Bitcoin Treasury Honeymoon Ends

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, December 10. And today, we are talking about a new treasury company that debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, and things did not go well. Before we get into that, however, if you're enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you wanna dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/breakdownpod. Alright, friends. Well, the latest Bitcoin treasury company debuted on Tuesday, and things did not go well. Twenty one Capital was listed on the New York Stock Exchange after completing their SPAC merger. The stock opened at around $11, a 25% drop from the closing price for the SPAC deal. The stock recovered slightly in the afternoon, but this was still a gut punch for what was supposed to be the next big Bitcoin treasury company. Twenty one was the vehicle put together during the spring with investment from Tether, Bitfinex, Cantor Fitzgerald, and SoftBank. They hired Strike founder Jack Mallers as CEO and accumulated 3,900,000,000.0 in Bitcoin before going public. That was enough to make them the third largest Bitcoin treasury company behind MicroStrategy and Marathon Digital. Mallers had high hope coming into the listing. He said in a statement, Bitcoin is honest money. That's why people choose it, and that's why we built 21 on top of it. Listing on the NYSE is about giving Bitcoin the place it deserves in global markets and giving investors the best of Bitcoin, its strength as a reserve, and the upside of a business built on it. The investors were also hyping up the stock with Mitchell Askew of Blockware tweeting, this isn't your average DAT whose primary strategy is hiring a c tier Bitcoin influencer with a few thousand followers to bull post twenty four seven. The groups backing twenty one are connected with the most powerful institutions in the world. Twenty one will be a major player not only in Bitcoin but in the grand arc of financial history. Nobody is bullish enough. The immediate crash, however, forces perhaps some reassessment. Normally, Bitcoin treasury companies get at least a short period of grace from the market on launch. It's reasonable for even a cynical trader to price in some additional Bitcoin accumulation out of the gate and attach a slight premium to the stock. Instead, twenty one is priced basically in line with the value of their treasury. The market is signaling that they're not willing to fund the purchase of a single satoshi out of share sales. And I certainly think this is a lot less about 21 than it is about the category. Even with Bitcoin jumping 3% to reach 92,000, that tailwind didn't help twenty one …