WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:16.400
[upbeat music] Welcome back to Blockspace Live, presented by CleanSpark. You got Charlie and Will today, and we are talking markets. We've got Kiel, Cipher,

2
00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:30.450
Kiel alpha on the show, if you hang in for a second. Galaxy's ripping. We're gonna talk Stretch, Michael Saylor, and how Zcash has a lot more to do with digital credit than you realize.

3
00:00:30.480 --> 00:00:39.260
We're talking with Francis Corvino of Lagos Finance here. We've got Kaan Farhani of Luxor to go over the monthly look back.

4
00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:52.200
And of course, SpaceX, because SpaceX is a data center company, not a rocket company, which means it's within our purview to cover. Blockspace goes live on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.

5
00:00:52.540 --> 00:01:05.960
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let me roll that back. Every single day of the week, weekdays at 1:00 PM Eastern, featuring quick hits on AI, data centers, some Bitcoin mining, and emerging technology. Make sure to like and subscribe.

6
00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:19.480
Hit that notification bell on YouTube so you get the push notification if you're on mobile. And if you like what you hear, it turns into a podcast anywhere podcasts are found, RSS, Spotify, and Apple.

7
00:01:19.540 --> 00:01:31.820
Will, we're leaving CoinDesk. We are, and I don't know if it's the SpaceX news or people coming over from the CoinDesk stream, but downloads of the podcast are jumping off the charts, which is always great to see.

8
00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:43.800
Uh, so yeah, if you're listening on CoinDesk right now, this is our last week working with CoinDesk on this feed. So be sure to add us as your primary podcast host location.

9
00:01:44.340 --> 00:01:49.200
Uh, just go to Blockspace on Spotify, Apple, or elsewhere, and click the bell notification.

10
00:01:49.300 --> 00:02:00.400
Give us a five-star review, and be sure to download every episode Monday through Friday, 1:00 PM Eastern live, and then of course 5:00 PM afterwards on your podcast location of choice.

11
00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:17.960
This show is brought to you by CleanSpark, NASDAQ listed, ticker CLSK. More on them later on in the show. Before we go to markets, we gotta take a look at hash rate index, which candidly, Will,

12
00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:30.860
all-time low hash price this past week. All-time low? Thought we already got there a little bit ago. I, uh- I thought February was all-time low, but it's even, it's even worse now? I mean, 27? Yeah, that's all-time low.

13
00:02:31.300 --> 00:02:40.940
Yeah. People didn't even... This is the thing, like, it's so low that people don't even, like, n- notice that it's all-time low because- [laughs]... it keeps going down. That, that's bottom sentiment.

14
00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:50.480
I, I think the Bitcoin mining in space stories, we can put that aside for now. Uh, we'll get to data centers in space with the SpaceX talk at the end of the show.

15
00:02:50.600 --> 00:03:00.800
But with revenue forecasts like this, I don't think you're launching rockets to mine Bitcoin. You might not even be willing to drive out to Oklahoma to launch a new Bitcoin mine. [laughs] Yeah.

16
00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:13.520
No, the, we'll kick you out. Please, no more Bitcoin mines here. More AI. [laughs] Actually, not even that. Um, so just over- overview of the hash rate index. Um, uh, fees are low,.68%.

17
00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:26.760
Uh, we have an estimated difficult adjustment down of 10%. That's pretty notable because- Okay... hash rate is a little bit lower. Network hash rate on the seven-day moving average, 864 exahash.

18
00:03:27.820 --> 00:03:41.600
Um, again, if we were to zoom out or, like, look at the, I believe, the 30-day smoothed average of the network- Zoom out, bro. Yeah, like, even, even if I zoom out, okay, maybe it's not 864 exahash, it's 970.

19
00:03:41.860 --> 00:03:54.790
Still, like, not looking very good and optimistic, but it seems that network hash rate has plateaued for now. We'll get into, um, a potential near-term, uh, catalyst for a direction with Kaan here in a second.

20
00:03:55.340 --> 00:04:04.300
Will, is there any other insight to be gleaned from, uh, the gloomy hash rate index, uh, data? I think just this follows headlines, right?

21
00:04:04.400 --> 00:04:16.440
So we have the headlines, and the data follows later typically, uh, that we kinda get from the network as it, as it lags slightly. But all these large miners have been selling ASICs, liquidating entire fleets

22
00:04:17.519 --> 00:04:22.740
to put in GPUs for AI inference and, and training. That makes sense.

23
00:04:22.860 --> 00:04:31.260
And so we're gonna see that percentage of US miners, uh, the percentage of global hash rate in the US, which I should say, is going to go down year over year.

24
00:04:31.710 --> 00:04:41.099
And we'll see 2026 probably as, like, the reset year, uh, going forward. And then maybe, uh, you know, next year we get a bull market and, and hash rate flows back in.

25
00:04:41.230 --> 00:04:49.120
But I would only expect this number to, to sit and make this low period for the rest of the summer. Yep. All right.

26
00:04:50.380 --> 00:05:04.040
Hash rate is not looking optimistic in the short term, but there are things which are looking optim- optimistic, Will, and that is miners who have pivoted to AI. Um- Yes. I think I'm gonna let you intro this one.

27
00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:12.820
This is some alpha you found about Kiel this, the other day. Check this out. Um, what's this say? Yeah, that's right.

28
00:05:12.860 --> 00:05:21.000
So this morning on Twitter, sort of circ- circulating, this is not official comms from Kiel, not official comms from the other company we're gonna talk about in a second.

29
00:05:21.110 --> 00:05:31.660
This is just a screenshot on Twitter that's circulating, and the, the stars kinda line up here. So Kiel, formerly Bitfarms, has been on a tear. Uh, it's traded over six bucks.

30
00:05:31.720 --> 00:05:40.230
They announced a huge convertible note, $400 million last week that we covered, uh, on the newsletter and on the website. Now we're covering here right now.

31
00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:54.060
That $400 million convertible essentially is to go to pay for general costs, expenses of the company, AKA building out new AI factories. One of the AI factories that they're currently building out is in Washington.

32
00:05:54.340 --> 00:06:04.230
Uh, I believe it's Moses Lake. Yes, Moses Lake. Yeah, Moses Lake. Uh, there's so many of these data center names popping around my brain, so sometimes I'm like, am I adding two from different companies?

33
00:06:04.360 --> 00:06:17.400
But anyways, Moses Lake, uh, no tenant named this year, but Ben Gagnon, who's been on the podcast before, e- even in the last two months, talked about on their recent earnings call that they're, expect to have three deals signed this year.

34
00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:30.852
We might have a hint right here-Of who the first deal is with AWS looking to hire a data service technician lead, a data center manager at the Moses Lake, Washington area.

35
00:06:31.352 --> 00:06:42.332
This is for a data center that's not completed yet. That's stated in some of the details here. Uh, the pay range and all this sort of stuff matches as well. Now, what's in Moses Lake? You know, is this a big city?

36
00:06:42.392 --> 00:06:53.452
Is it outside Seattle? I- is there other AWS locations in the area? No. There's nothing really there, okay? It's, it's kind of middle of nowhere. Uh, there's been a Bitcoin mine that was there formerly.

37
00:06:53.472 --> 00:07:01.632
You can look it up on Google and drive by it on Google if you want, see all the ASICs there. But it's transforming into a, a data center location.

38
00:07:01.712 --> 00:07:14.732
So I think, like, the online sleuths are seeing that, you know, AWS might come out as a tenant. We'll get to Cipher later that also revealed AWS had a tenant, uh, is tenant signing with AWS, uh, as of today.

39
00:07:14.872 --> 00:07:22.912
So looking at the stock price up 10% on the morning. Uh, to say if this is because of the Twitter sleuths or just something else, hard to say.

40
00:07:22.932 --> 00:07:32.812
But Keel has been, been ripping since the start of the year and since the rebranding and re-domiciling in the US. Yeah. Up, gosh, hard to say.

41
00:07:33.152 --> 00:07:49.422
Uh, a couple multiples, two or 3X on the year, 10% on the day on maybe, you know, maybe the stock rips on this, uh, AWS, uh, tenant rumor. We'll see. Keel's not the only ticker going up right now. Yeah.

42
00:07:49.452 --> 00:07:58.572
Also look at Galaxy. I mean, look at this, 20% on the day. Now it's been- 22%. 22%? It's, yeah, 20... It's, it's been a little, you know, volatile year.

43
00:07:58.652 --> 00:08:12.192
This actually doesn't bring it to, like, a yearly high, which was around 34 bucks, uh, in January. But back at $30.62, up 22% this morning.

