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[upbeat music] Welcome back to Blockspace Live, brought to you by CleanSpark. You've got Charlie and Will. It is- Discount Colin. Yeah, yeah, Colin.

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I don't know where he is, but, uh, he's out there in the field, uh, in the arena getting stories for us because the stories are numerous.

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The big one today is SpaceX IPO, and we're gonna talk about how it's really not a rocket company. It's a data center company in a rocket company costume.

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Also, we've got Andrew Burchwell of the Ohio Blockchain Council in the house to talk about, what else, data centers in Ohio. Then we've got Tom Masiero of Sphere 3D in the house.

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More on data centers and what is-- what Sphere is up to. Probably, uh, non... Yeah, non- non-hyperscale data centers. Then we- we've got Cole Kennelly to talk markets. A doozy of a day.

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Markets are a bit down, uh, but Blockspace goes live, as you know, every single day, every weekday at 1:00 PM, uh, featuring quick hits on the latest in AI, data centers, some Bitcoin and crypto, and emerging tech. Will.

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Yeah. If you are listening to this on the Coindesk Podcast Network, we are departing these lovely shores for the foreseeable future and heading out on our own.

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You can go to Blockspace on Spotify, Apple, Castro, wherever else you are listening to podcasts, and just hit that subscribe button, hit that bell notification so you always get announcements about when we go live with new shows, which is every single day.

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If you're catching this on the live stream, it's 1:00 PM Eastern. If you are listening later, it's typically around 5:00 PM Eastern.

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And yeah, we're hitting all the, the news updates, so if you wanna continue with us, which we think you should, then jump on over to our new podcast player and give us, of course, five stars. Charlie?

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This show is brought to you by CleanSpark, NASDAQ-listed ticker CLSK. More on CleanSpark later on in the show. Let's kick it off. We could talk about how the markets have pulled back a bit.

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Will, we could talk about how Bitcoin has absolutely, uh, pooped the bed, to be a polite colloquialism.

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But we're gonna talk about the SpaceX IPO because they dropped their S-1 yesterday, or an amendment to the S-1 yesterday, and revealed a number of things.

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I think more than that is Elon posted a nice little hype video, which, guess what, talks about data centers in space. Here's a clip. Model and be able to capture all of that value, and so that's exactly what we did.

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We now have the world's largest coherent supercomputer with the Colossus-2 data center that we stood up with best-in-class compute GB300 specifically from NVIDIA.

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We have the first gigawatt-scale training cluster, the first gigawatt-scale megapack battery installation there as well, and first to deploy the GB200s and 300s at significant scale.

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And so, you know, having a gigawatt of nameplate compute draw is really compelling for us. Yeah. Gigawatt of nameplate compute.

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One thing that SpaceX definitely has is the power and the compute, which is why they signed this deal with Anthropic.

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So Will, let me review the high levels of what we learned from the SpaceX S-1, and then I'll throw it to you for some commentary. So they filed their S-1 on June 1st, 2026. It's public now.

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The company plans to fix the IPO price at $135 per share, sell 555.6 million shares, raise a record $75 billion at a $1.75 trillion valuation. Ticker would be SPCX,

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and they're currently on the roadshow promoting the IPO. So at $1.75 trillion, here's the-- here's where it stacks up. SpaceX will be larger than Microsoft. It would be h- behind only, I believe, Apple and NVIDIA,

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and that is despite SpaceX posting a $4.28 billion net loss in Q1 alone, and an accumulated deficit of, like, $41 billion.

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So, uh, another takeaway is that apparently retails are-- investors are earmarked for 30% of the float, which is three times the standard- Wow... for these mega cap IPOs. Will, what are your thoughts?

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It's a ton of retail. It's a ton of retail. I mean, for us, I think the data center part is probably the most interesting, uh, at least for our audience, and I think what we care about.

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Luckily for us, I think the data center part also, like, undergirds the entire future of the business.

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So if you look at SpaceX right now and what they're doing with xAI and everything else that's been wrapped into it, a lot of the revenue is coming from Colossus and what they've built out with their data center campus in Memphis.

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Uh, and then if you look at the SpaceX I-- uh, S-1 and the IPO information, we ran this article talking about how the AI compute satellite is a new term that they're throwing out there in their prospectus, and it's kinda like on the books now that this is a commodity or it's a new product that they're going to launch.

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Obviously, Elon has talked about this in the past quite a bit, and there's been tons of people on Twitter talking about this.

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I mean, we've even seen people talk about Bitcoin mines in space, right, for, for quite a long time and talking about how, like, the thermodynamics are better 'cause there's no heat in space and it just dissipates.

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A lot of this stuff isn't true. Doesn't matter.

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What they're trying to talk about here is a, a vertical integration between being able to launch these rockets into space, add the data centers into space where there's 24/7 power through the sun, and then be able to use-Grok on these giant data centers and kinda own the entire data center landscape that way, uh, which is a huge market, right?

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Uh, I think some people look at this and they kinda scoff at it, but this is very, like, Elon, right? Where it's th- we're not going to be the best data center company.

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We are going to make every single data center company obsolete by launching data centers into space, having essentially no cost for running them from the energy standpoint, and then trying to figure out how to recoup the costs on the rocket launches over and over again.

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So that's a pretty cool part, and I, I expect we will be talking a lot more about the extraterrestrial data centers on Blockspace a lot more. Yeah. It's, it's really fun to talk about data centers in space.

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Elon's been selling the vision. And the, and he, and the vision is actually, it's, it's pretty obvious when you look at the SpaceX I- the SpaceX numbers. Um, here are the numbers.

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So, um, last year, SpaceX's total 2025 revenue was $18.7 billion, which sounds like a lot. The majority of that was Starlink, about $11.4 billion.

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But as you may know, Anthropic just signed a deal with SpaceX to use their Colossus-1 data center in Memphis, or just outside Memphis, Tennessee, and that deal would net SpaceX about $15 billion per year.

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So the number is, like, pretty clear. Uh, SpaceX's $18.7 billion revenue last year at $15 billion per year with just Anthropic alone, that's 80% of their entire revenue from last year.

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So it's no wonder Elon wants to, like, say, "We- we're really a data center company that shoots data centers up into space via our rockets." Yeah, some of the other stuff is kinda crazy.

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The float that you mentioned, 30% is for retail. I mean, I think that does show us where we're at with retail trading, just the exuberance. Twitter itself, X, which they own, has become a stock trading platform.

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It's kinda like StockTwits and Yahoo Finance all mixed in one with a, a feed in it now. So makes sense that they're kinda, like, building all these things together. Usually gonna go for, for where their money is.

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Uh, but yeah, this article we threw up on Blockspace, which you can go read right now, does talk a lot about that data center landscape when it comes to SpaceX. Yeah. And there's, like, a lot of questions.

