Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital is now the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury by BTC holdings, after miner MARA sold off a portion of its holdings and fell to the number three spot.
The newly formed Bitcoin (BTC) treasury company holds 43,514 BTC in its corporate treasury, valued at over $2.9 billion using the market price at the time of this writing, according to data from BitcoinTreasuries.
Twenty One Capital was publicly listed late last year following its business combination with Cantor Equity Partners, a special purpose acquisition company. Now trading under the ticker XXI, the NYSE-listed shares are down more than 25% year to date.
MARA sold 15,133 BTC, valued at about $1.1 billion, throughout March 2026. The next largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder is Japanese BTC treasury company Metaplanet with 35,100. Bitcoin Treasuries analyst Tyler Rowe in a note Thursday said:
“For the industry, it’s a cautionary signal. MARA borrowed aggressively to stack sats during the bull run and is now selling Bitcoin at a loss to service that debt. This is the precise scenario critics of debt-fueled treasury strategies have warned about.”
This aggressive borrowing is in “sharp contrast” to the business model popularized by BTC treasury company Strategy, which treats BTC as “perpetual digital credit,” using it as collateral to continually finance BTC acquisitions.
“Can miners sustainably operate as Bitcoin treasury companies without the capital markets infrastructure Saylor spent five years building,” Rowe said in the note shared with Cointelegraph.
Some market observers note the change signals the capitulation of crypto treasury and mining companies amid a challenging business environment, worsened by the crypto bear market that started in October 2025 and declining share prices.
Related: Sweden’s H100 eyes Europe’s No. 2 Bitcoin treasury with 3,500 BTC deal
Analysts forecast the decline of the crypto treasury space in 2025
In June 2025, venture capital firm Breed said that only a few crypto treasury companies would survive the “death spiral” of contracting market net asset values (mNAVs) by maintaining a price premium that would allow these companies to secure more financing.
As access to cheap financing options disappears, companies trading at or below their net asset value would have to sell their BTC holdings to meet debt obligations, according to Breed.
Companies that treat their crypto holdings as a speculative bet, rather than a long-term play, were likely to capitulate between cycles, Deng Chao, CEO of asset manager HashKey Capital, told Cointelegraph.
At the same time, crypto treasury companies with a disciplined treasury strategy would last through multiple cycles, he said.
Magazine: Bitcoin’s ‘biggest bull catalyst’ would be Saylor’s liquidation: Santiment founder
Read the full article here