44
00:08:12.872 --> 00:08:22.872
Will, did I miss some news, or is this just everyone being bullish on whatever Novogratz did but over the weekend? No, so this is a little more speculation here. Uh, I...

45
00:08:23.512 --> 00:08:28.232
There was some stuff on Friday, nothing with a tenant announcement.

46
00:08:28.372 --> 00:08:43.472
There was some rumors around maybe Galaxy would sign a deal with, like, Jane Street or something like that for its data center, Helios in West Texas, but nothing formally announced, just, just Twitter chatter, which essentially worthless, uh, for the most part.

47
00:08:44.172 --> 00:08:59.092
But the one thing I would say is that they did have the Morgan Stanley head of AI infrastructure and, and basically one of their bankers go on, uh, CNBC on Friday and talk about Galaxy, how it's well-positioned, and how he thinks it has some more room to grow.

48
00:08:59.572 --> 00:09:12.392
Now, I think that's a lot of sell side analyst chatter where, you know, they're trying to get clients and they're trying to get people to work with them and get that nice b- spread, uh, for sales of converts or, or other financial infrastructure or financial deals.

49
00:09:13.652 --> 00:09:31.232
So that's the only thing I can really see is that talk, but I will say that Galaxy itself has sort of two stories that some people, some of, like, the Twitter trenches think the, the story hasn't been told as well enough, uh, to differentiate between the AI side and then the Bitcoin side.

50
00:09:31.312 --> 00:09:41.512
Obviously, Bitcoin has been down year to date. It's also down over the last year or so. Uh, we're revisiting 2024 highs, which is not what you want to be doing right now.

51
00:09:41.592 --> 00:09:51.152
Uh, we wanna be making new highs, and so that's somewhat seems like a laggard on the business. And then the other side, you have the AI infrastructure side with this huge campus in West Texas.

52
00:09:51.212 --> 00:09:58.652
That's, that's just going to be... It i- already is a gem for, for Galaxy. They already have a deal with, with CoreWeave, but they have more room to grow on that campus.

53
00:09:58.712 --> 00:10:10.572
I've been there a few times, and there's a lot of room to grow there. So perhaps this is starting to price in some of that with Morgan Stanley going on CB- CNBC, but it also could just be it's a new day.

54
00:10:10.612 --> 00:10:19.932
The trading bots are trading, and it's up 22%. It's a Monday, so, uh, they get to be the darling stock of the day. Yeah. A lot of things are green, a lot of things are green today, for sure. Yeah.

55
00:10:19.952 --> 00:10:30.772
I mean, a lot of things are green, um, including Cipher. Um, some of our friends over at Cipher are having a nice, uh, kickoff to the week, up 5.92%, basically 6%,

56
00:10:31.752 --> 00:10:45.672
um, to ba- to, uh, really continue on a great trend for the year, kicking the year off around 16 bucks per share, now at 23. Since April, it's been kind of, uh, uh, ascending upwards.

57
00:10:46.592 --> 00:10:56.692
Did I miss something about Cipher, Will? I've been too deep in the Bitcoin trenches, uh, you know, wring my hands 'cause the price is down. Uh- Yeah... what's going on with Cipher?

58
00:10:57.332 --> 00:11:02.532
Well, let's do Cipher, and then let's jump to Frances. Uh- Yeah... I'll do this last one, and then we can...

59
00:11:02.542 --> 00:11:10.171
Korman, a friend of the show, Jamie, also had some cool news today, but we'll maybe put that one for another day. They're not publicly- Yeah... traded quite yet.

60
00:11:10.232 --> 00:11:21.972
Uh, this news, Cipher, they were down at the end of last week, maybe not down on the five-day, but down certainly on the 24-hour, uh, when there was a big sell-off on Friday across, like, everything.

61
00:11:22.092 --> 00:11:33.572
Um, and I think, like, what you're seeing right now, that five, 6%, uh, growth over the morning is, is just kind of repricing some of that. They were also down because they had, uh...

62
00:11:33.782 --> 00:11:42.852
Or they were down last week, I think, just because of general breakdown a- across the sector. This morning, uh, I think some of the interest is the convertible note, um, or not the convert.

63
00:11:42.912 --> 00:11:51.692
I think it's some sort of senior debt obligation. Apologies. Mixing up my converts with, with Keel. They're doing a, a, a financing round for their Stingray site.

64
00:11:51.702 --> 00:12:03.132
The big news this morning was they did disclose that as a part of that funding round info, they let everyone know that AWS is going to be the tenant for their Stingray campus.

65
00:12:03.472 --> 00:12:15.212
They announced that signing in March, but they didn't name the location nor the tenant. And now that we know they have AWS, they have two leases with AWS. Both these le- leases are very long.

66
00:12:15.232 --> 00:12:23.736
They're triple net coverage, meaning they make a lot of cash on these leases, and they're backed byOne of the most profitable businesses on Earth, which is AWS.

67
00:12:23.836 --> 00:12:34.196
So I think that's why you're probably seeing them in the green this morning, uh, despite the funding news, which can kind of push down on the stock a little bit as you're kind of going back out to market asking for more dollars from investors.

68
00:12:35.616 --> 00:12:47.896
Yeah. Um, great day in the public markets. Speaking of public markets, let's get an ad roll from the sponsor of the show, CleanSpark. Rolling. [Instrumental music] We are CleanSpark,

69
00:12:48.836 --> 00:13:04.996
America's Bitcoin miner, a publicly traded company with the largest operating hash rate. Powered entirely by self-operated infrastructure across four states. This is our proof of work.

70
00:13:05.636 --> 00:13:21.846
We are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy and Bitcoin at cleanspark.com. So Will, we still have more markets data center news.

71
00:13:21.916 --> 00:13:34.316
There's Leopold Aschenbrenner situational awareness. There's a CoreMint announcement. We have Francis Corvino waiting in the wings, uh, to talk about Stretch. How much do we wanna keep talking about data centers?

72
00:13:34.736 --> 00:13:43.596
I think that we can throw some of the data center stuff to the end with SpaceX- Yeah... 'cause we can do Leopold at the end. That was a nice little hit from Wall Street Journal this morning.

73
00:13:44.336 --> 00:13:50.096
Uh, we could also kind of talk about the CoreMint piece with SpaceX 'cause it's like terrestrial- Yeah... versus extraterrestrial space centers.

74
00:13:50.416 --> 00:13:57.456
So if you're interested in SpaceX, which we're seeing a, a lot of interest right now around that, just stick around to the end of the show and we'll hit on that. Yeah.

75
00:13:57.516 --> 00:14:08.916
We're gonna hit SpaceX and more data centers at the end of the show. Got a couple more seconds, but we've got Francis in the wings. Francis is my favorite strategy commentator right now. Gonna bring him on.

76
00:14:09.956 --> 00:14:18.396
Francis, welcome back to the show. Hey, guys. Morning. Good to see you, Will. Nice to have your, uh, your handsome mug on here for once. [laughs] Good to see you again.

77
00:14:18.696 --> 00:14:31.156
You know, his old stomping grounds back on the podcast. So Francis, um, Michael Saylor didn't sell, he bought Bitcoin. What? Why would he- That was disappointing... do that?

78
00:14:31.236 --> 00:14:40.736
That was disappointing because I, I really thought maybe there was an angle there to, to call an early sale. So I, I, I did think last night that there was a strong chance that Michael Saylor had sold his Bitcoin.

79
00:14:41.216 --> 00:14:56.726
Um, and the reason that I did is partially because of some of the stuff I've said previously, which is that I think Michael Saylor wants to try and build like a ro- really robust ship, and he's willing to, um, he's willing to do things which are unpopular in order to make that happen, despite what, what the audience might think.

80
00:14:57.056 --> 00:14:58.656
Turns out I was very wrong.

81
00:14:58.856 --> 00:15:21.166
Um, we saw some large transactions move out of Fidelity, uh, custodian, which were attributed to MicroStrategy, and I'm thinking to myself, "Well, if you're Fidelity or if you're MicroStrategy and you're sitting at Fidelity where they have an omnibus custody, why would you be moving Bitcoin from, um, like one omnibus wallet to another omnibus wallet within the same custodian?"

82
00:15:21.296 --> 00:15:27.016
It didn't really quite make sense to me. So also generally, having worked at a large Bitcoin custodian in the past,

83
00:15:28.376 --> 00:15:36.736
large Bitcoin funds are not in the business of moving a ton of Bitcoin just to show that they can, particularly within the same kind of custodian. They just...

