whole strategy is built around growing Bitcoin per share, and the simpler the cap table, the easier that math gets.
Think of SoftBank's exit as a quiet handoff. The traditional tech investor helped get XXI off the ground, and the crypto-native operator takes over from here.
Tether already holds more than 97,000 BTC on its own balance sheet, making it one of the largest corporate Bitcoin holders globally. XXI gives Tether a public-markets vehicle to keep accumulating in a different structure.
Two things to track. First, whether the proposed merger with Strike and Elektron actually closes - that would turn XXI from a treasury vehicle into something closer to an operating company spanning trading, mining, and lending.
Second, watch XXI's next Bitcoin purchase. With Tether now in full control, the pace of accumulation is the clearest signal of where this is heading, and the buying behavior will tell investors how aggressive the strategy gets without SoftBank in the room.
For comparison, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) pioneered the public-company Bitcoin treasury model and now holds hundreds of thousands of BTC. XXI is testing whether the same playbook can work with crypto-native operators running the show.
The next 12 months will show whether Twenty One Capital becomes the next Strategy or something entirely different.
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