Tether’s merger plan lifts Twenty One; Visa, MoonPay make moves

Tether, the majority shareholder of Twenty One Capital, proposed on Wednesday a three-way deal that would first combine Twenty One and Bitcoin payments company Strike and then merge the combined business with Bitcoin miner Elektron Energy. Twenty One shares fell 1.7% to $7.83 in regular trading, then rose in after-hours trade to a high of $9.28 and settled at $8.35, about 6.6% above the close.

Tether described Strike as contributing a profitable financial services platform, global distribution and regulatory infrastructure, and characterized Elektron as adding large-scale Bitcoin mining assets and operational capacity. Twenty One Capital is known for buying Bitcoin for its balance sheet, Strike provides consumer Bitcoin payments and remittances, and Elektron operates mining facilities. Tether did not provide a timetable or detailed ownership and governance terms for the proposed transactions.

Visa expanded its stablecoin settlement pilot to include Polygon, Base, the Canton Network, Arc and Tempo, bringing the program’s supported blockchains to nine alongside Ethereum, Solana, Stellar and Avalanche. Launched in 2023, the pilot lets Visa partners settle transactions using stablecoins instead of traditional banking rails. Visa reported the program has reached an annualized settlement run rate of roughly $7 billion, up about 50% quarter over quarter, and said volume remains small compared with its core payments operations. The pilot evaluates whether stablecoins can enable faster settlement, around-the-clock availability and lower costs for cross-border payments.

MoonPay completed the acquisition of Sodot, an Israeli crypto security infrastructure provider, in an all-stock transaction valued at about $100 million that closed in April. MoonPay plans to use Sodot’s key management technology as the foundation for a new institutional unit serving banks, asset managers, trading firms and exchanges building digital-asset capabilities.

The institutional unit will be led by Caroline Pham, who joined MoonPay as chief legal officer and chief administrative officer after serving as acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. MoonPay co-founder and CEO Ivan Soto-Wright described the company as “the world’s leading crypto payments network” and framed the institutional arm as the next stage of the business.

Background: Twenty One Capital is publicly traded and has acquired Bitcoin for its balance sheet. Strike focuses on Bitcoin-based payments and custody, and Elektron Energy operates Bitcoin mining facilities. Visa’s pilot continues an industry effort to test tokenized settlement rails and alternatives to traditional cross-border payment processes.