84
00:15:36.796 --> 00:15:45.276
It's like hammering a nail just to see if hammering a nail still works. It, it doesn't, it doesn't necessarily make sense to do that unless you're like changing, um, custody policy or something like that.

85
00:15:45.576 --> 00:15:55.436
So given the timing of everything, it made sense that, hey, why is their Bitcoin being moved from Fidelity, which is generally not the place where MicroStrategy is doing the majority of its buying.

86
00:15:55.476 --> 00:16:10.896
They do a lot of the buying at, at Coinbase, and then a little bit of the buying from Anchorage, and the final sort of destinations where that Bitcoin ends up on chain is generally, um, sort of like, uh, some go to Coinbase, some go to Microstr- uh, some go to Anchorage, and then some go to Fidelity.

87
00:16:10.936 --> 00:16:14.336
So it, it was just very interesting to see that on chain movement happen.

88
00:16:14.796 --> 00:16:22.036
Now, there is one thing which I'm, I'm starting to kind of consider, which is perhaps some of that Bitcoin went out in order to be posted as margin.

89
00:16:22.396 --> 00:16:28.396
Because I heard from a couple, um, other pundits sort of in the industry who work around the OTC space, and they said, "Hey, Francis."

90
00:16:28.776 --> 00:16:37.455
In fact, MicroStrategy is able to call their own shots so well at this point that they're able to trade on credit to the extent that they can usually buy up to $500 million of Bitcoin, right?

91
00:16:37.656 --> 00:16:39.436
And they don't have to pre-fund that.

92
00:16:39.496 --> 00:16:50.405
So they don't have to send the USD to the brokerage ahead of time in order to buy $500 million of Bitcoin because the brokerage trusts the creditworthiness of Mic- uh, of Strategy enough that they're like, "Okay, yeah, sure.

93
00:16:50.896 --> 00:16:57.846
We'll just buy it for you, and then we'll net settle at the end." But now things might be a little bit different with, with MicroStrategy starting to, to show a little bit of weakness.

94
00:16:57.916 --> 00:17:06.396
So perhaps this was in fact a transfer where MicroStrategy was beginning to move some Bitcoin to margin in order to make that Bitcoin purchase that we saw.

95
00:17:06.496 --> 00:17:16.016
Um, perhaps, you know, we're seeing some of the prime brokers in the industry start to be like, "Hey, you know, we used to give you just this massive credit allowance, but now you're starting to show a little bit of weakness structurally.

96
00:17:16.056 --> 00:17:29.836
So we would like you to actually add some Bitcoin to this account as margin before you buy additional Bitcoin." Okay. How much of this is sort of Charlie putting tape and strings together,

97
00:17:30.796 --> 00:17:40.106
given that we don't always have a ton of information about strategy, and how much of this is, is like the actual bet you kind of see behind the scenes? Not to call you out, but I am curious- Oh, no...

98
00:17:40.116 --> 00:17:45.286
like it's so- No, for sure... hard to know what's happening, right? This is definitely, this is definitely strings, uh, for sure. Okay.

99
00:17:45.296 --> 00:17:55.896
But it, it is interesting, I think, that you can look on chain with Bitcoin in a way that you- Yes... can't with other assets. So the sort of, um, the,

100
00:17:56.876 --> 00:18:06.416
the pull in order to like consider, "Hey, what is happening on chain?" Is much stronger here, right? Like, if this was a, a, a gold, a gold trade fund or a gold trust, right?

101
00:18:06.476 --> 00:18:16.236
Like, we would not have the ability to be like, "Okay, clearly something happened here because we saw the physical settlement of gold happen over the internet." This is something that is unique to Bitcoin.

102
00:18:16.576 --> 00:18:34.892
So I think it is very natural for us to be looking in each one of these wallets, which are generally quite exposed, and we can sort of understand the underlying mechanics of each one of these wallets individually and, you know, ask ourselves some questions like, "Hey, maybe we can get a little bit of insight early, early from the market."Okay.

103
00:18:34.952 --> 00:18:44.752
Switching gears to what I think you may have coined the term of, which is the frequency wars. Mm-hmm. Like the dividend of Stretch versus SATA.

104
00:18:45.792 --> 00:19:01.272
Um, s- I think the news is that Stretch is considering a more high f- a higher frequency dividend than previous. You, uh, kind of identified this as a trend and a competitive edge here on the show weeks ago.

105
00:19:01.472 --> 00:19:10.352
Um, is this dividend DeFi summer for Bitcoin? I bel- I believe they actually approved it. Um- Okay. Approved. Okay. Yeah. So, so, um, yes.

106
00:19:10.552 --> 00:19:24.602
I, I do think that there's a lot of, um, sort of comparisons that could be made between this is, this dividend wars between, um, you know, MicroStrategy and, um, and Strive are perhaps the DeFi summer of Bitcoiners, right?

107
00:19:24.612 --> 00:19:33.852
We're seeing very, very high yield. You know, 12, 13% yield with the potential to push it up even more. And that was what brought a lot of people into DeFi at the beginning.

108
00:19:33.932 --> 00:19:43.572
They said, "Hey, this is really, really interesting. I can go provide liquidity to this AMM, and I [chuckles] I can get just massive, massive APR overnight even."

109
00:19:43.932 --> 00:19:52.412
And then as time went by, some of those yields started to sort of get a little bit smaller and compress. And now something like 14, 15% yield in DeFi is actually quite interesting.

110
00:19:52.912 --> 00:20:00.252
Now Bitcoiners are sort of getting their first opportunity to look at, "Hey, this is 14, 15% yield for something I'm paying attention to anyway.

111
00:20:00.292 --> 00:20:10.572
Why don't I jump on this, because I think that this is safe, and, um, I like high yield." Generally, there is just a massive exodus of people to the door, whatever that door has high yield behind it.

112
00:20:10.862 --> 00:20:22.372
And these are two really interesting high yield products, which are now paying out daily, uh, daily dividends in one sense, bi, uh, biweekly dividends, uh, in the Strat- in the, in the stance of, um, Strategy.

113
00:20:22.392 --> 00:20:28.732
And this thing is also something that can help your life over a long period of time, because if you're collecting dividends for two years, right?

114
00:20:28.812 --> 00:20:34.032
You can actually use that, um, when you're applying for a mortgage or something, 'cause it, it counts as real income.

115
00:20:34.632 --> 00:20:43.052
Um, so yeah, this is something that can be positive for people in their real life and helping give them, you know, some, some stronger sorta like credit, um, proof of income.

116
00:20:43.132 --> 00:20:48.682
Uh, and then it's also something that's just attractive because it's high yield, and we've seen this pattern play out before in DeFi summer.

117
00:20:48.712 --> 00:21:14.372
And now, um, some very different but also somewhat similar structural games being played in the centralized economy now, where the only difference is really rather than logging into MetaMask, um, and buying, you know, a little bit more sketchy coins for a little bit higher yield, you're logging into your brokerage account, um, and you're buying some securities which have a yield, which come from a levered Bitcoin position being solvent for a long period of time.

118
00:21:15.652 --> 00:21:30.392
So I wanna talk about Zcash in a sec, but I have pulled up a tweet. I wanna get your reaction to this. This is on, um, uh, Saylor bought 100 million, it looks like, from the MSTR ATM sale.

119
00:21:31.312 --> 00:21:46.092
Nick Carter says, "It's what we expected. Defending Stretch by sacrificing MicroStrategy. Why anyone would continue to hold that stock is beyond me." What are your thoughts? I understand at this point.

120
00:21:46.352 --> 00:21:52.111
I really didn't expect him to dilute shareholders, um, so aggressively.

121
00:21:53.192 --> 00:22:04.632
And I also feel like they may be stretching the, or moving the goalpost a little on the, you know, 1.2 M NAV being sort of the, you know, we're not going to sell shares and dilute under this level.

122
00:22:05.072 --> 00:22:11.792
It's starting to get really, really close, and it's starting to get to the point where, like, just the execution of these trades is going to...

123
00:22:11.832 --> 00:22:26.572
The execution, the financing arrangements that you have to make, the risk that you take just by, like, putting these trades on, all of those things are starting to sort of creep away at that premium that MicroStrategy shares trade at over Bitcoin, and it's gonna get to the point where it's gonna flip at one point.

124
00:22:26.602 --> 00:22:29.042
And not... This isn't a perfect comparison.

