At the closing of the Business Combination, Twenty One will be majority-owned by Tether, co-founder of Twenty One and the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, and Bitfinex, with significant minority ownership by SoftBank Group Corp. (“SoftBank Group”), one of the world’s leading investment holding companies.
Not sure how you all feel about this but something about this doesn't seem right. Jack has, from my recollection, been strongly against Tether and the like. So, it's very odd seeing him go into business with them. First impression is that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Curious on everyone's thoughts on this announcement.
I don't recall him ever being against Tether. I can see how someone might think that - he associates with people who seem like they have been against Tether. Regardless, Tether is allocating more money into Bitcoin stuff than any single entity, so expect to see more people who you thought were against Tether, or who would otherwise be against Tether, suddenly become pro-Tether.
Yeah, I don't know if he mentioned it in his podcast a while back or in some video on YouTube, just felt like he would be against it based on his standards of being Bitcoin-only. However, Strike does use USDT for deposits/withdrawals in certain countries. So, I would guess that might disprove my prior statement.
You are correct. Pretty sure I have heard him explain this a few times. The reality is that in the US Strike uses fiat dollars and in other countries Tether is popular. I get why they are doing this.
Jack says good things about Bitcoin, but runs a KYC wallet. So now he wants to compete with Saylor, another fiat maxi. Partnering with Tether makes total sense.
Jack has talked about it on his podcast. Whenever his co-workers have an idea on an innovative product, the bar is always the 60-some percent return that you get from just holding bitcoin. If the idea can't outperform that, the idea gets shot down.
Very likely that domestic banks will have some exposure or render services to this, and it's really central banking that is being disrupted... not so much banking in general.
Elimination of the Fed in favor of the Treasury should be good for banks currently subordinate to the Fed and not the masters of it.
So this is like Microstrategy without the software business for cashflow? Another debt fueled bitcoin holding company? Because ETFs are too risk averse?
I can't help but feel like this is all going to end poorly. Feels a lot like hearing about that friend of a friend that was flipping 10 homes at a time in 2006 and was driving a Maserati until they weren't. Maybe USDT fixes this.
If you read the whole announcement, the business is not just to buy, hold and give access to their Bitcoin treasury, they intend to build financial software that uses Bitcoin underneath:
"Twenty One is structured to be a day one Bitcoin-native company that will strategically allocate capital to increase Bitcoin per share. Twenty One intends to develop a corporate architecture capable of supporting financial products built with and on Bitcoin. This includes native lending models, capital market instruments, and future innovations that will replace legacy financial tools with Bitcoin-aligned alternatives. As a pro-Bitcoin advocate, Twenty One plans to produce original Bitcoin-focused content and media. This pure-play approach will offer investors access to a public company that combines Bitcoin exposure with an operating business building Bitcoin-native products and services."
This sounds like what I hoped Saylor would do - instead of just hovering up everything possible, spend some resources to attend to the actual ecosystem. Build capacity in ways the raw market won't or can't.
I don't read this as software products. I read this as financial products. They are SPACing without any product - they just have a bitcoin treasury. I don't think anything about this announcement implies that there's going to be software product sold.
i'm pretty sure that they are going to use this space to both acquire bitcoin through financial products and also acquire companies that have been venture capital back in a liquid, but sats flow positive
No.Kind of.