Raphael Zagury

Zagury earned a B.A. in economics from IBMEC and an MBA from Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry.⁠[1][2]

He began his career on Wall Street, serving as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and as a managing director at Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.⁠[1]

He then co-founded the boutique investment bank One Partners and later co-founded OpenCo, a Brazilian fintech lender, where as chief financial officer he led capital raises backed by SoftBankSoftBank GroupSoftBank Group (SoftBank Group Corp.) is an investment holding company headquartered in Tokyo, founded by Masayoshi Son in 1981. Starting out as a distributor of personal computer software, it moved into the internet, broadband and mobile communications, and has since become an investment group centered on AI-related assets such as Arm, the SoftBank Vision Funds and OpenAI.Open the full entry, the IFC and LTS Investments.⁠[1]

Zagury was chief investment officer of the bitcoin financial services company Swan Bitcoin, where he designed the Nakamoto Portfolio tool, and he headed its mining business.⁠[2][3]

Swan’s mining joint venture with TetherTether USDt (USD₮)Tether USDt (USD₮, commonly written as USDT) is a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin issued since 2014, formerly named Realcoin and co-founded by Brock Pierce, Reeve Collins, and Craig Sellars. The tokens are minted and redeemed by the issuing company on multiple blockchains, and the peg relies on reserves, the issuance and redemption mechanism, and market arbitrage; it is not a decentralized algorithmic stablecoin.Open the full entry began in July 2023, was financed by Tether and managed 12 EH/s as of July 2024.⁠[4]

On September 25, 2024, Swan Bitcoin sued six former consultants and two companies, Proton Management and Ilios Corporation, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the defendants conspired to take its mining business, technology, trade secrets and personnel; the individuals had resigned almost simultaneously on the evening of August 8, 2024, to join ProtonProtonProton is a privacy technology company and service brand headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, offering encrypted email, VPN, cloud storage, password management, collaboration and artificial intelligence services, with paid user subscriptions supporting the business and its free services.Open the full entry. Zagury, then chief executive of Proton Management, was not a named defendant.⁠[4][3]

Swan’s filing cited an email allegedly written by Zagury stating “Tether needs to send default notice”; days after the resignations, Tether informed Swan that Proton would take over mining operations for the joint venture. Swan did not sue Tether.⁠[4]

On June 1, 2026, the federal case was dismissed in its entirety, after Swan conceded in parallel U.K. proceedings that it did not own the assets, documents and trade secrets at issue in the California case. Swan founder Cory Klippsten said Swan had filed a JAMS arbitration demand against Zagury in March 2026 alleging breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and tortious interference; those allegations have not been adjudicated.⁠[5]

Zagury founded and leads the team managing Elektron Energy, a bitcoin mining and infrastructure company to which Tether outsources a significant portion of its bitcoin mining. As of April 2026 Elektron managed about 50 EH/s across its platform, roughly 5% of the bitcoin network.⁠[1][6][7]

On April 29, 2026, Tether Investments said it intended to vote for a merger of Twenty One Capital (XXI) with Strike, founded by Jack Mallers, followed by a combination with Elektron Energy, and planned to recommend Zagury as president. Zagury was then a member of XXI’s board.⁠[7][6]

Zagury had served as an independent director of the New York Stock Exchange-listed Twenty One Capital, as interim chair of its Audit Committee and as a member of its Compensation and Nominating and Corporate Governance committees. He resigned from each committee effective July 15, 2026, while remaining a director.⁠[1]

On July 21, 2026, Twenty One Capital announced that its board had appointed Zagury chief executive officer effective July 20, succeeding Jack Mallers, who stepped down to focus on Strike. The company confirmed that Strike would remain standalone and was no longer being considered for a combination, while a combination with Elektron remained under evaluation as a related-person transaction at a preliminary stage.⁠[1]

In the announcement he said: “My job is to build the operating company around it, with the discipline, governance, and executional rigor of an institution.”⁠[1]

As of August 2026 Twenty One Capital held 43,514 bitcoin. Zagury was scheduled to give a keynote at the Bitcoin Treasuries Conference in New York on September 28, 2026.⁠[8]

Twenty One Capital: Official website: https://investors.xxi.money/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]