In brief
- Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank are working together to launch a public Bitcoin company, Twenty One.
- Cantor Equity Partners—a blank check company associated with Cantor Fitzgerald—will help Twenty One launch via a SPAC merger.
- CEP shares are up 134% on the week due to a surge following the announcement.
Shares of Cantor Equity Partners, an investment firm affiliated with crypto-friendly Cantor Fitzgerald, soared 50% on Thursday following news that it plans to merge to become a new Bitcoin-based company.
The Nasdaq-listed shares, which were recently trading for $24.80 apiece, are up 134% over the past week, Yahoo Finance data shows.
CEP is a blank check company—an entity created to acquire or merge with others to help them go public.
On Wednesday, the firm announced that it would launch Twenty One via a planned SPAC merger. Twenty One will be a publicly traded, Bitcoin-centric company that plans to debut with a treasury of more than 42,000 coins—over $3.9 billion worth at today’s prices.
The company plans to not only stockpile Bitcoin and offer investors exposure to the asset without actually holding it, but also offer Bitcoin-related financial services and create crypto-related content and media.
Twenty One has huge backing: Stablecoin giant Tether, crypto exchange Bitfinex, and investment firms Cantor Fitzgerald and SoftBank are all helping it launch.
Cantor Equity Partners is run by Brandon Lutnick, the son of former Cantor Fitzgerald boss and current U.S. Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick.
Cantor Fitzgerald is in charge of custodying Tether’s reserves, which back its enormously successful USDT stablecoin.
USDT is a stablecoin—a digital token that trades in line with the U.S. dollar and is used by crypto traders to enter and exit transactions. Many industry observers say the product is the backbone of the crypto economy.
Jack Mallers, who runs Bitcoin payments company Strike, will be Twenty One’s CEO, according to an announcement Wednesday.
The announcement said that CEP will work with Twenty One to raise $385 million through convertible senior notes and $200 million through private investment in public equity, or PIPE, to buy Bitcoin and fund “general corporate purposes.”
Investors will then be able to get returns from buying shares in the company, the announcement noted. Twenty One will trade under the ticker XXI.
Edited by James Rubin
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