Sep 15, 2026 · 1h 5m
Bitcoin executive challenges banks on trust and transparency
Rapha Zagury: Tether's Bitcoin Empire, Taking Over XXI and What Comes Next
The conversation tests whether Bitcoin-linked companies and stablecoins can offer stronger financial alternatives without reproducing the opacity and centralization they criticize.
- 1Rapha Zagury traces his Bitcoin conviction to Brazilian hyperinflation, frozen savings, and the 2008 financial crisis.
- 2He argues 21 Capital must grow its treasury through operating businesses rather than simply replicate direct Bitcoin ownership.
- 3The discussion weighs Tether’s reserve transparency, stablecoin utility, mining decentralization, and the risks of AI infrastructure financing.
Don't miss
Zagury says he would choose stablecoins over banks for holding dollar savings, prompting a challenge over Tether’s reserves and Bitcoin’s principles.
The brief
Rapha Zagury’s view of money began with Brazilian hyperinflation, frozen savings, and family stories of displacement—experiences that made portability and institutional trust practical concerns.
After working in banking during the 2008 financial crisis, Zagury found Bitcoin through research into the Treasury and Federal Reserve, then moved from finance into the digital-asset industry.
As CEO of 21 Capital and a former leader of Electron, he explains why a Bitcoin treasury company must create value through operating businesses rather than merely hold Bitcoin.
The sharpest dispute concerns Tether: Zagury favors stablecoins over banks for dollar savings, while Natalie Brunell presses him on reserves, audits, transparency, and future bailouts.
The conversation widens to mining decentralization, Ocean and BIP-110, and whether Bitcoin infrastructure could eventually converge with AI—though Zagury sees AI risk as mispriced.
What was said on this episode
44 statements · 33 positive · 8 negative · 3 neutral
Rapha would choose stablecoins over banks for holding dollar savings.
“I would definitely put in stable coin.”
Listen at 0:07
Banks are less transparent than stablecoins.
“Banks, you know, they're much less transparent.”
Listen at 0:12
Bitcoin clarified economics for Rapha.
“Bitcoin made that much more clear for me later on.”
Listen at 5:05
Bitcoin makes monetary policy predictable because its rules are encoded.
“Bitcoin is the first time that actually economics became black and white for me because the code is right there, right? The monetary policy, it's written in code.”
Listen at 6:57
Merrill Lynch’s collapse demonstrated the fragility of the financial system.
“the too big to fail was literally a thing, right? There was absolutely no way that some, you know, a company like Merrill Lynch, you know, with offices everywhere, massive revenues would collapse overnight, which is what happened.”
Listen at 13:06
Bitcoin’s price fell from roughly $1,000 to $300 after Mt. Gox.
“The price was something like $1,000 or something like that. Didn't pay too much attention. Then Mount Knox happened, right? And the price, yeah. Renting from like $1,000 to $300.”
Listen at 16:04
Bitcoin has a 21-million supply cap encoded in its protocol.
“I saw the 21 million cap and how it was. literally written in code”
Listen at 16:28
Warden models Bitcoin portfolio allocations according to investor risk tolerance.
“it kind of gave a model for people to think about, you know, how to size it appropriately, depending on the risk that they want it to take”
Listen at 18:28
Electron is probably the third- or fourth-largest public-comparable Bitcoin miner.
“Electron is the, today, probably the third or fourth largest miner in the world if we compare to public companies”
Listen at 19:40
Electron controls approximately 5% of Bitcoin network hash rate.
“we have... five percent of the network hash rate”
Listen at 19:47
Rapha conceptualizes Bitcoin mining as a fixed-income bond.
“the way that I think about mining is just, it's a bond. It's like a fixed income bond”
Listen at 21:17
Low-cost Bitcoin miners are more likely to survive bear markets.
“Bitcoin is a commodity at the end of the day. Commodity business, they don't come in good and bad. They just come around how you are positioned on the cost curve. So the low cost are the ones that survive.”
Listen at 24:17
Tether strongly supports Bitcoin and its ecosystem.
“they are hardcore Bitcoiners, first and foremost. They really support the Bitcoin ecosystem.”
Listen at 25:04
Electron became Tether’s mining arm.
“Electrum became the mining arm of Tether.”