125
00:22:29.072 --> 00:22:42.942
But a long time ago, we had the GBTC summer as well, where people were borrowing cash against their Bitcoin in order to try and take advantage of making in-kind, um, in-kind creation of GBTC shares, so at NAV, right?

126
00:22:43.032 --> 00:22:54.172
One BTC equals one GBTC share. And then those shares, after a six-month lock-up period, would trade on the open market, and they would trade for a long period of time at greater than NAV.

127
00:22:54.551 --> 00:23:02.322
Because brokerage didn't have acc- or, like, traditional brokerage clients didn't have access to Bitcoin in other ways. Like, they didn't really know how to log into Coinbase and buy physical Bitcoin. Yeah.

128
00:23:02.352 --> 00:23:07.692
So they were happy to just buy it through their brokerage, and they weren't really checking how much Bitcoin was actually underlying the security.

129
00:23:07.702 --> 00:23:29.872
And that was great up until so many people were borrowing cash to make in-kind creation of these GBTC shares that when they tried to exit that position, everyone was trying to exit that position at once, and the inability to actually take Bitcoin out of the GBTC trust, because it wasn't an ETF, it was a trust where the Bitcoin had to be held there, uh, until it converted into an ETF.

130
00:23:30.652 --> 00:23:36.752
Eventually, people couldn't withdraw. They couldn't take the Bitcoin out, and it traded well, well, well below NAV.

131
00:23:37.192 --> 00:23:47.252
So Saylor is at a different point, where he's at, like, kind of this 1.2 level, which is the line in the sand that he's sort of drawn and saying, "Hey, I'm not gonna continue selling equity, uh, for Bitcoin below this price."

132
00:23:47.312 --> 00:23:58.772
Well, now he's, he's getting there, you know? And that to me looks a little bit like, uh, the, the NAV flip that GBTC did, uh, back in, you know, 2022 or so, where it started to go below par.

133
00:24:00.432 --> 00:24:13.222
On Stretch, so it's been as low as 93 bucks, um, might even been a little bit lower, and it looks like we're recovering back to 97, 98. How important is it to get back to that par $100 level for investors?

134
00:24:13.252 --> 00:24:21.932
Or do you think we could hang out in that 97, 98 zone and, and still sort of be, like, okay for things to move forward? I mean, I think there's some natural volatility to these products to begin with.

135
00:24:22.032 --> 00:24:27.852
So hanging out at, like, 98 is probably okay, but much below that is, is where he's really gonna need to raise the dividend.

136
00:24:27.952 --> 00:24:37.962
Particularly if it's staying on the lower end of that for a period of time, at some point he is gonna have to raise the dividend. Um, otherwise, you know, that, that starts to get a little messy. But I...

137
00:24:37.992 --> 00:24:54.042
It doesn't have to be exactly at 100 all the time. I don't think that, you know, this needs to be a stable coin. Um-So, we got Con waiting in the wings, but I wanna talk about this angle you have, which is on Zcash.

138
00:24:54.102 --> 00:25:05.822
Because everybody's talking about Zcash, they're obsessed with shielded pools, they're obsessed with, uh, privacy and the soundness of Zcash, but you have an interesting take on comparing Zcash to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

139
00:25:06.182 --> 00:25:19.362
Explain this. Yeah. So, uh, currently if you wanted to chase DeFi summer or DeFi type yield on Bitcoin, it is, is very hard to do because Bitcoin only has bilateral contracts like what Lagos offers.

140
00:25:19.402 --> 00:25:29.422
So we have a direct contract with an individual counterparty where we, uh, we lend cash against Bitcoin, and that's a, a bilateral contract. Similar to Lightning Network, right? It's channel based.

141
00:25:29.722 --> 00:25:36.342
What Bitcoin doesn't have is the ability to do covenants for more than two party transactions where people are dynamically entering and leaving.

142
00:25:36.842 --> 00:25:52.102
In order to be able to have these multi-party contracts on top of Bitcoin, we have invented something rather ingenious called BitVM, which allows you to verify a layer two and arguments of knowledge on that layer two, which then allow coins to be moved as a result on layer one.

143
00:25:52.202 --> 00:26:01.642
So you can think of as zero knowledge proof a bit like the coat check at a bar. You go up to the bar, you drop your coat check off at the bar, um, and then you walk inside.

144
00:26:01.702 --> 00:26:13.421
Upon walking back out of the bar, maybe you've done some bartering with someone and now you have two jackets, uh, someone at the door will give you a ticket, and that ticket should say, "Hey, I now own two jackets."

145
00:26:13.502 --> 00:26:21.722
You take that ticket, you try and feed it to a machine, and if that ma- if that machine returns you a red ticket, you can't bring any jackets out of the bar. The coat check isn't gonna return them to you.

146
00:26:22.142 --> 00:26:36.142
If it returns you a green ticket, now you are able to take whatever coats that you have claimed to be able to, to wear out. What Zcash essentially had an issue with was the soundness of the machine checking the ticket.

147
00:26:36.552 --> 00:26:46.202
So people were able to make arguments that they owned more Zcash or more coats, right, than they actually do. So that is a fundamental problem, right?

148
00:26:46.322 --> 00:27:02.502
If you're able to create arguments on a layer two inside of the bar that you own something that you don't actually own, it's a fundamental concern. And Bitcoin was reliant on that type of trust assumption, right?

149
00:27:02.522 --> 00:27:14.142
Which is a strong trust assumption, but if you have implementation issues or if you have errors with the, uh, like, underlying technology of it, unfortunately it's, it's gonna be a lot harder to trust that, right?

150
00:27:14.262 --> 00:27:38.922
So we- we're going to be able to, uh, essentially verify zero knowledge proofs of layer twos where we can have money markets on top of Bitcoin, and those things are really, really exciting, but they rely on the same technology that Zcash relies on, and soundness issues will also affect our ability to bridge Bitcoin to layer twos, borrow cash against it, or lend cash against Bitcoin and lever it up and get, you know, high yield and stuff like that on a layer two away from Bitcoin.

151
00:27:39.282 --> 00:27:42.082
But now we're seeing sort of the soundness issue with Zcash

152
00:27:43.042 --> 00:27:50.282
represent the risk premium that you take any time you're starting to bridge your Bitcoin, and the more creative that we get with the solutions, the more risky it gets.

153
00:27:50.402 --> 00:28:01.952
Zcash is, um, you know, a very advanced cryptocurrency in the grand scheme of things. They have spent, uh, a huge amount of money on audits. They have some of the world-leading experts in zero knowledge proofs.

154
00:28:02.422 --> 00:28:12.242
But there are only so many world-leading experts of zero knowledge proofs unfortunately, and they were essentially able to, you know, to figure out that this bug existed via OP_PUSH4.8, right?

155
00:28:12.362 --> 00:28:26.522
So the scope of people who are actually able to look at these things isn't expanding, but it is in an effectively w- in an effective way it is expanding because people can now punch things into, into OP_PUSH4.8 that they would never have been able to understand before.

156
00:28:26.562 --> 00:28:30.462
So these, these types of systems are gonna be attacked in ways that they, they hadn't previously.

157
00:28:30.882 --> 00:28:42.552
So that means that any time you're using a bridge that relies on a zero knowledge proof, whether it's on top of Ethereum or whether it's on top of Bitcoin, you have to be considerate of these types of issues as well.

158
00:28:42.622 --> 00:28:51.782
Because if you're able to create arguments of knowledge which are inaccurate, that means that you can trick the layer two into d- into pegging out Bitcoin that you don't actually own.

159
00:28:52.582 --> 00:29:07.762
Um, to play devil's advocate, there are some situations in which, uh, you're only allowed, like, only certain parties, a white list, are able to actually create a valid proof or a ticket, um, that can be scanned to begin with, and generally speaking that's a trusted list.

160
00:29:08.082 --> 00:29:15.162
So the guy at the bar, uh, isn't going to create a ticket for you if he knows that you don't actually own the coats to begin with, right?

161
00:29:15.782 --> 00:29:26.142
Um, but at the same time, these solutions are moving to be more decentralized, so anyone should be able to try and generate their own proof of, "I own this coat," to exit the bar with.

162
00:29:26.662 --> 00:29:45.472
And as we move forward in that direction, these issues become more and more prominent because a soundness issue where, um, people have live Bitcoin in an adversarial environment means that you can take what should be a red ticket, turn it into a green ticket, and withdraw a huge amount of Bitcoin from the platform, and that's very risky.