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Like, data centers in space, what does the latency look like? 'Cause we think about, like, inference is very latency dependent. Um,

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the, you know, uh, where does the cooling come from with these operating low-Earth orbit.

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Um, I heard Elon, uh, talking on a podcast about how his, kind of, one of the big reasons he likes, uh, data centers in space is because you don't have to go through all the permitting.

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And also, I don't think you have, like, the noisy neighbor problem or the NIMBY problem in space.

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It's kind of ironic that, uh, maybe the reason to go to space is not rather an engineering one, but perhaps a regulatory and just how, what's the easiest path to execution.

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But you still gotta figure out how you cool those. I don't know how that works. I'm skeptical. Any last thoughts on the SpaceX IPO, Will? Uh, I think the day of will be crazy, and maybe the, the aftermath.

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We'll see if all the liquidity does get pulled out, even more so of Bitcoin and other speculative tech assets because these IPOs. Yeah.

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Uh, I think as, I think as long as there's giant mega IPOs on the horizon, if you own things like Bitcoin, like myself included, gonna be in for s- for some more pain. But we're gonna keep rolling.

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We have Andrew Burchwell on next from the Ohio Blockchain Council. He's gonna talk about what's going on up there, data centers, of course. But before that, a word from our sponsor, CleanSpark.

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[gentle music] We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner, a publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate, powered entirely by self-operated infrastructure across four states.

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This is our proof of work, and we are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and Bitcoin at CleanSpark.com. And a reminder, we are leaving CoinDesk.

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So if you are listening on CoinDesk, subscribe to the Blockspace feed. Search Blockspace on whatever platform you're on and subscribe to that feed so you can keep listening to this content. All right. Let's talk Ohio.

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I'm gonna bring on Andrew Burchwell. Andrew, welcome back to Blockspace. Hey. Good to see you boys. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yes. Sound great. Good to see you. Likewise. Um, so you have...

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We've been covering, like, the data center pushback, uh, a lot. I've been pulling up, you know, Boomer posts on Facebook. 'Cause when you leave Twitter, you go onto normal social media, people are not just apprehensive.

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There's some cross-ideology vitriol against data centers. So- Truly... let's talk about public policy and messaging. Um, first of all, I think let's just go into how it relates to Ohio. Um,

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I saw there's a local news story from, uh, featuring, I think, Bitdeer mainly and their- Mm-hmm... data centers. And you had, um, a senior project manager, um,

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uh, reference Senator Moreno, who said that taxpayer-funded giveaways shape, uh... Or he was criticiz- criticizing tax- taxpayer-funded giveaways, and it shapes the no incentive stance. Explain this to me.

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[laughs] Uh, levels here. Okay.

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So-You know, you have this Bitdeer moment where you can look at a single company example like Bitdeer, and I think at this point they're saying they're going to spend $20 billion in the U.S.

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in the four-year sort of Trump cycle. Half of that's going to be in Ohio. So we're ground zero for the current moment of the boomer post, right?

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And the boomer post goes all the way down to the, it's the sign on the side of the highway when, when you're in rural places. And if you drive to enough places, you'll drive through this and you'll see it's everywhere.

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And it is, uh, I would say cross-party, it is cross-generation, and it is probably, even though maybe they're not going all the way quite yet, one of the largest political activations I've seen in some time, just in terms of like what are people paying attention to.

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So then you find yourself, if you're, okay, take the other side of that, you're the politician, not the citizen, and you're sort of thinking about how do I be a politician in the, the current moment.

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And every single one of them is getting hammered on this topic, and they're really just like, "Well, what's the solution? How do I think about it?"

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And behind the scenes, and, and I would just say this is my opinion and I'm not speaking for anybody up to and including any, uh, United States senators, but I think a lot of people are saying, "Hey, these things are actually pretty good for us generally," right?

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Pro-energy, compute is good. We think that we want these things developing our, especially the rural, impoverished, uh, deindustrialized places, and especially in the Midwest particularly, where we focus on here in Ohio.

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Uh, and yet we're, we're balancing the tension of big tech, and what does it mean when these large things come in and are consumptive, you know, people think they're extractive, right?

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And we've seen this over and over again on an industrial cycle.

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So I think the middle ground I'm seeing right now is we're not necessarily, from a political perspective, taking a pro data center stance, but we are taking a where's the reasonable nuance but not a moratorium stance, right?

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Which is really where Moreno is aligning himself to say, "We want this, but we're no longer going to give you the handout we tried to give you 10 years ago when we were really trying to get you to come here."

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And the thing in Ohio that's happened is we created a sales and use tax exemption, right? And we said, "Well, we think this will drive business development to the state." 10 years ago, we were desperate.

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We were begging people to come to the state. And then lo and behold, that works, right?

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And so now we have a lot of data centers, and then they're all taking advantage of this sales and use tax, and then the number goes crazy.

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It's, you know, we thought it was going to be $150 million, now it's $1.5 billion or something, and then everybody, citizens alike, are going, "Well, that's way too much. Wait a minute.

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These are trillion-dollar companies that are saying they're going to use all of this compute to take all of our jobs. What are we doing here? That's a bad deal. We're not going to take that."

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Uh, so finding the nuance right now is really difficult, but I think it's super important.

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I think this is what, uh, Bitcoin mining particularly in the early industry, the last five years or so, because we've already dealt with this, Bitdeer and the like can come out in front of this and go, "Yeah, we've already learned those lessons.

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We already know what we need to do." They're just like, "We spent five, you know, million dollars on a, a noise abatement solution," right? Like, we're willing to work with the community.

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Uh, I think it was Paul who you were talking about, does a really great job of literally just going to these places and being a part of them.

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And I think groups like that in the current moment who are willing to say, "Yeah, we don't, we don't want any tax abatements in that way.

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You're going to make enough on, uh, revenue taxes and other local, you know, taxes for the community that we will happily also pay the sales and use to the state." There's no if or at that point.

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Um, but it really is just how do we, how do we find a reasonable middle for people so that we, we're not getting impeded?

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Because right now, if we, if we slow down in any sense, we're gonna fall behind in a lot of ways, and that's not just compute, that's energy, that's globally.

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And frankly, I mean, just to use the Bitdeer example specifically, they have three sites that are known in Ohio. Uh, one of them is m- moving forward pretty well.

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I think a pretty substantial percentage of hash rate is sitting in Massillon, Ohio right now.

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And the mayor of Massillon is looking at the other two facilities that are dealing with some local consternation right now, and those facilities haven't been built yet.

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The mayor of Massillon's going, "Look, if they don't want them, w- we'll take another one." Like, they, they already see the realized benefit of it.

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And you will too if you go there, by the way, and you see the new substation they built, and you look at the one that was built, you know, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and you're like, "Oh, okay.

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Yeah, I can see how this is good for my community." What's the disconnect then?

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'Cause I think when we look at the larger picture and you see this pushback on it, yet I walk down the street, I know that everyone's scrolling their phones all the time using these data centers. Mm.

