Jack Mallers’ Twenty One Capital has become the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) treasury by holdings after miner Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA) sold part of its stack and fell to third place. The newcomer holds 43,514 BTC in its corporate treasury, valued at more than $2.9 billion at the time of reporting, per BitcoinTreasuries data.
Twenty One Capital went public late last year via a business combination with Cantor Equity Partners, a special purpose acquisition company. Now trading on the NYSE under the ticker XXI, its shares are down more than 25% year-to-date.
MARA sold 15,133 BTC — roughly $1.1 billion — during March 2026, pushing it behind Twenty One Capital and ahead of Japan’s Metaplanet, which holds 35,100 BTC. Bitcoin Treasuries analyst Tyler Rowe warned that MARA’s actions are 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.”
Rowe contrasted this aggressive borrowing with treasury models like Strategy’s, which treat BTC as “perpetual digital credit,” using it as collateral to finance further Bitcoin acquisitions. He also questioned whether miners can sustainably operate as Bitcoin treasury companies without the capital markets infrastructure that took years to build.
Some observers view the reshuffle as evidence of capitulation among crypto treasury and mining firms amid a challenging business environment. The industry has been hit by a bear market that began in October 2025 and by broadly declining share prices, squeezing companies that relied on cheap financing.
Analysts forecast decline of crypto treasury space
In June 2025, venture capital firm Breed warned that only a few crypto treasury companies would survive a “death spiral” of contracting market net asset values (mNAVs). As access to inexpensive financing fades, companies trading at or below net asset value may be forced to sell Bitcoin to meet debt obligations, Breed said.
Deng Chao, CEO of asset manager HashKey Capital, told Cointelegraph that firms treating crypto holdings as speculative bets rather than long-term plays were most likely to capitulate between cycles. By contrast, treasury companies that maintain disciplined, long-term strategies are more likely to endure multiple market cycles.
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