163
00:29:46.282 --> 00:29:58.922
So for the DeFi summer world of Bitcoin that people were, were sort of hoping for in the BitVM world, I think that maybe this is the opportunity to look at it as, hey, whatever we thought we needed to get in yield to make this worthwhile, it needs to go up.

164
00:29:59.022 --> 00:30:12.342
Because Zcash shows that protocol risk, zero knowledge proof risk, verifier risk are things that need to be quantified from an economic perspective when considering how much return I need to get on my capital for bridging it to a layer two,

165
00:30:13.902 --> 00:30:21.002
in the same way that, you know, MicroStrategy's debt structure needs to be analyzed when considering- Yeah... am I, am I going to buy this security or not?

166
00:30:21.942 --> 00:30:41.202
Yeah, this reminds me of a quote from OpenZeppelin's CEO, who tweeted this a month ago at this point, that he didn't consider any DeFi project, even the blue chip ones like Aave, et cetera, to be sound anymore in the age of, of AI, because you can just play around with these things until you find an exploit that's out there.

167
00:30:41.742 --> 00:30:50.222
Uh, it doesn't matter how hardened the code base is after all these years, you're going to be able to break into it. And OpenZeppelin is, like, the premier platform for DeFi penetration tests.

168
00:30:50.862 --> 00:30:53.252
Uh, so I think to your point, that's, it's, like, a very cogent one.

169
00:30:53.382 --> 00:31:11.390
We have, like, the DeFi protocol risk, and then we have, like, the financial engineering risk that's on top of it.Yep, and actually what he's referring to specifically there is probably just virtual machine risk, whereas with the BitVM world that we're looking to, to move towards with Bitcoin, you take on two different layers of risk.

170
00:31:11.430 --> 00:31:19.950
You both have the virtual machine risk, you also have the zero-knowledge proof verifier risk. So if something goes wrong on the virtual machine level, that's a problem.

171
00:31:20.030 --> 00:31:32.349
If something goes wrong on the soundness of zero-knowledge proof verification, like arguments of knowledge level, that's also a problem, uh, particularly again, if these solutions are truly permissionless like we want them to be.

172
00:31:33.730 --> 00:31:45.350
Francis, Lagos Finance Co-Founder, thank you so much for coming on the show, explaining a whirlwind of topics. We will see you again next time Saylor does something. Thank you, guys. Cheers. Bye. Cheers.

173
00:31:46.910 --> 00:31:56.690
All right, we got Con waiting in the wings to take us on a review of last month's mining market. But before that, a word from our sponsor, Luxur.

174
00:31:58.490 --> 00:32:09.430
[static] This episode is brought to you by Luxur's Commander, Bitcoin miner management software built for enterprise operations.

175
00:32:09.970 --> 00:32:24.190
Commander gives you real-time fleet monitoring, bulk remote commands across your fleet, and Intelligent Miner, which is an automated profitability engine that runs every five minutes, adjusting power settings to live hash rate and energy markets.

176
00:32:25.070 --> 00:32:29.840
ERCOT back tests show over 10% more profitability versus binary mining.

177
00:32:30.630 --> 00:32:46.490
Commander Pro is $100 per megawatt or a 25 basis point pool fee adder, which is roughly half the price of the competitors, and comes with a 60-day free trial. Get started at luxur.tech/commander.

178
00:32:46.870 --> 00:33:00.210
And speaking of Luxur, we've got Luxur's Con in the wings. Bring him up here. [static] Con, welcome back to the show. Charlie and Will, thanks so much for having me back on the block.

179
00:33:00.430 --> 00:33:08.910
Yeah, um, always a pleasure to be here. Yeah. Um, so we, you, we've been doing this, uh, for a few months now.

180
00:33:09.410 --> 00:33:21.480
You publish the Luxur monthly look back series, which I've got pulled up here, and I'll just let you take it away. Explain, this, what happened in the month of May here? Definitely.

181
00:33:21.550 --> 00:33:31.260
The month of May was a period for Bitcoin mining in which the economics came and went very quickly, so let's get into these details.

182
00:33:32.050 --> 00:33:40.930
First thing I'll point out is if you scroll down just a little bit, we're gonna see a table with monthly averages right up top there. So if you go back up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, right here.

183
00:33:41.510 --> 00:33:50.530
So from a monthly average perspective, the month of May was green across the board for mining metrics in terms of hash price and its constituents.

184
00:33:50.570 --> 00:34:01.890
And as a reminder, this is the second consecutive month where we see improvements in mining economics from where we were, um, in late February, early March from our all-time low cycle.

185
00:34:02.430 --> 00:34:11.620
However, as we're all aware, the monthly averages conceal the, the true trend, which shows when we look at the intra-month movements.

186
00:34:12.200 --> 00:34:26.430
So from, uh, a hash price perspective, we saw that Bitcoin price and US dollar hash price had a local peak in early May and started to revert back down, and obviously mining markets followed.

187
00:34:26.850 --> 00:34:32.970
Uh, difficulty was actually down on average, but up net, uh, given difficulty adjustments.

188
00:34:33.320 --> 00:34:42.230
We saw one negative adjustment and two positive adjustments throughout the month, and we also saw transaction fees increase as well.

189
00:34:42.290 --> 00:34:52.310
Despite all this though, as of early June, we now know that we're down quite bad, and the reason is because of Bitcoin price action.

190
00:34:52.390 --> 00:35:06.380
As of early June, we saw geopolitical tensions reignite given conflict in the Middle East, and there's also some seasonality, um, and marginal mining moves taking place as well. So there's a confluence of factors.

191
00:35:06.450 --> 00:35:19.689
But the TLDR of May is it showed, um, you know, green across the board from a monthly average perspective, but then as we look into the true trend intra-month, we see that we're, we're down bad. Down bad.

192
00:35:19.750 --> 00:35:32.530
I mean, it's Bitcoin mining, right? So we're, we're kinda used to it. Four-year cycle typically happens that mining revenue kinda crushes us every four years. Uh, I was not expecting to revisit the lows in February.

193
00:35:32.840 --> 00:35:37.730
I was from a price perspective. Um, I did think that we'd actually see more hash rate come offline.

194
00:35:38.250 --> 00:35:54.620
And from your report, you know, we had sustained growth in some areas of hash rate perhaps, and that's why we're not only having, like, difficulty, um, kind of be where it's at at the period, but hash rate has been, like, going up a little bit, getting to that one zeta hash- Mm-hmm...

195
00:35:54.620 --> 00:36:05.070
and that's putting pressure on it when you look at Bitcoin price as well. So throwing the, the ball to you, are we seeing some incumbents still in the space? Is there international presence in Bitcoin mining?

196
00:36:05.290 --> 00:36:17.270
Is it any new entrants that we should know about, or a mixture of these things? Yeah, good question. Interestingly, we saw that throughout the month of May, we got back to the one zeta hash level.

197
00:36:17.770 --> 00:36:21.170
Uh, but since then we've reversed quite firmly, and we're now down.

198
00:36:21.190 --> 00:36:33.730
In fact, I just took a look at our hash rate index data on our website, and we see that as of early June, over the past week or so, we've lost over 100 exahash when we look at the seven-day simple moving average for network hash rate.

199
00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:47.030
And I think a lot of this has to do with marginal mining capacity moving in and out of the network, in addition to seasonal curtailment taking place as of early June, given that we're now in the four CP season.

200
00:36:47.670 --> 00:36:54.970
So there, there is some on-chain mining native dynamics, but of course, Bitcoin price action was a big driver as well.

201
00:36:55.610 --> 00:37:04.840
In Q1, we saw that the Middle East tensions caused a drop in hash rate, which we suspected some of which came from, um, affected jurisdictions.

202
00:37:05.330 --> 00:37:22.906
At the same time, we now see that marginal hash rate moved back in throughout May, which means that the-Change in network difficulty and hash rate we're seeing is not necessarily being driven from a hash rate supply shock, but it's more so mining economics being affected by Bitcoin price action.

203
00:37:23.286 --> 00:37:32.346
So the uncertainty really is hinging on the Bitcoin price side of things versus mining metrics native to, uh, hash rate. Yeah.

204
00:37:32.386 --> 00:37:46.906
You guys previously, I believe, identified that Iran had rough estimated maybe seven exahash, which dropped down in Q1. I think it's, uh, it's back a bit by the month end. And, um,

205
00:37:47.866 --> 00:37:54.866
you know, we're always looking towards, like, the next hash rate catalyst. Mm-hmm. And you hinted at this seasonality.

206
00:37:54.926 --> 00:38:09.446
We have-- I would say it's like the new, like, China wet season hash rate migration phenomenon domestically. Here in the United States, in Texas, we've got, um, the Texas 4CP on the horizon imminent.