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And then we also know that people, like, need jobs in these areas. You go, why are people not quite getting it? Why are people still pushing back on it?

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Uh, is, is it really just come down to, like, they want to have their own wheels greased? Oh, yeah. Well, that's part of it. I mean, I'm not gonna make that a personal claim.

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I think everybody's looking for incentives, and for a while, a few months ago, it was very much, well, how can we get, uh, the data center companies to pay for a lot of stuff, right?

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Uh, that could be infrastructure upgrades on the grid. That could be, you know, communal investment, whatever it is. But it is kind of coming, you know, to take your, your couple of pieces at that point.

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I think it's past that now. I think culturally, people are, um, noticing that their lives are out of their control.

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And I think in a lot of senses, this is my personal opinion, but when people look at big tech and surveillance and censorship and all of the things that have happened and are possible and can continue to get easier with these tools, they rightfully say, "I'm not sure I want to buy into that completely."

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And they want to understand how they can be protected from it, and therefore they're right... Like, I don't think this is just a, a miseducation or a boomer post thing.

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I think this is, like, very meaningful stuff happening right now. And I think the messaging has been so poor from the top down because most of the time it's a commercial enterprise, and now we're seeing the IPO moment.

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And if I'm anthropic, am I trying to scare people so I can raise the value or, you know, play some game in the, you know, public capital markets so that I can boost some potential I have in an IPO setting or whatever it might be?

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Like, there are all these things that aren't good for the farmer in rural Ohio as a particular example, right? So the disconnect to me is less that the people are resistant to the tools.

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It's just that I don't think we're actually doing a very good job of saying, "Here's how these tools actually will help you."

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Uh, and instead it's, "These tools are actually going to take your job," and all of these other things that are disastrous.

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And I think it's really simple to say these people are missing the point and being influenced by foreign persuasion and all of these other things.

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But I think until we realize that actually there's a meaningful thing here, which is-People are looking at the global state of things. You know, this takes me all the way back to fiat. Like we- Yeah...

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we don't talk about Bitcoin enough in this moment of, wait a minute, why are people so upset? Well, it's because the money is broken. Uh, and all of these things are downstream of all of those things.

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And until we bring it full circle, you know, I think people are gonna continue to look for that scapegoat. And I, I will say this is the last thing, because we, we sit in the middle of this as a politic.

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Utilities and entrenched interests are very good because they've had a long time to practice at getting people not to notice the ways in which they are the problem.

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And the utilities have done a really great job of saying the data centers are the reason why our grid is fragile and broken.

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And nobody knows how electricity works, and so it's very easy to just say, you know, "It's over there and it's this new th-."

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But it's, no, it's, it's 50 years of perverse incentives and mal-investment and just corruption outright, frankly. Yeah. And we saw that directly in Ohio with House Bill 6 and other scandals.

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So, you know, I think people are just, like, it, it's l- it's fatigue, and they're like, "Okay, stop." You know?

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Let's, let's, uh, the, the classic like, "Let's get our hands around this," and it's like, well, we can't actually do that, so what's the middle way here?

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And it's actually, let's try to use these tools and think about how to actually empower people with these tools.

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And to me, that is, like, local scale, that's like 20 megawatt to 100 megawatt scale things, and not gigawatt scale things. Yeah.

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Because I think no matter what, big, large, looming will always be more problematic than things that are small, modular and, and different. That's a perfect tee up to our next guest, Tom Masiero, who's in the wings.

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But I wanna ask you a couple more questions. Sure. Uh, so I'll, I'll, I'll push back.

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Like, you know, the three of us, we've been in the data center game, me in the Bitcoin world, for a long time, so we're, we, you know, are probably a little biased.

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But I want to a- I wanna examine, like, what are valid concerns from the public on this? 'Cause a lot of people are obsessed with water use. To me, that seems like a spurious claim largely. Is it, is it power rates?

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Is it maybe that the pie is being baked in their backyard and they're not getting a big enough piece of it? Like, what are the valid concerns of, to, uh, that the public might have?

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I think the valid concern that I have that I'll just say maybe we can run with a little bit here is when tools become sophisticated enough at scale,

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we lose the ability to properly govern them, and I think that's why Bitcoin, right?

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Like, I think we looked at protocol, and we think about how technology manages systems of decision-making, and that is in essence governance. When we do this and when we do this quickly,

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I think there is actually a real risk that we can put ourselves outside of the bounds of business as usual pretty quickly. W- we look at the example of Anthropic going to the Catholic Church, right?

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Like, large scale global institutions who have normally been tasked with, uh, maintaining order are now looking at these tools and going, "Ah, well, we can do this much better and faster now."

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And the Pentagon is grappling with how do we use these tools? How do we maintain hegemony of the best tools to defend ourselves?

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That's all governance to me, and I actually think that is the most legitimate criticism of scale at any cost.

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Which is why I think the, the middle tier players have such an opportunity here, because they aren't maligned by, uh, algorithmic bias, right?

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Uh, in, on the right in Ohio, most people are mad at Google, Meta, Amazon, because of the way the Instagram, uh, Facebook Meta algorithm moves people poorly and inarticulately, and maybe to the detriment of what you might think is, like, a proper society, right?

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Like, people are being pushed into the extremes of thought, and it's an algorithm we don't control. And so I think we, we should rightfully be weary of any idea of anybody doing anything at any time.

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However, as a free markets guy, right, where's the tension? It's, it ultimately comes down to who has control, who has authority, who has responsibility for these assets.

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And I am a big believer that actually the local community should be stakeholders to some degree in these projects. I think Tom will come on next and say a little bit about that.

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I think we're all sort of coalescing around this theme of actually instead of it being something that could be looked at as purely extractive, even if the water's closed loop, even if it's off grid, even if you're not affecting anything, the community's still gonna go, "Do we want this in our community or not?"

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And I think they should, and I think we should do a better job of trying to get them to be on our team from a compute perspective.

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But there are also many teams, and I don't think I'm gonna sit here and say that Anthropic is the same as Google, is the same as CleanSpark or Bitdeer or Mara, right?

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Like, these are all actually different approaches to the philosophy of markets, and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that in markets, uh, people don't always act rationally, and that's just something we should come to expect in a more free system.

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Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. I wish we could have you on more, but we have, uh, guests lined up. Andrew, you are welcome back.

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Next time we're gonna talk Ohio policy and protocol. Thank you so much. Good to see you guys. All right, we're gonna keep rolling. We have Tom Masiero and then Cole Kennelly on.

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But before we bring Tom on, a word from our sponsor, Luxor. [whooshing sound] This episode is brought to you by Luxor's Commander, Bitcoin miner management software built for enterprise operations.

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a friend of the show, Tom. Friend of the show. Friend of the show, Tom. Tom, welcome back.Hey, guys. Nice to see you guys. Nice to see you too. So we, we brought you on for the hot segment.

