- Cantor Equity Partners is the special-purpose acquisition vehicle being used to take Twenty One public.
- Shares in the SPAC were up sharply following the news.
Shares of Cantor Equity Partners, the so-called blank-cheque vehicle that launched in January, soared just a day after announcing it will merge to become the Bitcoin-acquiring new firm Twenty One.
CEP jumped 34% in New York trading to $22.23. That’s up sharply from its closing price of $10.62 on Tuesday.
Shares in Michael Saylor’s Strategy — which Twenty One is both copying and competing against, fell slightly, by 0.1% to $345.33.
Twenty One is a venture between investing giant SoftBank, stablecoin company Tether and digital asset exchange Bitfinex. The latter two are owned by the same company, iFinex — along with participation from Cantor Fitzgerald.
Cantor Fitzgerald in January launched Cantor Equity Partners as a special purpose acquisition company, a shell entity used to raise capital for the purpose of acquiring a privately-held company.
The company will be led by the Bitcoin-backer Jack Mallers, the co-founder and CEO of Lightning payments platform Strike.
Twenty One’s goal as a firm, like Saylor’s Strategy, is to acquire Bitcoin by selling shares in itself.
Twenty One will aim to launch with a treasury of 42,000 Bitcoin, pooled together from joint venture participants, the Financial Times reported.
That haul would be worth about $3.9 billion.
“We’re not here to beat the market, we’re here to build a new one. A public stock, built by Bitcoiners, for Bitcoiners,” Mallers said in a statement.
The firm will be “prioritising accumulation over speculation,” said Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
Bitcoin fell 1% over the past day, according to CoinGecko, trading at $92,721.
Andrew Flanagan is a markets correspondent for DL News. Have a tip? Reach out to aflanagan@dlnews.com.