207
00:38:09.946 --> 00:38:22.486
Khanh, explain this and how this, um, affects-- like, how this-- how it, like, stages, uh, hash rate and particularly hash rate derivatives, uh, going into the summer. Absolutely.

208
00:38:22.526 --> 00:38:29.566
So this is an interesting seasonal trend, as you pointed out, Charlie, that we've seen since 2022.

209
00:38:29.946 --> 00:38:39.526
It's shown itself through many different signals, both on-chain and through hash rate derivatives markets, which we'll touch on right now, and it's essentially the seasonal pattern that we see.

210
00:38:40.466 --> 00:38:52.206
It starts off in ERCOT as we estimate with hash rate index data, around seventeen percent of global network hash rate is hosted in Texas, being powered by the ERCOT electricity market.

211
00:38:52.666 --> 00:39:01.486
Now, one of the incentive programs that ERCOT has is called 4CP. It stands for four coincidental peaks. And essentially, the way it works is,

212
00:39:02.386 --> 00:39:16.646
a facility's transmission charges for the next whole year is determined by four fifteen-minute intervals of the highest grid demand during the months spanning from June to September of this current year.

213
00:39:17.426 --> 00:39:24.276
So if you're online during these peak intervals, you're gonna be charged much higher transmission fees for the next year.

214
00:39:24.286 --> 00:39:33.766
Conversely, if you're offline and you're curtailing during these periods, you get to, um, access this big cost savings for transmission costs next year.

215
00:39:34.566 --> 00:39:50.286
So the incentive for miners is to curtail proactively in an effort to avoid these peak intervals so that they capture these cost savings. And these-- uh, this trend shows itself in many different ways.

216
00:39:50.346 --> 00:40:01.686
I'll point four, I think, interesting insights that we can look into. And Charlie, if you bring up that screen again, I'm gonna sh- point to a couple of charts that- Yeah. We can- -we'll walk through. Yeah.

217
00:40:01.746 --> 00:40:08.026
Which one do you want me to pull up? So, okay, that's the first one right here. So yes, right here.

218
00:40:09.566 --> 00:40:14.726
There's three different ways to look at this, and then there's a fourth additional way from the hash rate derivatives market.

219
00:40:14.786 --> 00:40:27.846
The first on-chain signal is if we look at 4CP season versus outside of 4CP season, the rest of the year, we see a difference in average difficulty adjustments. So what do I mean by this?

220
00:40:27.886 --> 00:40:38.726
The average difficulty adjustment between twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-five during 4CP months, which is from June to September, was around one percent, plus one percent.

221
00:40:39.066 --> 00:40:49.846
So we see that the average difficulty adjustment is upwards and positive during this period. Outside of this period, throughout the rest of the year, it's more like two point one percents.

222
00:40:50.406 --> 00:41:01.536
So just based on average difficulty adjustments, we see around a one point one percentage point drag based on this seasonal curtailment that's taking place.

223
00:41:02.206 --> 00:41:15.046
But month-- uh, like the month of May, we know that these monthly averages are actually concealing an even better insight. So if you scroll down just a little bit more, we'll check out the next chart over here.

224
00:41:16.146 --> 00:41:25.326
Now, we're looking at the same thing, but now we're looking at specific months instead of, you know, the 4CP versus the rest of the year. And we see another interesting detail.

225
00:41:25.446 --> 00:41:39.326
We see that the curtailment itself is actually concentrated in the month of June. So June is the only year, uh, during the year where we see, on average, negative difficulty adjustments.

226
00:41:39.716 --> 00:41:46.686
So we're seeing a decline in difficulty, and the reason is because the curtailment is most intense during this month.

227
00:41:47.506 --> 00:41:59.046
And conversely, towards the end of the 4CP season, as we get out of September and the risk of curtailment ends, we see a rebound, which is concentrated in October as well.

228
00:41:59.546 --> 00:42:07.366
October tends to be the strongest month in terms of hash rate and network difficulty growth, and we call this the beach ball effect.

229
00:42:07.866 --> 00:42:16.886
The reason is because during summer, you have a lot of hash rate that's being pent up and being controlled essentially, like holding a beach ball underwater.

230
00:42:17.326 --> 00:42:29.486
And once the risk subsides, and there's no penalty for being online during these peak intervals, as we get into October, all of a sudden this beach ball releases, and we see this resurgence in hash rate.

231
00:42:29.906 --> 00:42:41.966
So these are interesting insights that we can pick apart when we look at month-to-month difficulty adjustments. And the final one is you can go even deeper and look at specific hours when these intervals occur.

232
00:42:42.506 --> 00:42:55.426
That's because ERCOT releases them publicly after the fact, and we see that after the fact, if you were to look at these peak intervals, you would see that block times slow down significantly. So if you-- Yeah, exactly.

233
00:42:55.486 --> 00:43:08.566
Right here. We can see that during these hours when the peaks actually occur, block times are more like twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen minutes versus the target, uh, that the network aims for, which is ten minutes.

234
00:43:09.046 --> 00:43:24.474
So we can see that miners are curtailing, um, very specifically, even more so when we get to these peak curtailment, uh, intervals.This is one of my favorite, uh, charts ever, 'cause it's something finally, like, revealing about block times- [laughs]...

235
00:43:24.494 --> 00:43:27.704
and, and the real meat space that miners operate in. Will?

236
00:43:28.314 --> 00:43:40.174
Khan, are you telling me that when I buy my coffee with Bitcoin on a Square terminal now, it might be a little slow at some points during the year because of Texas miners? Is that what I'm hearing? Ab- absolutely.

237
00:43:40.234 --> 00:43:50.074
If you're buying it afternoon to evening times, whe- when peak grid demand hits, you might, you might need a little more time for that to settle. [laughs] Not if you use Lightning.

238
00:43:50.574 --> 00:43:59.654
Okay, Khan, I got, uh, I got one last question for you, and that is, um, we are seeing a phenomenon in US dollar-denominated hash rate,

239
00:44:00.634 --> 00:44:17.874
uh, forward curve, which has flipped into contango, um, which means that the future price is, uh, higher than the current spot price, which is a f- a rare occurrence in hash rate forward markets. Explain this.

240
00:44:17.954 --> 00:44:24.934
I mean, you kind of just did, but, you know, double tap on this for me. Yes, definitely. Yeah, so now we get to the punchline.

241
00:44:24.974 --> 00:44:31.794
The punchline is we see all these on-chain signals of the incoming Four CP season, and guess what?

242
00:44:31.954 --> 00:44:56.614
The forward market is expecting this and pricing it in, which is why we see this shape of the curve that you just described a- as contango, which essentially means that forward hash price levels, which you can lock, lock in by engaging in these contracts for the next six months, is right now offering a hash price that is higher than the current spot hash price.

243
00:44:57.134 --> 00:45:10.054
And the reason behind this, the intuition, is because mining companies, forward sellers, know that as we get into Four CP season, the risk of curtailment increases, which means hash rate is expected to drop.

244
00:45:10.134 --> 00:45:23.234
If hash rate drops, the value of hash rate that remains online increases. So hash price is going up, which means forward sellers are able to command a premium in forward markets at the moment.

245
00:45:23.654 --> 00:45:39.674
So the forward market is this fourth financial signal in terms of expectations, which is telling us that curtailment is expected, and it's baked into forward market expectations as well. Uh, yeah.

246
00:45:39.684 --> 00:45:49.594
That's some deep financial modeling for Bitcoin mining, let me tell you. A lot of people out there, Charlie amongst them at one point, we just plug in an ASIC and let it rip. Oh, wish I had that. [laughs] Wish I...

247
00:45:49.894 --> 00:46:00.774
Five years ago. Oh, my gosh. But it also takes money to make money, so you gotta have money to put up and, and, and hedge, so that's a whole nother egg to crack.

248
00:46:01.554 --> 00:46:14.334
Khan, um, last thoughts, final thoughts, capstone before I, we go and talk, uh, mining stocks. Uh, the summer's gonna be hot. What's that mean for Bitcoin mining? What's the June monthly look back gonna look like?

249
00:46:15.654 --> 00:46:22.754
Yeah, we're at a very interesting time right now, I think. Um, a lot of the headline revolves around Bitcoin price action and uncertainty.

250
00:46:22.834 --> 00:46:31.354
I think looking forward, there are a few potential headwinds that we can keep in mind when it comes to the Bitcoin price action side of things.