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Uh, I was teasing you this morning on, on Telegram. But, uh, we got a few video clips we wanna get some reactions from you with.

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But before we do that, let's talk about the announcement you guys had on Monday with the combination of Cathedra and Sphere 3D now trading under the ticker ENE, which is having a huge week.

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Tell us a little bit about the integration and, uh, why... W- you can't really tell us why the stock is up, but maybe more generally speaking, like, why is the market liking companies like Sphere 3D?

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Yeah, I wish I could say, like, we were geniuses in, in, um, you know, setting up the timing on this whole thing with, you know, Bitcoin profitability and, you know, mining sort of being at its, like, worst levels possible.

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And then, um, you know, some of these smaller Bitcoin mining infrastructure companies signaling to be ready to, uh, essentially, you know, pivot their assets over into AI compute.

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And I, I think, you know, the, the process that it took for us with, um, uh, you know, with this merger was, like, six months.

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And so the last, I would say, like, two or three months, uh, Joel and I have been, you know, on calls almost, uh, I mean, every day, multiple calls a day, engaged with every single layer within AI compute, and it became very clear that this was, like, a real thing.

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And so, you know, maybe a couple weeks before, uh, you know, the merger was set to be finalized, it was, you know, it was clear that we were gonna be heading in this direction.

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And so we started to try to, to get that, um, story out and to have it be clear with what we're doing, which is just a, uh, an assessment of where we're at, looking at bringing in folks who have done this at, at, um, larger scales and have worked with the different counterparties involved.

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And, um, you know, this week we, the, the deal was finalized on Monday, and I think there was some fortuitous timing with, uh, DMG Blockchain, same day came out with, you know, their similar size in terms of, uh, one of the sites that they have announcing a institutional grade, uh, investor with, you know, with a backstop, and that sort of kind of legitimized, I think, folks in our, I guess, like, the cohort in our segment that this is, like, a legitimate thing.

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And, and now it's up for, uh, for everyone to, you know, go and execute. Yeah, we had, uh, Steve and Sheldon on earlier this week talking about a 50 megawatt investment-grade deal.

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And this is the big question, right, uh, in AI data c- data center landscapes. Do you go big with the hyperscalers, the 1 gigawatts, or can you go smaller modular? And maybe the thesis gets played out on both sides.

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There's certainly companies that are pursuing both in tandem. Let's watch this video. This is from the head of compute at OpenAI, and I wanna get your reaction to it.

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You know, one of the, one of the, maybe the other dimension, Sachin, is training, the shape of the training workload, as you said, is fairly synchronous. Mm-hmm. It is typically coordinated. You need a coherent cluster.

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It goes up right all at the same time. Inference, on the other hand, does not seem that way. It's likely much more spiky, a lot harder to forecast maybe.

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And as that, as that changes, uh, you might even want more compute closer to the edge to minimize latency for, for inference. Talk about that for a second.

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How do you manage, um, the shape of your, your, your compute capacity knowing that you're moving towards an inference-heavy world?

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Uh, does that mean more distributed, almost Cloudflare-like mini clusters closer to the edge, or a giant one in Texas or Virginia is good enough? It will get there, but it's not yet, and for two reasons.

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One is, uh, there are still significant benefits to scale, uh, on building this, this compute. Mm-hmm.

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Uh, so building 50 megawatts of compute is far more expensive per megawatt than building a gigawatt of compute at one location. Fascinating. Uh, and that's- On a unit, per unit basis... on a per megawatt basis. Got it.

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Right? And that's for many reasons, right? Mm. So labor is a big bottleneck around the world today- Mm... in, especially in the US. Mm. We just don't have enough people to build these things. Mm.

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So getting the kind of critical human mass you need to build- Mm... you would much rather do it for a bigger scale- Mm... than for little bits of 50 megawatts spread around the country.

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Okay, Tom, reactions towards that because it's the, it's the nexus of the battle right now, right?

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Guys like yourself, publicly listed, have some megawatts under management, but you guys don't have 500 to 1 gigawatt patches versus the hyperscalers. So how do you think about that?

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Uh, I think the market will determine, um, that there's probably a little bit of truth to, to both of it.

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Um, you know, the, the problem I, I see is that a lot of these larger scale proct- projects are, and Andrew was talking about this before, are falling into more of a, uh, of a state of, of being jeopardized than I think some of the smaller ones.

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That does not mean the smaller ones don't have to deal with some of the same exact issues.

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Um, so if that's being the case, I think the market will work itself out with, with a lot of this because at the end of the day, you know, I think I talked with, you know, with, with Charlie last time, it was very reminiscent of the 2020, 2021 Chinese mining exodus where there was such an influx of machines that hit the shores that needed homes that, you know, like, I mean, that, that was all-time, um, you know, price per terahash.

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You know, you had, uh, S19s selling for $10,000 each. So you're talking, like, 30 million bucks would fill out a 10 megawatt site, was not cheap.

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And prior to that, there was a lot of talk am- among, you know, folks in the industry where, you know, around standards and buildings, and containers were sort of shunned at that point.

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So I just think, you know, there's, just like in everything, these cycles will come around and, um, the market will prove itself. Uh, you know, this,

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uh, the, the leader of, um, Google's energy, uh, side of things had a, like, a contrary take to the OpenAI guy's side of things.

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He was basically saying there's, there's this path for the bigger ones, and then he's like, you know, there's gonna be this middle layer of, you know, maybe 50 megawatt, uh, sites that are, are gonna be kind of clustered together and, and are gonna be part of the package.

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So it's just essentially a tool belt issue.I'll throw in there one more question, then we'll go to the next clip. The labor issue seems to be noticed more and more.

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We had Adam Sullivan, the CEO of Core Scientific, tweeting about that this morning.

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Uh, he spoke about it in a private conference with TD Cohen the other day as well, talking about how Core Scientific and its five-plus sites that they're building out for Core Weave are competing against Google and a lot of the other hyperscalers, new clouds out there for the big labor contracts.

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He-- One thing he noted was that you are not only just competing for, like, the, the big national brands, but you're competing on a price basis against people who have deeper pockets.

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And if you go cheap and hire someone local, you might not get the quality, you might be delayed, you might lose the contract. So there really is a fixed pool of talent here.

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How do you see that playing with the local game?

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Because if you're smaller, maybe you can get things done a little faster and manage it a little bit better, but maybe you also kinda get screwed by not having as good of quality laborers. Yeah.

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Um, I think at the scale that those guys are building out, they're, they're in competition, direct competition with the hyperscalers.

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I think for the s- size, uh, sites that we're dealing with, they're gonna be more modular builds, potentially mobile builds.

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And the partners, I think that, uh, even DMG talked about, you know, they've got essentially a co-location partner that's coming with them.

