Jack Mallers’ Twenty One jumps to third place among corporate bitcoin holders
May 15, 2025
The world through bitcoin-colored glasses (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
The new venture overtook Riot Platforms in the race to stockpile the most bitcoin.
It took just a few weeks for newcomer Twenty One, the new bitcoin-native company launched by Strike CEO Jack Mallers, Tether, and SoftBank Group, to become the third-largest corporate bitcoin holder.
The company, which said it would be a superior vehicle to Michael Saylor’s bitcoin holding company, Strategy, added 4,812.2 bitcoin on May 13 (acquired via Tether), bringing its total holdings to 31,500, according to a regulatory filing. This brings it closer to its aim to hold 42,000 bitcoin when the company launches under the ticker XXI.
Meanwhile, Japanese company Metaplanet released its Q1 earnings yesterday, noting it has become the top Asian bitcoin corporate holder and the 11th globally. It was the company’s “strongest quarter,” CEO Simon Gerovich said in an X post. With its latest bitcoin acquisition this week, the company now holds “more bitcoin than El Salvador.”
Metaplanet holds 6,796 bitcoin, reaching 68% of its 10,000 bitcoin target in roughly four months, its earnings presentation showed. It also achieved a 170% BTC yield year to date. Q1 revenue increased 8% quarter over quarter, largely driven by bitcoin income generation.
Strategy, the original bitcoin stockpiler, added 13,390 bitcoin this week for $1.34 billion, bringing its total to 568,840.
This week also saw the newest entrant in the Strategy copycat race, Nakamoto, launched by President Trump’s crypto advisor, David Bailey. Nakamoto aims to “elevate bitcoin to every public and private corporate balance sheet around the world,” Bailey told Sherwood News.
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Decentralized finance protocol Aave setting new on-chain records
Decentralized finance giant Aave continues to calcify its lead in the crypto borrowing and lending sector as on-chain data shows record levels of protocol activity.
The total value of digital assets locked into Aave’s smart contracts has reached an all-time high figure of about $40 billion, making it the largest DeFi protocol in the entire crypto ecosystem.
Meanwhile, active loans have also surpassed historical levels, climbing to more than $15 billion, which makes up nearly 66% of the market, data from blockchain analytics platform Token Terminal shows.
Total value locked is a signal of protocol growth, but the most important metric is active loans, Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative, said. “It’s a precise tracking of actual economic activity generated by users of protocol and associated revenue,” Zeller told Sherwood News.
Aave, which holds a substantial amount of ethereum, was able to reach its milestones in part from the resurgence in the price of the asset, which has jumped roughly 45% in the past seven days to trade hands around the $2,550 level, outperforming other major cryptocurrencies.
Aave and the broader on-chain lending space are examples of successful product-market fit stories where crypto lending is used as a global financial rail, Dmitriy Berenzon, a partner at early-stage crypto venture firm Archetype, told Sherwood. “These lending protocols have remained anti-fragile throughout the last bear market and are now flourishing from both the renewed interest from institutions and companies ‘connecting’ the supply side of capital to more retail and real-world use cases,” Berenzon said.
The price of AAVE stands at over $228, more than a 3% increase in the last 24 hours and about a 35% jump in the past seven days. The token currently has a market capitalization of $3.4 billion.
5/13/25
GD Culture raising $300 million to build bitcoin and $TRUMP reserve
GD Culture Group announced yesterday it has entered a stock purchase agreement with a British Virgin Islands company, “providing for the sale by the Company of up to $300 million of its common stock.” It said it will use the proceeds to build its crypto treasury of bitcoin and $TRUMP. Shareholders don’t seem to like the idea and the stock is down over 8% today.
GD Culture operates via “its primary business conduit, AI Catalysis Corp, focusing on digital marketing and AI technology.” The firm was warned in April about a potential Nasdaq delisting, which said (emphasis ours):
“Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(b)(1) requires companies on the Nasdaq Capital Market to maintain a minimum of $2.5 million in stockholders’ equity for continued listing, however, based on the Company’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, dated March 18, 2025, the Company reported stockholders’ equity of $2,643.”
While many companies are rushing to emulate Strategy’s bitcoin accumulation mission, that’s not the case for $TRUMP reserves. Bitcoin has been crushing it lately, crossing $100,000 last week. Meanwhile, $TRUMP is down more than 7% in the past 24 hours as the competition to be among the top 220 holders has ended.
The company says this would make it “one of the first public companies to make $TRUMP a cornerstone of its digital asset strategy.”
That said, last month, logistics management innovation company Freight Technologies announced it had entered an agreement to issue convertible notes of up to $20 million “exclusively earmarked for purchasing $TRUMP.”
GD Culture operates via “its primary business conduit, AI Catalysis Corp, focusing on digital marketing and AI technology.” The firm was warned in April about a potential Nasdaq delisting, which said (emphasis ours):
“Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(b)(1) requires companies on the Nasdaq Capital Market to maintain a minimum of $2.5 million in stockholders’ equity for continued listing, however, based on the Company’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, dated March 18, 2025, the Company reported stockholders’ equity of $2,643.”
While many companies are rushing to emulate Strategy’s bitcoin accumulation mission, that’s not the case for $TRUMP reserves. Bitcoin has been crushing it lately, crossing $100,000 last week. Meanwhile, $TRUMP is down more than 7% in the past 24 hours as the competition to be among the top 220 holders has ended.
The company says this would make it “one of the first public companies to make $TRUMP a cornerstone of its digital asset strategy.”
That said, last month, logistics management innovation company Freight Technologies announced it had entered an agreement to issue convertible notes of up to $20 million “exclusively earmarked for purchasing $TRUMP.”
5/13/25
Coinbase set to join S&P 500, becoming the first crypto company added to the benchmark index
Coinbase shares were as much as 10% higher in premarket trading on Tuesday after the news that the company will join the closely watched S&P 500 index.
The crypto exchange will replace Discover in the benchmark index before trading opens on May 19, as the financial services company is in the process of being acquired by Capital One.
With that, Coinbase becomes the first crypto company to join the S&P 500, reflecting how the exchange, and the wider crypto universe itself, has become a bigger part of the US financial system since the company went public in 2021. Last week, bitcoin spiked past the$100,000price point as traders bought the coins through exchanges and increasingly popular bitcoin ETFs such as Blackrock’s IBIT, which now holds more than 600,000 bitcoin, or some 2.8% of the total supply.
The news also comes a week after Coinbase announced its plans to buy Deribit, the world’s biggest crypto options trading platform, based in Dubai, for a whopping $2.9 billion — the largest crypto deal to date.
This morning’s upward move undoes some of the weakness in Coinbase shares this year, which had dropped ~17% as of yesterday’s close.
With that, Coinbase becomes the first crypto company to join the S&P 500, reflecting how the exchange, and the wider crypto universe itself, has become a bigger part of the US financial system since the company went public in 2021. Last week, bitcoin spiked past the$100,000price point as traders bought the coins through exchanges and increasingly popular bitcoin ETFs such as Blackrock’s IBIT, which now holds more than 600,000 bitcoin, or some 2.8% of the total supply.
The news also comes a week after Coinbase announced its plans to buy Deribit, the world’s biggest crypto options trading platform, based in Dubai, for a whopping $2.9 billion — the largest crypto deal to date.
This morning’s upward move undoes some of the weakness in Coinbase shares this year, which had dropped ~17% as of yesterday’s close.
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