251
00:46:32.034 --> 00:46:39.674
First is the ongoing tension in terms of geopolitics and conflict in the Middle East. Obviously, Bitcoin is this global liquid asset.

252
00:46:40.094 --> 00:46:47.593
It reflects real-time market conditions, and we're seeing a lot of uncertainty right now in Bitcoin price. Geopolitics has a role to play.

253
00:46:48.214 --> 00:47:00.894
Separately, in terms of capital markets, I think it's also interesting to see that there is this high-level rotation out of Bitcoin and crypto-native markets into AI infrastructure for capital.

254
00:47:00.974 --> 00:47:12.154
Obviously, much like railroads being built back in the day, AI infrastructure is the main project of today, perhaps the next decade or so, and we see this reflected in capital markets as well.

255
00:47:12.494 --> 00:47:24.054
A lot of money in investment is simply moving towards AI infrastructure, and perhaps Bitcoin is seeing a bit of a substitution effect in terms of growth capital moving elsewhere to look for returns.

256
00:47:24.074 --> 00:47:37.953
And then we also have an incoming set of IPOs, which may arguably be the largest IPO cycle of this decade, right? We're talking about aerospace and defense companies, AI labs, et cetera.

257
00:47:38.373 --> 00:47:51.854
So I think there's an interesting effect here where capital is being sucked out of Bitcoin and perhaps going into these other areas of growth. So that's what we're keeping in mind from a price action perspective.

258
00:47:51.874 --> 00:48:02.314
And then obviously when it comes to the mining side of things, we're watching curtailments. In fact, our research and development fleet located in Texas is curtailing actively at the moment.

259
00:48:02.354 --> 00:48:18.214
We are testing our intelligent mining operations, so we get to see this, yeah, in real time. What we expect is for hash price to be around the $30.50 range, um, up through to November of 2026.

260
00:48:18.554 --> 00:48:28.444
So that's where short-term expectations are at the moment. Khan, [claps] thanks for coming on Block Space and sharing the Luxur and Hashrate Index insights.

261
00:48:29.394 --> 00:48:38.324
Looking forward to have you on again whenever the next installment comes out. Cheers. Have fun. Thanks. It's monthly. Yeah. Thanks so much, guys. Take care. See you around. Take care.

262
00:48:40.254 --> 00:48:57.034
All right, we're gonna go back to stocks and markets, but not before a word from our sponsor, Ligos. [static noise] Hedge funds are getting liquidated. Is your Bitcoin safe?

263
00:48:57.334 --> 00:49:07.014
It's not just Bitcoin price drying up, and boy, is it drying up right now. Big whales, hedge funds, and lending desks are going under after notorious Tentan and Two5 liquidations.

264
00:49:07.474 --> 00:49:18.254
Maybe we'll tack on the June 2nd liquidation [laughs] on there too. Counterparty risk is rampant, so it's more important than ever to understand who actually controls your Bitcoin.

265
00:49:18.334 --> 00:49:33.886
Don't be the next FTX or Celsius victim.If you're working with another loan provider, do yourself a favor before it's too late and check out Lagos Finance, Blockspace's preferred non-custodial Bitcoin lender using Bitcoin native smart contracts to protect your stack.

266
00:49:34.586 --> 00:49:51.446
With Lagos, you always know where your Bitcoin is. Hold your keys, no wrapping, no bridging, no rehypothecation. Get competitive rates as low as 10% APR, probably lower now. Go to lagos.finance to learn more. Okay, Will.

267
00:49:52.686 --> 00:50:04.646
Time to rip more data center stocks. Time to rip more data centers. SpaceX on looming, um, IPO, I think it's what, like, next week? Am I getting this right? Yeah, it's, it's really soon here.

268
00:50:04.686 --> 00:50:13.946
I don't remember the day, but, uh, let's actually go to this Leopold story first, and I- Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let me- This is, uh, fresh from the Wall Street Journal this morning.

269
00:50:14.066 --> 00:50:20.906
We did a little rewrite of it, but the Situational Awareness hedge fund, uh, it's doing pretty well. It's doing pretty well.

270
00:50:20.946 --> 00:50:33.486
So the Wall Street Journal got some inside scoop from people associated with Situational Awareness. Uh, for those who are not in the know, it's the hot new hedge fund, mostly focused on AI infrastructure.

271
00:50:34.376 --> 00:50:51.406
Uh, it's co-founded by a guy out of OpenAI, and he wrote an essay called Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead, basically laying out this thesis for why AI infrastructure and AI in general will recompute the entire economy.

272
00:50:51.426 --> 00:51:02.146
And if you really wanna ride the wave, then you gotta get in on the AI infrastructure stocks. He did this with a few purchases, including in the past, stocks like Core Scientific, EREN, et cetera.

273
00:51:02.686 --> 00:51:18.566
And as of the latest filing, which is just a snapshot every quarter, uh, they included more Bitcoin mining stocks or former Bitcoin miners as they're more and more going as, including Bitdeer, CleanSpark, uh, Qul infrastructure, formerly known as Bitfarms, et cetera.

274
00:51:18.906 --> 00:51:22.666
So we covered all of that on Blockspace, and I think we've talked about on the podcast.

275
00:51:23.486 --> 00:51:36.906
This morning, the big news for Situational Awareness, which the Wall Street Journal got a nice scoop on, was that they broke $20 billion in assets under management, which brings them into, uh, like, the, the larger categories for hedge funds.

276
00:51:36.946 --> 00:51:38.706
You know, it's, it's pretty far up there.

277
00:51:39.406 --> 00:51:48.166
Um, and then the last thing that they noted was that Jane Street actively is investing with them, meaning that they're, they're giving Situational Awareness the ability to invest dollars on their behalf.

278
00:51:48.566 --> 00:51:59.646
They're up over 1,000% since the inception of the fund, uh, I believe not including fees, and then they're up 270% year to date as well. So they're doing pretty well.

279
00:52:00.126 --> 00:52:06.066
Um, the one thing I'll say about the snapshots, the 13 Fs and Gs, is that those are very context dependent on the moment.

280
00:52:06.076 --> 00:52:23.906
The Wall Street Journal article laid that out pretty cleanly, but if you don't follow these things, you know, th- giving you a snapshot of the holdings at a certain point in time, there's a lot of puts and calls and stuff like that in there, which give you kind of, like, some indication of how they're thinking about the market structure, but it, it changed quite a bit.

281
00:52:24.396 --> 00:52:31.826
The thesis, however, is pretty cleanly laid out in that essay I talked about, and then some of the other holdings like Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure.

282
00:52:32.666 --> 00:52:44.546
Uh, any thoughts on that, Charlie, but we can talk about SpaceX in a moment. Leopold is a copy trade, uh, for the, for the indefinite future. I mean, I don't... You know, this kid ha- kid, I mean, we're talking kid.

283
00:52:44.586 --> 00:52:54.556
We're talking low 20s when he- Yes... wrote this, uh, essay back in, I think, 2024. So I think he can drink alcohol now, and he runs a $20 billion hedge fund.

284
00:52:54.626 --> 00:53:11.986
It's ironic, though, you know, that The Wall Street Journal got an inside scoop to Situational Awareness because the w- you know, the rumor on the street is Leopold, because of his proximity and because of the theme of the Situaw- Situational Awareness cabal in the Bay Area, is that he knows all the people.

285
00:53:12.146 --> 00:53:25.506
He's got all the contacts. Yes. That's his alpha. You know, those, I mean, those Zoom or group chats must be going wild. [laughs] Um, so, uh, yeah, that's Leopold. I think, what else have we got?

286
00:53:25.566 --> 00:53:32.966
We've got Corement as well. Yeah, I mean, we'll just hit on this really quickly, uh, 'cause Corement's not public. They're friends of the show.

287
00:53:33.046 --> 00:53:41.086
I thought it'd be interesting to kind of talk about this, but they announced a new land deal, uh, that they're working on. Uh, I think they just put it on LinkedIn. I didn't see it in the press releases.

288
00:53:41.125 --> 00:53:42.245
I didn't really see it anywhere else.

289
00:53:42.306 --> 00:53:56.526
But I think just giving people a sense of, like, what's happening in some of these, you know, former pasture land across the US, that people are finding these locations, throwing them up on LinkedIn, trying to sell them, trying to find new partners, providers.

290
00:53:57.206 --> 00:54:12.566
Uh, I wanted to pair this with a SpaceX story because this is, like, your prototypical land deal you'd find in the US or elsewhere, this piece being in Texas, and SpaceX jumps everything and says, "Hey, how about we move this entire process to space?"