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It's actually no different than what Marathon, uh, is doing with their partnership with Starwood es- in, in terms of, like, bringing them along with their expertise. Uh, so,

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you know, I, I think those issues won't be as plentiful, uh, on the smaller side of things. Okay, Charlie, we still have this next clip, which I think is pretty interesting. It's from, uh, I think a talk this morning.

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Ed Zitron, who, who runs a really well-known blog and podcast, and he has a contrary take on the whole AI CapEx spend issue.

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Again, I think this was on, uh, Bloomberg's Business Week daily as of this morning, and it's eliciting a lot of attention. So we're zooming out a little bit more on CapEx spend. Let's play this.

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I'll probably let it run for about a minute as he, as he lands on the thesis here. Of course. Their growth is coming because people cannot measure how much an AI task actually costs.

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And couple months ago, Anthropic started charging their enterprise customers the actual token rates. What this has led to is suddenly businesses are going, "Oh, how much money are we spending?"

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Uber's C- I think it w- it was Uber's COO, Andrew McDonald, said that they are having trouble justifying ba- the AI spend based on the actual return, that one can actually measure it.

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So you've got a thing where you can't measure the costs and you can't measure the return on investment. What do you call that? You call it a thing without an ROI.

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Isn't it, though, safe to say, Ed, like, I think about this. I agr- like, that there is gonna be, when there's any new technology, there's a lot of money thrown at something, right? A hot new idea- Yeah...

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whatever it is. And that ultimately...

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Like, we've talked with some experts in the AI world that are saying all of these large language models, not everything's gonna exist, 'cause right now it doesn't cost you anything to use it.

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But at some point, there will be a cost, and people will start to select what they wanna play with.

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And so is it a case of right now, I mean, at some point there will be some winners, some losers, and we'll see some things filter their way out, and that there will be some return on investment for some of the larger players when it comes to AI?

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Do you not see some winners and losers in this or some winners in this? I think the winner is Jensen Huang, and the winner is the construction firms who have got prepaid for all the data center construction.

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Maybe Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have become billionaires through this. But when it comes to the actual businesses, you can't find anyone who can measure the ROI because you can't do it.

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So when it comes down to the model companies themselves, they're horrifyingly- Mm-hmm... horrifyingly unprofitable. I think OpenAI lost, like, twenty-something billion dollars last year.

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Anthropic's probably not far behind this. And we don't have access to their books and their private companies- Of course, of course.

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But this is based on- But once they file for an IPO, we, we, we'll get some- Yeah, and that's the thing.

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When we see these S1s, I think it's going to be kind of a massacre, because I think that people have this view that these companies are becoming more profitable or even have a path to profitability.

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And the ac- Okay, Tom, initial takes on, on that. I mean, it's a, it's a good hot take. Uh, I think... I, I kind of just...

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I kinda think of myself as, like, the angry old guy who was shaking my fists in the, in the air, like, you know, like you and I talked a couple of weeks ago, of, like, kind of seeing the utility of a lot of these AI products as just being, like, an extension of chat or, or, or search.

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And then I... You know, there's been this, like, explosion in the last three or four months around, like, agentic use, and within that, things are happening very, very quickly.

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And, you know, I almost liken it to when y- going back when Facebook announced their IPO. They had no profit. They were just basing their, you know, their numbers on how many users they had.

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And, and, um, and my- myself I was like, "What..." You know, "What kind of business is this? This is gonna be a terrible stock."

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And now they're one of the most, like, you know, obviously very successful, obviously became extremely profitable.

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So I think it's a little shortsighted to, you know, to, to completely just throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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Y- he kind of undercuts this idea that, um, Anthropic is profitable, and he, he puts it at the, at the feet of, you know, just pumping Elon. [lip smack] I mean, you know, at the end of the day, we'll, we'll see.

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I know that for m- for my particular use, and, and friends in my cohort, I know them within the circle, we use it all the time, and it's become in- increasingly valuable. It makes my work more efficient.

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It gives me superpowers in different ways. There's different types of people that are using it.

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Yeah, the enterprise guys at Uber and some of these other Fortune 500 companies didn't have [chuckles], um, you know, throttles on their stuff, and they... and people just went buck wild. Well, I use it very differently.

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Like, I, I, I have a $100 a month cloud-Um, account. I don't max out my stuff, and I use it a lot. Um, and so I think there's, like, you know, different cor- cohorts of people that are using it.

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I don't think it's slowing down. I think we're very, at the very, very early stages. The a- agentic stuff d- is not perfect.

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You gotta spend time fine-tuning it and doing all this other stuff, but the way that it's improving is going to dramatically shape, um, you know, the way people do things, and it's gonna disrupt a lot of industries.

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Can I wrap with a total curveball question? So the SpaceX S1's out, and surprise, SpaceX isn't a rocket company, it's a data center company, says Elon. Uh, and he wants to put data centers in space.

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This is a bit of a fun, like, you know, thought experiment that we Bitcoiners have had for many, many years. Tom, what's the feasibility of putting a data center in space?

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Do you, you know, is, is it this cra- Is it harder or easier than Tennessee? Yeah. Is it easier to put a data center in Tennessee or in space?

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[laughs] I mean, it took me an hour and a half to move my cows this morning, so I don't know if I'm exactly, um, uh, qualified to answer that question. Um, I looked like Jeremy Clarkson out there. But- [laughs]...

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uh, I would say, I would say, like, it's, it, listen, all the smart people are saying you can do it, lasers and all kinds of crazy stuff.

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To me, I think there's probably a lot more, uh, cool things you can do here on Earth.

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Like, I, I live in a part of the country where there's immense amount of, like, caverns and caves and, you know, places where it's, like, very cool underground.

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We've, we've never even ex- you know, explored the depths of the ocean. So, um, I think there, you know, that'll be the hype is some of the space stuff that's going on.

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But, um, you know, I also think there's probably gonna be a lot of innovation.

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Uh, you know, if you look at the, the issues that people are having with, uh, with data centers, I could see, you know, some, some kind of unique ways to go about it. [dog barks] Thanks a ton.

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Data centers in space gets a yes, maybe, qualified answer. I love it. This is gonna be a fun topic to keep hitting on.

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Well, I, one thing, one thing I would say, though, about, uh, Elon's shift, um, into the, like, the data center business was he was very quick to pivot.

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He's able to use, um, the infrastructure that he put in place and now has a really good, uh, end-use customer that's gonna drive a lot of, um, revenue for them.

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And then Mar- Mark Zuckerberg recently, you know, kind of signaled the same thing, that they would be potentially getting into, you know, whatever you wanna call it, N- Neo cloud business where they're selling compute as well, too.

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So there's, there's something very special in the compute-to-token kind of, like, margin that a lot of these guys are seeing that maybe will be a bridge to when, you know, the agentic stuff catches up and business models are able to ROI.

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Love it, Tom. Thank you so much for your insight and takes. Shout out to Sphere. It's had a great week. Uh, thank you so- Any time, guys. Yeah, thank you so much. We'll s- we'll catch you later. Gotta love Tom.

