Jack Mallers aims for Saylor’s crown with billion-dollar Bitcoin bet

At the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Strike’s CEO, Jack Mallers, unveiled an ambitious strategy to rival Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin dominance.

As the chief executive officer of one of the most talked-about ventures in digital assets — Twenty-One Capital Inc., Mallers aims to reshape corporate Bitcoin holdings and challenge Saylor’s firm, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which currently holds over 580,000 BTC, valued at approximately $64 billion.

Jack Mallers aims for Saylor’s crown with billion-dollar Bitcoin bet

Twenty-One is supported by the investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald LP, stablecoin powerhouse Tether Holdings SA, and the Japanese investment firm SoftBank Group. The company is not simply following the ever-expanding list of businesses chasing after the opportunity to imitate Strategy, Michael Saylor’s software firm that has been transformed into a leveraged proxy for Bitcoin — it is trying to beat it. 

Twenty-One Capital, backed by notable entities including Tether and Cantor Fitzgerald, recently disclosed a $458 million Bitcoin acquisition. The firm plans to publish its Bitcoin addresses to verify its reserves, emphasizing transparency in its operations.

In contrast, Michael Saylor’s Strategy continues its aggressive Bitcoin accumulation, recently purchasing an additional 4,020 BTC, bringing its total holdings to over 580,000 BTC.

Mallers envisions Twenty-One Capital acquiring up to 5% of Bitcoin’s total supply, approximately 1 million BTC, signaling a bold ambition to rival Saylor.

Many people outside the crypto community have recognized Jack Mallers mostly for being emotional in 2021 when he announced that Bitcoin would become legal tender in El Salvador at the biggest conference in Miami. 

How Mallers ended up as the leader of Twenty One may be as interesting as Mallers’s story about turning El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele onto Bitcoin.

Mallers narrates his journey to explore Bitcoin 

Mallers explained that his path to Twenty-One went through Tether Holdings SA CEO Paolo Ardoino, who has known Mallers since his early days in Bitcoin. Mallers began revealing his exploration of Bitcoin. He explained that he grew up in and around traditional finance and was first exposed to Bitcoin in 2013 when his father co-founded and sold a discount futures brokerage. 

Apart from his father, his stepmother is deep in the crypto world, known as BitcoinMom on X. Mallers dropped out of college and founded Zap Solutions Inc., Strike’s parent company, when he was 23.

Mallers also revealed that Tether’s sister company, Bitfinex, was the first major exchange to implement the Lightning Network. He continued by saying that he was one of the most vocal early developers of the Lightning Network, referring to the Bitcoin payment protocol. “And so Paolo and I would talk, and that was à la 2017,” the CEO of Strike concluded.

In the meantime, Tether was establishing a deeper relationship with Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment bank that US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick led before he was recruited to work as part of President Donald Trump’s executive staff. Cantor helps oversee Tether’s reserves and holds a convertible bond with the largest Stablecoin operator. Lutnick has helped transform Tether, a firm formerly eyed with suspicion by Washington, into an unlikely ally of the president. 

Due to Cantor’s ties with Trump, Mallers mentioned that Tether is the only link between him and the bank and Lutnick, whose son Brandon currently manages the company.  He admitted that he did not know Brandon well, but he was his banker.

Crypto investors prefer Mallers to Saylor as a perfect choice for Twenty-One

Mallers and Tether crossed each other’s paths over the years, including overlapping in El Salvador, where Strike and Tether now have headquarters. 

When Mallers launched Strike in El Salvador in 2021, it became the most downloaded app in the country. Strike first relied on Tether’s USDT stablecoin as a substitute for the dollar, but it quickly dumped USDT in favor of partnerships with banks in El Salvador. In 2023, Strike started adding Tether again to its platform.

However, it was not until the end of last year when the concept for Twenty- One began to take shape, Mallers said. Mallers remembers meeting Tether and their team in November at a Plan B Forum, a conference co-hosted by the Swiss city of Lugano and Tether.

“We had a smart conversation about the direction of the world, their plans, and my plans,” Mallers said. 

For many people, Mallers is an appealing choice to lead Twenty-One because he is so frank about his defense of Bitcoin. Whereas Saylor frequently appears as a serious businessperson, Mallers comes across with the “crypto bro” appeal that is quite attractive to retail crypto investors. 

Additionally, Mallers, like many online influencers, is active on his YouTube channel, where he uploads videos and hosts a weekly podcast about Bitcoin and the financial systems called The Jack Mallers Show.

Mark Palmer, a senior analyst for fintech and digital assets at Benchmark, also stated that although Michael Saylor’s role as a promoter of Strategy and Bitcoin had been incredibly helpful, Jack Mallers, who is a charming person and famous in the crypto world, is a great choice to promote both Twenty-One Capital and Bitcoin.

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