RAISE Summit Kickoff, GLXY, CLSK, MARA & RIOT News!

We connect the dots between Bitcoin stability and the rough tape in AI infrastructure stocks, then zoom out to the real constraint behind both markets: power. We also unpack how capital, compute, and policy shape who wins the race to build GPU-heavy AI data centers across the US and beyond.

• Bitcoin range action versus miner uncertainty and AI stock weakness 
• Rise AI conference scale and why mining companies are showing up 
• IREN’s sponsorship, branding strategy, and CSP-style buildout plan 
• TeraWulf interview highlights and why ERCOT demand numbers shock 
• Interconnection backlogs, batching reforms, and what policy changes unlock 
• “Bring your own generation” as a moat for AI data center development 
• Demand response and curtailment credits as real business model drivers 
• Community impact from data centers, jobs, taxes, and local investment 
• Bitcoin network transaction volume hitting record highs for adoption 
• Galaxy Helios phase one completion and the mining-to-HPC pathway 
• CleanSpark’s June production, hashrate efficiency, and power under contract 
• NScale’s revolving credit move and what it signals for AI infrastructure capital

Let us know in the comment section below if you're currently holding shares in either Clean Spark or Galaxy and your top pick in the sector currently!

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Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Lineup

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey guys, welcome or welcome back to the channel McNally Money, the official home of power analysis. A big episode in store for you today. We've got news out from Galaxy, Clean Spark, and NScale. We're going to be discussing in today's podcast, along with your top AI headlines. Before we get into it, take a second, smash a like button, guys. Big help to myself and the channel. Anthony absolutely loves it. If you're not already subscribed, McNally Money, feel free to join. And let us know in the comment section below if you're currently holding shares in either Clean Spark or Galaxy and your top pick in the sector currently. With that being said, let's get into today's episode. All right, guys, away we go. Wednesday afternoon, a great episode in store for you. We've got a lot of big headlines. We're gonna be covering the Raise AI conference that's taking place this week and some big updates out from Galaxy Clean Spark and a few of the top stocks we cover on the channel. Now, first things first, Anthony, uh Bitcoin in that 61 and a half range. I think you said in live now up over 62. So we are seeing uh stability, I guess I'll say in Bitcoin. But as we move over to the miners, still a lot of uh uncertainty there.

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Yeah, the five-day charts looking like you know, if you take the midpoint across there between uh 62 and 63,000. So uh maintain its stance there. But as you can see from we've had a couple of dips towards the 61,000. As I say, again, I I I try not to look on it on a daily basis. I'm here for the long term. I bought some Bitcoin last week when he's at 59,000, so um still happy happy to add where appropriate to the uh to the stack and yet to sell um any sats, unlike a couple of other key people in the space that I've been selling lately.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Yeah, not just selling Satoshi, selling iron, selling everything lately in the space. Now uh we move over to the stocks here, Anthony. I took this screenshot, it was almost all green. Then we had a chat, we took another one, it was half green, half red. Now it looks more red in real time. But to my earlier point, that disconnect between Bitcoin and AI, we've seen softness or weakness in the AI infrastructure space for about 10 trading sessions now.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah, we've seen some a bit of quite a bit of downturn there. And um, if you've got stocks that we talk about on a daily basis in your portfolio, you'll know that from about the 22nd of June, uh, we've seen a significant bull pullback, maybe 35-40% on some of these stocks. Um,

Bitcoin Holds Steady While Miners Swing

SPEAKER_00 2:35

looking at the day range there, you can see the majority are close to their uh low on the day range there. And you know, with the exception of uh uh uh TerraWolf, um, and we'll come on to that reason, probably why their stock price is doing better than most. Wi-Fi is in uh positive territory, and Soluna Holdings also um at its high for the day there, um, you know, um showing a little bit of um you know uh positivity to the to the space, but the majority of stocks as we speak now live are in sort of like red territory there. But uh as I say, it's a bit of a turbulent um um market at the moment. It doesn't help when we have issues in the Middle East kicking off again today. I think there was um some strong words from the president and also some strong words from Iran on what what uh US bases they were going to target. It sent a bit of a shock wave across the bowels, and maybe we're still seeing a little bit of that shock wave um in the last few days as well. But um, as I say, we there's plenty of positivity in the space, and and we'll come on to talk about Patrick's uh discussion in a moment.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yeah, we will. First, I want to hit on the Ray's conference here. That just kicked off on the 7th over in your neck of the woods, Paris, Anthony. Uh, but to your point there, we are starting to see very deep seek-esque, I guess. A lot of these companies have run up tremendously over the last couple of months. Now we get this meta, a bit of FUD. We talked to Patrick about that as well. And I think it is just a little bit of a spook out or shake out in the market here. Uh, moving over to Rays, though, this is an interesting one. I know you've got some high-level numbers to share what the conference is about, but it wasn't too long ago that many of the companies we talk about were frequenting the Bitcoin conference, uh, now shifting over to focus obviously on AI.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah, we've we've been looking to go to the last three Bitcoin conferences, one in Nashville and the last two in Las Vegas. And when I look at the numbers that Raz are attracting this week, it seems to be probably a similar size. 15,000 attendees, 4,000 companies represented, 500 speakers across all events, and about 50 citywide