Listen at 26:25
21 Capital aims to become a Bitcoin operating company.
“The company is becoming an operating company. That's our core focus. We want to become the Bitcoin operating company”
Listen at 30:37
21 Capital plans to issue debt to purchase additional Bitcoin.
“the fourth one. is doing everything that the other treasury companies are doing. We're going to do it as well, right? Which is issuing debt to buy more Bitcoin”
Listen at 34:15
21 Capital could use its unlocked Bitcoin holdings during market dislocations.
“if there is a dislocation in the market, listen, we have more than 43,000 Bitcoins in our balance sheet. Two-thirds of them are, you know, right now unlocked. We could do something with them.”
Listen at 34:43
21 Capital plans to establish an energy-trading arm.
“I think the first thing to do is that we are going to have an energy trading arm as well”
Listen at 35:35
Bitcoin-backed lending will continue growing.
“Bitcoin back lending is a sector that it's going to continue to grow.”
Listen at 36:47
Bitcoin-backed lending may offer exceptionally strong risk-adjusted returns.
“this is probably one of the best risk adjusted returns that you could have ever asked for.”
Listen at 38:41
Investors with one dollar should buy Bitcoin directly.
“If you have $1, you should buy Bitcoin.”
Listen at 39:11
21 Capital aims to outperform Bitcoin on a risk-adjusted basis.
“our goal is to, on a risk-adjusted basis, beat Bitcoin”
Listen at 39:37
Bitcoin mining usually underperforms directly holding Bitcoin.
“in most scenarios, mining does not beat Bitcoin.”
Listen at 39:57
Bitcoin mining can be less volatile than directly buying Bitcoin.
“Mining is less volatile than just buying Bitcoin in some situations.”
Listen at 40:42
Public criticism of Tether repeatedly changes its transparency standards.
“the public keep changing the the goalposts”
Listen at 42:08
KPMG is conducting Tether’s audit.
“I think the audit is you know it's the audit like people are going to be able to see it's kpmg doing the audit”
Listen at 42:24
Tether can provide less surveillance than Brazil’s centralized payment system.
“it is less surveillance than they use like in brazil for example”
Listen at 44:04
Tether has substantial demand in countries with weak currencies and financial controls.
“there is definitely a market for this.”
Listen at 47:09
Rapha would choose stablecoins over banks for twenty-year dollar savings.
“I would definitely put in stablecoins.”
Listen at 48:31
Tether probably holds at least full reserves for its liabilities.
“I can tell you that they probably do have even more than that”
Listen at 49:17
Bitcoin adoption will increase substantially.
“Definitely we're going to have more adoption.”
Listen at 50:18
Bitcoin represents a very small share of global monetary assets.
“Bitcoin is a drop of a drop in the ocean of liquidity that we have out there.”
Listen at 50:25
Bitcoin is the best savings technology to date.
“Bitcoin is the best saving technology we've ever seen”
Listen at 52:36
Bitcoin could expand the market for savings assets beyond existing monetary assets.
“the addressable market would actually expand.”
Listen at 52:41
The United States may already be mining Bitcoin.
“They might be mining Bitcoin already.”
Listen at 53:02
Ocean’s miner-controlled block construction is important for Bitcoin decentralization.
“what ocean does is extremely important”
Listen at 53:44
Ocean shareholders opposed continuing on the BIP-110 chain.
“the shareholders i think were very vocal about where they wanted the company to go and it was not on the bip 110 chain”
Listen at 54:57
Companies require centralized governance in many areas to avoid dysfunction.
“companies need to be centralized in a lot of things that they do. Otherwise, it will become dysfunctional with long time.”
Listen at 56:39
Bitcoin miners can switch mining pools easily.
“moving from one pool to the other is super simple”
Listen at 58:07
Electron can redirect its miners to another pool in about three minutes.
“it's a three minute change in configuration in the miners and we would point our miners somewhere else.”
Listen at 58:18
Rapha wants more mining pools to return block-template control to miners.
“I would like to see more and more oceans out there, other companies that do the same thing, that give block template creation back to the miners”
Listen at 59:31
AI infrastructure risk is currently mispriced.
“there's a lot of risk that is being mispriced right now in AI.”
Listen at 1:00:42
Electron is not pursuing AI high-performance computing for now.
“the answer is no for now i think maybe not in this cycle maybe on the next one”
Listen at 1:00:57
AI high-performance computing requires much greater capital expenditure than Bitcoin mining.
“the CapEx investments that you have in AIHPC, they're an order of magnitude larger than what you have in Bitcoin mining”
Listen at 1:01:19
Statements are attributed to the speaker as said on the episode and reflect their view at the time, not PodLume's. They are not advice.