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We got a few minutes. Wanna jump over to this SemiAnalysis tweet that I'll pull up. You're, you're master of the screen here.

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So yeah, Cloudflare is now saying that, uh, for the first time in human history, which is not too long, the internet is now mostly bots and not h- humans.

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So, you know, internet been around in some form or another since the '60s, so really not that long, and then truly, we really only had it since the '90s or early 2000s, takeoff in the, in the 2010s.

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But I think it's interesting to see this kinda chart pop up here. Uh, Cloudflare obviously is, is the one to look at with this. Uh, they're gonna have pretty good data on it.

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So wanted to pull this one up as we're waiting for Cole to join us to talk about Bitcoin and Bitcoin volatility, which obviously has been pretty brutal over the last month.

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I think we're down 20% month over month, which is not great. Uh, but Cole's a great person to come talk about this while we tr- transition away from machines and bots and talk about our favorite coins.

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So feel free to take that one off, and I, I think Cole just joined. Yeah, it, it is funny how, uh, you know, we used to talk about tokens in crypto, and now we're gonna about, now we're talking about tokens in AI.

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It's just tokens- Different tokens... all, all the way down. We're gonna bring Cole on here in a second, but not before a word from our sponsor, Ligos. [static sound] Hedge funds are getting liquidated. Is your BTC safe?

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Go to ligos.finance to learn more. All right, let's talk markets with our boy Cole Kennelly, who's here waiting in the wings. I'm gonna bring him up now. Cole, welcome to the show. Can you hear me? Hey, guys.

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Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Great, yeah. Welcome to the show. Good, uh, good to have you back. So Cole, Bitcoin is down 20% month over month. Uh, Stretch had a bad day yesterday, touched 94 bucks, and Mr.

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Bag Holders are crying, and everyone kind of wants Saylor's head at the moment.What's your take on Bitcoin market?

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Is it really just not the hot, shiny thing right now, and the IPOs are drying up the liquidity, or is there something underneath the surface we don't know about? Yeah, I think it's a confluence of a couple things.

253
00:42:48.244 --> 00:43:07.823
Most, uh, specifically, I, I think Saylor in the 8-K selling $2.5 million of Bitcoin, which relative to how much Bitcoin Strategy owns is not a very large amount, but, you know, just kind of scares the market and makes the market think that he's going to sell more, uh, Bitcoin.

254
00:43:08.024 --> 00:43:16.724
Um, so, you know, effectively, s- Strategy has this, uh, stretch preferred, and they pay out a dividend.

255
00:43:16.793 --> 00:43:25.184
They just bought back some debt, but, you know, he sold some Bitcoin to prove to the market, "Hey, Bitcoin's liquid, it's money." Um, but the market didn't like that.

256
00:43:25.244 --> 00:43:28.374
I think there's also a couple of other factors, specifically- Mm-hmm...

257
00:43:28.374 --> 00:43:41.264
um, you know, some of these AI stocks, AI, uh, related IPOs coming up, um, have shifted sort of some capital and attention towards, towards those markets. And so I would say that it's a confluence of a couple things.

258
00:43:42.004 --> 00:43:42.664
Um, who knows?

259
00:43:42.684 --> 00:43:55.304
Perhaps the market's a bit, uh, concerned about Quantum as well, and so I think that it's a mix of Saylor, um, you know, is AI taking a little bit of the bit out of the market, uh, as well as, uh, some other factors.

260
00:43:55.324 --> 00:44:12.564
And so, um, yeah, it's, it's an interesting time in crypto, and vol, you know, kind of went to a nine-month low, the BVIV index, um, recently, and then kinda mean reverted back to, uh, you know, 50s, 50 handle, high 40s.

261
00:44:12.604 --> 00:44:28.444
And so, um, it's been an interesting couple weeks. Yeah, it looks like BVIV, uh, rocketed up this week, what? Up 47%. And can you e- explain the BVIV as well, just for audience members who aren't familiar with it?

262
00:44:29.164 --> 00:44:39.204
Yeah, sure. So the BVIV index is 30-day implied volatility of Bitcoin. It's pretty analogous to the VIX index, but for, for crypto markets, for Bitcoin.

263
00:44:39.704 --> 00:44:46.864
And so when the market is expecting uncertainty or volatility or risk, the BVIV index tends to increase.

264
00:44:47.544 --> 00:45:00.844
Um, and so basically we, we use the global options markets to price, uh, this index, and it constantly just prints every, uh, you know, uh, continuously. And so, um, it's a measure of fear. It's a measure of uncertainty.

265
00:45:01.444 --> 00:45:12.344
Um, at times it can measure greed, but it's really this expected risk index. As you said, I don't really believe Bitcoin crashed because Michael Saylor sold $2.5 million worth of Bitcoin.

266
00:45:13.304 --> 00:45:20.094
It seems to me that it is part of this just AI sucking the money out of everything and the, and the intention of everything.

267
00:45:21.044 --> 00:45:32.644
Do you sh- have a similar view, or maybe, like, qualify why you think Bitcoin and broader crypto experienced a massive drop this week? I, I do think it's a mix of a couple factors.

268
00:45:32.684 --> 00:45:42.364
I mean, the market definitely doesn't like that, that Saylor and Strategy are, uh, you know, levered and, uh... You know, I, I don't...

269
00:45:42.424 --> 00:45:47.844
I think the sort of, uh, you know, blow-up risk or, or like them failing is, is pretty low probability.

270
00:45:47.944 --> 00:45:54.964
But, um, the market definitely doesn't like him setting the tone that he's going to be continuing to sell or that he needs to sell to pay the stretch dividend.

271
00:45:55.024 --> 00:46:03.384
I mean, I think there's something like six months of, uh, dividends sort of payments that he has on his balance sheet sort of earmarked for that. He, he had more, but he had bought back the debt.

272
00:46:03.414 --> 00:46:14.764
And so even though it's a very small amount of Bitcoin that he sold do- in, in nominal terms, I do think that, uh, the market doesn't like that he, he could sell a lot more to, to fund the stretch dividend.

273
00:46:14.824 --> 00:46:22.624
So I mean, either he stops, you know, he lowers the, the stretch dividend and kind of, you know, that, that sort of ends, or he, he sells Bitcoin.

274
00:46:22.704 --> 00:46:33.344
There's a co- there's not many other, um, avenues for, for him to sort of raise capital. I do think, though, that, you know, uh, you have a SpaceX IPO, you have Anthropic IPO, you have OpenAI IPO.

275
00:46:34.004 --> 00:46:40.444
Um, the market is definitely focused on those things right now. I mean, I think, you know, there will be like a wealth effect. Who knows?

276
00:46:40.484 --> 00:46:46.554
People probably could, could end up buying Bitcoin post, you know, sort of those things, um, you know, the, the dust settling.

