Made sure to keep the AI used to a minimum for you regards. Here we go.
What kind of trader are you? The one who buys into crowed plays? Or a contrarian who has emotional capacity to buy something when it feels gross? Fair warning, if you think BTC is worthless, this one ain’t for you.
If you’re the latter, I have a trade you may want to look into. Today I bought calls in Twenty One Capital (XXI). You may know this as Jack Mallers’ Bitcoin treasury company. I listen to Mallers’ YouTube show weekly and have a pretty good feel for the guy and what he’s trying to do. He wants the company to accumulate bitcoin through internal operations (lending and other financing ops) without using offerings/ diluting stock. So a different layout than Microstrategy.
XXI is compelling to me for a few reasons. Forgive my use of Chat GPT to show a few calculations for sake of time.
Using XXI’s treasury of ≈ 43,514 BTC, the net asset value (BTC only) at $69,000/BTC is:
43,514 × 69,000 = $3,002,466,000
≈ $3.00 B BTC NAV
XXI has \~339 M shares outstanding (post-SPAC basic).
BTC NAV per share:
3.002\\text{ B} \\div 339\\text{ M} \\approx \\$8.86
≈ $8.9 NAV/share at $69k BTC
What this means vs price
You’ve been looking at XXI around \~$6:
• NAV/share ≈ $8.9
• Price ≈ $6
• mNAV ≈ 0.67×
Okay I’m back. If you skipped that just know XXI is trading significantly under their current BTC book price. I believe that’s because nobody wants to be in the BTC treasury space right now. It feels gross.
Second, I’ve seen that once MNAV on companies like this drop below zero, people exit the trade as the company can be seen negatively vs peers.
Why does this feel gross right now? I think we can start at market level, then drill down to crpyto and then XXI specifically.
I listen to a good amount of AI podcasts run by people I hold in high regard. Prevailing sentiment is that nobody knows what’s going to happen. I’ve been trading for 16 years and uncertainty brings buying opportunities. The US market will always go up long term. You can find 1,000 reasons to rebuke that, but history favors the bulls. I always want to buy into uncertainty. I think in the coming months the market will begin pricing AI as a positive instead of a negative.
So what’s up with crypto? Is it a scam? Worthless? Well, some of it is. I’m not a memecoin guy. I buy value. I’ve taken the time to do my 100+ hours of research on Bitcoin and there is deep value. However, it’s reliant on liquidity. The landscape right now is not favorable - rates need to come down and we need huge stimulus to re-shore our manufacturing base. When that happens, you want to own assets (stocks, land, real estate, gold, metals, bitcoin) because the value of the dollar will be hollowed out.
What about XXI? Why is it trading below MNAV? I think one reason is that Jack Mallers doesn’t really talk about this company right now on his shows. I think there’s a reason for that. They haven’t reported earnings yet, so I don’t think Mallers is able to disclose any information that would be substantial. They report for 2025 on April 3rd. I fully expect Mallers to disclose meaningful info that will positively impact the stock. Jack cares deeply about Bitcoin and his other company Strike. I refuse to believe he doesn’t give a shit about Twenty One.
When (not if) Bitcoin moves higher, I believe this company is the best vehicle to capture upside. NAV will move above one, and should settle around 1.25 in the short term. I think this is where most BTC treasuries will trade in neutral markets.
My final point is also pasted from GPT but shouldn’t be overlooked. Tether, Bitfinex and SoftBank own a huge amount of the float on this name.
There’s no exact % in public filings yet, but multiple deal analyses converge around:
Tether \~50–55 %
Bitfinex \~25–30 %
SoftBank \~15–25 %
Public float \~10–20 %
(This range matches the capital contributions + BTC supplied.)
You capture both BTC gains and the mean reversion. I’m willing to take significant risk here so I’m playing this with calls out to July. Shares also have plenty of upside. I’ve attached my position. March and April are historically up months for the market, and with crypto fear/greed still near historic lows, this is where I feel comfortable with the risk/reward on a big upside swing.
I bought $7.50 strikes out to July, with a break even of 8.28. I think that we only need 85k bitcoin to recapture that level. My base case is a Bitcoin run back to around 90-100k in the short term (next 2-3 months) which should send XXI to $10+.
Thanks for reading, if this sounded like your type of risk then do some more research before potentially entering. I’m not a professional analyst. But I do have a pretty good slugging percentage when it comes to bets like this. Good luck!