291
00:54:13.126 --> 00:54:23.826
That's kind of the story of the prospectus in S-1. Now, of course, there's this big in-between step called Colossus in Memphis, which is a approximately one gigawhite- gigawatt site.

292
00:54:24.766 --> 00:54:45.366
As of Friday, we had new news that we were not able to cover on the live stream because it hit at the end of the day, which is that Google signed an LOI, an agreement, with SpaceX to have a $920 million monthly lease for compute at xAI's, uh, Colossus campus.

293
00:54:45.376 --> 00:54:55.866
There's a bunch of outs in this, which a lot of people on Twitter were, were really quick to kinda critique, that Google can kinda walk away for any sort of reason here. You know, that might happen.

294
00:54:56.146 --> 00:55:00.126
You might get a headline in 30 to 90 days that this contract is over.

295
00:55:00.706 --> 00:55:18.206
But assuming that it does click, you start to see a pathway for xAI to start making a ton of cash and pay off its data center very quickly, which goes back to the thesis for all these Bitcoin mining companies that, you know, are pivoting to AI in the first place.

296
00:55:18.266 --> 00:55:26.402
That's the same math, that they're doing it. Elon has just been able to do it faster, bigger, better than anyone else because it's Elon Musk.Charlie?

297
00:55:26.462 --> 00:55:32.402
Yeah, let me re-- let's, let's review, like, the, the latest in xAI deal flow.

298
00:55:32.462 --> 00:55:43.502
So xAI merged s- or acquired or merged, joined with SpaceX earlier this year, and SpaceX had, in twenty twenty-five, made, I believe, roughly eighteen billion dollars in gross revenue.

299
00:55:44.402 --> 00:55:53.182
As I brought up last Friday, the Anthropic deal loan, which is one point two five billion a month, adds, like, eighty percent gross revenue.

300
00:55:53.502 --> 00:56:17.062
If you bring in the Google deal of n- an additional nine hundred and twenty million per month, that then means that just these two tenants alone, uh, more than double SpaceX's revenue for, uh, the coming year, assuming they stay on as clients and these deals are, like, as-- and they remain, you know, continuous.

301
00:56:17.602 --> 00:56:25.312
One other thing is, like, so there's Colossus I and II in Memphis, and Colossus II remains xAI's, uh, kinda flagship. Now, it's the,

302
00:56:26.222 --> 00:56:40.482
uh-- it's, like, they're all the GPUs are the same basically at a high level, whereas Colossus I is kind of a mix. It's a blend of diverse GPU sets, which, uh, if you, depending on how deep you wanna go,

303
00:56:41.442 --> 00:56:54.952
they can be good and bad at certain things. It's las- basically probably the less desirable, uh, like, compute stack for a client, but xAI has it. SpaceX has this ready to go, and they need tenants. Um,

304
00:56:56.182 --> 00:57:05.802
so- And people need compute. You know, people need electricity right now. Uh, there, there's, there's so many conversations still out there about we need size, and we need compute at size.

305
00:57:05.822 --> 00:57:12.892
We're seeing headlines once a week about a new company needing compute. I mean, there's one last week about Jane Street looking to build its own data center campus, right?

306
00:57:13.452 --> 00:57:27.242
And you can go build one and wait twelve, 18, 36, 48 months to get something going, or you can talk to Elon and rent out part of the data campus, and people with cash apparently are choosing to do that instead.

307
00:57:27.802 --> 00:57:36.242
Yeah, um, a couple-- So, like, a lot of people kind of wonder, "Why is Google doing this?" I think a lot of-- there's a lot of, like, asking questions of, "Why does Google want to rent compute?"

308
00:57:36.342 --> 00:57:48.902
They have a bunch of their own. And, um, one angle is, uh, a lot of people pro- forgot this, Google acquired a five to six percent ownership in SpaceX back in twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen.

309
00:57:49.222 --> 00:58:03.702
This is long before they did AI. This is before the, uh, xAI, uh, merger acquisition, and so, uh, this kind of, like, one, it drives additional revenue to SpaceX, so it, like,

310
00:58:05.182 --> 00:58:16.932
adds a lot of tailwind to their inco- to their imminent IPO. Um, it also diversifies Google's, uh, compute across, like, different labs and different landlords. Mm.

311
00:58:16.982 --> 00:58:29.682
I think this is a trend we're seeing across the industry right now. Um, I believe every major lab, now that Anthropic has the deal with SpaceX, is now running multiple vendor compute strategies.

312
00:58:29.782 --> 00:58:46.802
Um, so you have diversification, and it does in a way become almost like this, you know, kind of, uh, looped system where everybody has a deal with everybody else. Um, I have this tweet here, which I will pull up,

313
00:58:47.922 --> 00:59:01.262
which, um, did the numbers [clears throat] over the-- ov- over last week, um, kind of as a bait tweet, um, from Boring Biz. Uh, says, "Elon Musk's xAI reportedly spent forty billion to build their data centers.

314
00:59:01.342 --> 00:59:09.542
Based on public disclosure of the Anthropic and Google deals, xAI will get paid twenty-six billion dollars per year to license the compute from these data centers."

315
00:59:10.982 --> 00:59:26.522
This account says, "This is a payback period of 18 months," and attaches a chart. And, um, I think, you know, at the, at the-- at face value, yeah, this is a ton of revenue coming in for the initial spend.

316
00:59:26.562 --> 00:59:39.482
However, the big question, which I don't believe we know the numbers on, is, uh, how much does it cost them to run this compute? What's their power wa- you know, adds? What's their, you know, overhead, SG&A?

317
00:59:39.522 --> 00:59:52.362
Like, you know, if those-- if the margins are good, this is still an incredible deal, but we don't know that yet, as far as I'm aware. Um, Will, you have thoughts on this? A lot of cash. CapEx costs are really high.

318
00:59:52.622 --> 01:00:04.842
Uh, this is where we get those clips, like we had one last week, of people saying that it's too costly. The math is the math. This is too much of a, of a bull market that's turning into a bubble.

319
01:00:05.422 --> 01:00:16.422
And then you have, like, the graphics against, like, the railroad boom of the 1860s to 1890s or other time periods, the PC boom, the airline boom, the automobile boom.

320
01:00:17.502 --> 01:00:27.702
Just really depends, I think, on, like, do you think this AI infrastructure's gonna be worth it, and then what is, like, the compute refresh rates? Uh, that's a huge consideration, I think, worth talking about more.

321
01:00:27.722 --> 01:00:35.062
And then lastly, how do you think about some of the adjacent industries? You know, we saw memory stocks popping the last six-plus weeks. How do you think about that?

322
01:00:35.522 --> 01:00:54.262
When it comes to OpenAI and when they're building this out, you know, if they're able to turn around and sign two large leases and perhaps be able to pay off everything they've done in 18 months, that's a huge win, uh, compared to some of the others out there that are trying to stack, uh, convertible notes on top of senior debt on top of [chuckles] other options to get something going.

323
01:00:54.322 --> 01:01:03.572
Like, they're actually gonna have revenue coming the door to pay for these things. Uh, meanwhile, that's not even necessarily, like, their, their future business model. Um, so huge win for them.

324
01:01:03.662 --> 01:01:09.882
I don't have much more to say on that. Uh, we'll have to get more experts on to give us the bull or bear case for it.

325
01:01:09.942 --> 01:01:23.842
It really does showcase that while there are clearly now two frontrunners for frontier models, Anthropic and OpenAI, you can argue Google Gemini is up there, nobody really puts xAI as a frontier model.

326
01:01:23.922 --> 01:01:35.222
Um, but yet xAI is the one which appears to be generating some of the best revenue, which means we have a competitive and dynamic landscape. This is exciting to cover.

327
01:01:35.342 --> 01:01:49.322
Uh, theoretically, this might be better for the end consumer if this non-monot- monopoly, uh, persists. We'll have to cover this in weeks to come. Speaking of which, thank you for tuning in.

328
01:01:49.542 --> 01:01:59.602
M- Block Space goes live every weekday at 1:00 PM Eastern. This live show is brought to you by CleanSpark, NASDAQ listed, ticker CLSK. And

329
01:02:00.562 --> 01:02:16.402
we are leaving CoinDesk, so stop what you're doing, subscribe to the Block Space feed, search Block Space on whatever platform you're on, and go there. We end, uh, in a week. Otherwise, I'm Charlie. I'm Will.

330
01:02:16.442 --> 01:02:23.702
Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. [upbeat music]