277
00:46:46.644 --> 00:46:57.044
But may- maybe there's some other sort of, uh, market microstructure things happening with, um, you know, uh, individual whales selling or, or like o- other things that are going on.

278
00:46:57.064 --> 00:47:05.944
But I would attribute it largely to the, the market being scared of, of Strategy, which has so much Bitcoin, right? If there was ever a problem with Strategy, they have, you know, $50 billion of Bitcoin.

279
00:47:05.964 --> 00:47:16.904
It would take a lot to sort of unwind that. Um, that plus like the IPOs, and, um, there's just so many, you know, these different, um, AI stocks that are, you know, in going up.

280
00:47:16.924 --> 00:47:24.004
You have Micron and Dell, and the market's just... You know, a lot of these traders are very mercenary. They're looking for the next thing that's going up. They're following the trend.

281
00:47:24.044 --> 00:47:40.564
And so, um, perhaps we're just seeing a, a small rotation or a rotation from, uh, from crypto to some AI stocks, but I obviously think it w- we'll come back to crypto, and I'm, you know, remain very bullish on crypto and Bitcoin long term and, and think that, you know, this is kind of, uh, what a bottom looks like a lot of times.

282
00:47:41.864 --> 00:47:55.204
To that end, I wanna ask about, uh, sentiment. So we get a lot of our view into Bitcoin price action and, and interest in it via Twitter, uh, as do most people. Uh, y- you kinda swim with some institutions.

283
00:47:55.224 --> 00:48:04.444
Do you get the sense that they are not as interested in Bitcoin at the moment, that it's, you know, maybe like yesteryear's thing and, and not as interesting to them for allocations?

284
00:48:04.964 --> 00:48:12.243
Uh, CoinShares obviously puts out a really good notice about once a week on institutional investment in, in Bitcoin and crypto-related products.

285
00:48:12.714 --> 00:48:17.264
Uh, it hasn't been as dramatically down as I would have thought given the price action.

286
00:48:17.884 --> 00:48:28.344
Um, but I'm curious from your desk if you're seeing institutions kinda move one way or the other, or is it a little bit more muted than the retail fears on Twitter would have us think? Yeah.

287
00:48:28.564 --> 00:48:36.604
Um, I think that the institutions largely are still really excited about Bitcoin, crypto, tokenization, stable coins.

288
00:48:36.644 --> 00:48:48.594
I mean, every day there's some different various announcements about, uh, a tokenization effort or a new stable so- stable coin consortium or, um, some new Bitcoin-related, you know, uh, product or ETF.

289
00:48:48.664 --> 00:48:51.144
There's so many ETF filings by all these institutions.

290
00:48:51.184 --> 00:49:09.264
And so, um-I, I think that if you look at, like, the IBIT complex or the FBTC complex or some of these bigger, um, you know, issuers in, in the crypto space, asset managers, uh, digital asset space, as, as they say, um, I think that, uh, there's a ton of appetite for this, and they all think this is kinda where the market is moving.

291
00:49:09.284 --> 00:49:25.384
And, you know, AI is the new, um, sort of hot thing right now, but I think that, you know, crypto and stable coins and, and Bitcoin have, have, have proven itself, uh, themselves as, uh, things that the market, uh, likes, and they have a lot of utility and, and, you know, th- they're adopting.

292
00:49:25.404 --> 00:49:39.184
And so I think that all asset managers, issuers of ETFs, ETPs, ETNs, um, you know, uh, index companies, um, hedge funds, um, they're all looking at Bitcoin, they're looking at crypto.

293
00:49:39.284 --> 00:49:50.804
And there's sort of this, like, you know, uh, difference of view, I would say, like, from, like, crypto Twitter, you get a lot of people that are, you know, all in on Bitcoin or some altcoin, and they're, you know, candidly kind of...

294
00:49:50.844 --> 00:49:58.404
You know, their, their positions are down right now, and then you have the, you know, the people that are in the, um, you know, different institutions that are thinking about, "How do I get involved in this space?"

295
00:49:58.464 --> 00:50:04.644
And they're, you know, not as invested from a, a personal account pro- point of view most likely, and they don't see it the same way.

296
00:50:04.684 --> 00:50:09.144
And so I think that you get a lot of loud, upset people on Twitter for various reasons.

297
00:50:09.684 --> 00:50:23.264
Um, but institutional, um, you know, companies and, uh, investors are, are still really excited about crypto, and I think that, um, you know, they see this, this kind of, uh, small correction, or whatever you wanna call it, as a, as an opportunity.

298
00:50:23.294 --> 00:50:31.344
And so I think it's, it's an exciting time, and, um, probably the, the most interest from institutions in crypto and Bitcoin ever, right?

299
00:50:31.504 --> 00:50:39.743
It's, uh, totally the opposite of crypto Twitter, which is just, you know, the sort of people that have... insiders that have been in the industry for a long time that are, um, upset.

300
00:50:39.764 --> 00:50:54.244
But I think that the institutions are, are super excited. So, uh, BIV is trading on, uh, on, in a number of venues. But one of the venues that everybody's all hot about is Hyperliquid.

301
00:50:54.924 --> 00:51:07.864
I wanna get your thoughts and takes on, like, this new type of 24/7, almost like gray market for, for, for assets. It's g- it's got the SpaceX pre-IPO audio- It's in Wall Street Journal. It's, uh...

302
00:51:07.924 --> 00:51:18.144
Yeah, Wall Street Journal. It's not a gray market anymore. Yeah. Are you seeing the, the inci- I... Is it just the Wall Street Journal article, or are the, the big boys in, in New York actually, uh...

303
00:51:18.824 --> 00:51:35.144
Are they actually excited about, uh, something like Hyperliquid? I think Hyperliquid has captured the mindshare of all of the crypto Twitter retail, you know, folks, but then also a lot of the institutions as well. Um,

304
00:51:36.244 --> 00:51:52.704
you know, if you look to this week, you know, the CME stock, the, uh, NASDAQ stock, and various others were, were sharply down on the news of, uh, perpetuals coming to the US market, and this being effectively a threat to their, uh, futures business.

305
00:51:52.804 --> 00:52:01.044
Um, and so I think that absolutely Hyperliquid, um, you know, has caught the attention of a lot of the institutions for various reasons.

306
00:52:01.164 --> 00:52:12.164
Um, you know, they have these single stock futures effectively that are trading in this perpetual wrapper. And, y- you know, it's, it's in- uh, very innovative. It's 24/7 market.

307
00:52:12.544 --> 00:52:23.724
They have, uh, accessibility to commodities and equities and pre-IPO companies like SpaceX. I think with the Cerebras IPO, you saw that the market was, was looking at Hyperliquid.

308
00:52:23.744 --> 00:52:41.384
There was a, a Twitter, uh, post, uh, from, um, uh, one of the folks in the Hyperliquid ecosystem that showed Mor- uh, Morgan Stanley, I believe, bankers looking at the Hyperliquid, um, you know, chart for Cerebras on top of Bloomberg Terminal, uh, which was a kind of a, a, a poetic and, uh, you know, symbolic in a way.

309
00:52:41.444 --> 00:52:53.304
But, um, yeah, I think that Hyperliquid absolutely is catching the attention of, of everybody in the traditional finance space. Um, you know, the, uh, you know, crypto retail obviously.

310
00:52:53.324 --> 00:53:06.424
And there's been a number of these ETFs that have launched recently of, uh, Bitwise and 21Shares and Grayscale, which have all launched various Hyperliquid ETFs, and that coincided with the big run in the HYPE token, um, along with the, the pre-IPO stuff.

311
00:53:06.454 --> 00:53:17.624
And so Hyperliquid is definitely something that al- everybody is paying attention to largely. And, um, it's kind of, you know, this new on-chain exchange, uh, conglomerate that...

312
00:53:17.904 --> 00:53:22.863
And there's a bunch of other great, you know, projects that are, that are similar. You have Lighter and, and several others.

313
00:53:22.894 --> 00:53:35.454
And so it's a really interesting space, and I think that all of the incumbent institutions, as well as all of the, you know, hedge funds and investment banks and other, other types of firms, asset managers, issuers, are, are all paying attention to it.

314
00:53:35.904 --> 00:53:40.284
So it's, uh, that's something that's really, you know, kind of defied gravity. You have the Bitcoin.

315
00:53:40.304 --> 00:53:53.464
It's pretty crazy to see Bitcoin at 63K, 64K, and Hyperliquid is at all-time highs at 73, 74, fully diluted, um, a billion. And so, um, Hyperliquid's been incredible, and I'm a big fan of Hyperliquid.

316
00:53:53.544 --> 00:54:00.564
I think it's a really promising platform, and look forward to, um, you know, BIV being tradable there. Cool.

317
00:54:01.084 --> 00:54:11.743
Cole Kennelly, founder, CEO of Volmex Labs, thank you so much for coming on the show and ripping with us about markets. We'll have you on again soon. Thanks, guys. Cheers. See ya. Thanks. Bye.

318
00:54:12.904 --> 00:54:27.484
Okay, Charlie, before we close out, I have one more thing. Okay. And that is Cash App has announced a brand-new product. Can you guess what it is? Yes. The wand. Yeah. Oh, you did hear it. Yeah. Let me... [laughs] Yeah.

319
00:54:27.564 --> 00:54:37.254
I was hoping you hadn't seen it, because I was thinking you would be like, "Oh, it's some AI-powered checkout process," or they're getting into DSM.

320
00:54:37.324 --> 00:54:45.744
Oh, I've already, I've already given, I've already given my take on it in, in a side chat, you know, right out the gate. And what is it? How much? Do you know, do you know what my take is? I'd love to see it.

321
00:54:45.834 --> 00:54:56.858
Let's see if we can pull up the video really quick. Okay, yeah. Jack posted it. Let me, um, pull it up. It's so ridiculous. I already ordered one, of course.Let me pull up a Jack video here. But hysterical.

322
00:54:57.128 --> 00:55:05.668
I saw this and I thought, you know, there's SpaceX IPO, you're going through the prospectus, and there's like these amazing images of rockets shooting off into space.

323
00:55:06.988 --> 00:55:16.748
And here [laughs] we have Square is announcing the wand, the- Yeah... device. Oh, it's called Get My Magic. [upbeat music] Here we go. Incredible.

324
00:55:18.668 --> 00:55:35.548
[upbeat music] [laughs] I will say they, they just let go of 4,000 plus employees, and this is the first thing- [laughs]... they launch after. But, yeah. A little bit salt in the wound.

325
00:55:36.128 --> 00:55:44.368
So I mean, uh, I will say, I mean, I have a pink Cash App card, so you kind of, you kind of already know why I- They will probably make a lot of money off this.

326
00:55:44.428 --> 00:55:54.508
Like, it is, is very focused on one particular sort of client in the Cash App ecosystem, I would say. Yeah. And, and it's, it's- And it will do well... it's not for the clients who are on Twitter.

327
00:55:54.548 --> 00:56:01.588
It's for the clients who are on Instagram Threads by Meta. Yes. It's for the clients who are on TikTok. It's for the clients who carry purses.

328
00:56:02.188 --> 00:56:13.508
It's not really for me, although because I'm so contrarian, I just like the idea I might get one anyway. It makes a lot of sense. Cash App's becoming this whole neobank.

329
00:56:13.678 --> 00:56:19.858
It- I don't even know if that term really makes sense anymore. Um, and NFC payments are everywhere.

330
00:56:19.988 --> 00:56:31.348
I was in New York with you a few- a couple months ago, and I was just unbelievably happy that I could pay with my phone on my credit- Everywhere... M- MTL. Yeah, everything. It was amazing.

331
00:56:32.008 --> 00:56:47.158
Um, so why do I even carry a card around anymore, um, if I can carry my phone? I might just carry my wand around. [laughs] But, uh, I think this is an awesome product. 50/50 on whether it catches, it catches on or not.

332
00:56:47.158 --> 00:57:02.378
It's so funny. I just, I'm just thinking about the timing, where it's hysterical. Like, Elon is announcing his $1.75 trillion space data center company, and Jack's like, "How about a wand?" [laughs] Yeah.

333
00:57:02.378 --> 00:57:08.348
"How about a magic wand?" He needs- They'll probably make a lot of money off this. $25 a pop, and they're pushing it out.

334
00:57:08.608 --> 00:57:18.908
I, I'm sure it's gonna go, like, semi-viral on Instagram and, and they're gonna probably net a lot of money, which shows you the power of, uh, little gimmicks like this. Yeah.

335
00:57:18.928 --> 00:57:28.748
You can- I mean, I bet, I bet you it's, it's not the margin on the wand, it's the margin on the new customer acquisition and increased customer use of the Cash App platform. So,

336
00:57:29.648 --> 00:57:42.548
uh, that's where I think the, the opportunity lies. All right, well, we're gonna wrap it up. Uh, Jack, please come on the podcast, let us know, uh, and, and talk to us about the- He should have a magic Bitcoin wand.

337
00:57:43.208 --> 00:57:57.968
You pay with sats. I know. Yeah. That's what- I would- Yeah... one that works just for Cash App Square terminals would be awesome. All right. Thank you for watching Block Space Live, brought to you by CleanSpark.

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We are live every weekday at 1:00 PM Eastern, except for tomorrow, because we are traveling. And if you're listening on CoinDesk, make sure to head to the Block Space feed. We are ending the CoinDesk feed very soon.

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Remain, stay in continuity and go to the- A loyal listener... a loyal listener, search Block Space on whatever platform you can figure out. You know our logo by now. Otherwise, cheers and see you all Monday.

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