AI Infrastructure Pullback And Market Jitters

SPEAKER_00 4:45

side events. And when you go to a Bitcoin conference, we went to the one in Vegas literally a couple of months ago. Um, I think 50, if you said 15,000 people attended that over the two days, um, or the three days including the industry day, probably close to that there. Um, 4,000 companies. I don't think 4,000 companies are represented at the Bitcoin conference. So this is a this is a really big deal, this one here, and um it's quite clear um what they're trying to do. They're trying to bring obviously the top decision makers, you know, the C level leaders, shaping the uh direction of AI to assess implementation strategies on a global scale. Now, the other thing is is obviously connecting the three forces that drive AI infrastructure, that is capital, compute, and policy. And you know, direct engagement between the builders, the investors, and the policymakers, enabling that high-stakes connectivity. And finally, the focus is really on return on investment and a tangible evolution of deals and pilot programs.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, it's great networking, and we expect a lot of deals or discussion of deals to take place at this event. Now, IRIN really stepping out to take a lead role here. They're actually the headline sponsor of the entire conference. You can see the diamond level, some names we're familiar with, NScale NVIDIA. We've got some news on them later, but pretty interesting to

Raise Conference Shows The AI Shift

SPEAKER_02 6:10

see Iron at a higher sponsorship level than even NVIDIA.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Absolutely. We talked about um branding and getting that name out there, and I think I want to take in that next level now. Uh, they realize with their strategy they're going to effectively commit to that CSP model, um, you know, build their sites, their own sites with their own power, and then you know, fill their sites with GPUs. Remember, they've got a fantastic relationship with NVIDIA, um, and that relationship with NVIDIA um is all about filling that five gigawatts of power, um, not to mention the additional power in South Australia, which could probably take them probably to six gigawatts of power in total. But NVIDIA have got a great relationship with them, and then the plan is to put uh NVIDIA chip GPUs into those into those sites as that as they as they grow that company. Now, you know, a couple of years ago, not many people other than in the mining space would have understood or knew what um iron were, previously known as Iris Energy. Um they've been public now for about four years, and you know, they've grown as a Bitcoin miner. But if you go back and listen to Dan Roberts prior to the Bitcoin mining phase, his focus was on now, his focus then was on building these data centers, and this is what they're moving into now. You know, the Bitcoin mining space is a very unique space in North America. There's a lot of players out there, there's at least 30, 35 public companies, and iron was just one of those companies. They did manage to build a massive um hash rate uh in a very, very short space of time, and they got to the 50x a hash, but at the same time, they were also testing the model there for delivering um HPC on a smaller scale at some of their sites in British Columbia, and you can see that that benefits paid off there. They've started now, obviously, they've got a massive contract with Microsoft, they're building out more um um facilities at the children's site, they're on top of the 200 megawatts for Microsoft. They're now basically refurbishing those uh buildings that they fill with the Bitmain uh uh S21 machines and now replacing those and those buildings and putting in GPUs uh when they're ready to deliver you know another you know uh 300 megawatts of compute power at that site. Remember, it's a 750 megawatt site, and the PUE suggests probably 500 megawatts of compute along with 250 megawatts of ancillary power, then you've got the 300 megawatts they've already um uh energized at the Sweetwater One site. And when Sweetwater Two and Sweetwater One get fully energized, you're looking at two gigawatts of power there, the sites in Spain and Oklahoma. Uh, you know, so they've got a lot on the plate there, and uh it's going to be interesting to see when we get the next update for the next potential deal coming through from Iran. But uh yeah, great to see that as a headline sponsor. Okay, remember they've just invested in sponsoring uh one of the biggest basketball teams um in the Golden State Warriors in the US, and they've also sponsored um one of the big uh football teams in Australia as well. So you know getting that that name out there across the world globally is going to give them some of that recognition that we're seeing with the likes of NScale, Nvidia, Corweave, Nebbius. They want to be branded certainly in that level there, and because they own their own power and open infrastructure, they probably feel they need to be maybe looking towards uh joining the sort of the hyperscalers there. Um maybe in a few years' time when we see more of these deals come along, they probably get that recognition to certainly join that group.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

I think they will, and really trying to get that household name brand recognition. So we talk about Spain, they've got obviously a number of speakers at this event as the headline sponsor.

IRON’s Branding Push And GPU Strategy

SPEAKER_02 10:05

They've actually got Gabriel, the head of Spain overall, uh, on the first panel there. You can see alongside Cambiz, the recent CPO announcement we covered last week on the channel. The second panel, which also caught our attention, Anthony, Morantis, Iron Nvidia. So very interesting to see these three companies. Morantis was recently acquired by Iron Nvidia, that partnership you talk about. Again, you can see the benefit of the networking, the power of these type of conferences.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, absolutely. And um if I remember rightly, Chris Parker is also moderating that panel um with Dennis and Gabriel and Campbell's there. Um, I think he was um heading up the social media company that they recently acquired as well. He's now the chief marketing officer. So, again, using all those new hires straight away at one of the biggest conferences and getting you know their input in straight away is going to give them that sort of again help towards giving that recognition, brand awareness that people uh will be seeing. I remember when we were at the conference, um the Bitcoin conference in Vegas, they they'd um they had the sphere effectively uh advertising iron as well. So, you know, again, um, you know, having that awareness in in in sites that many, many people will get eyes on uh will only help them grow and become a more known uh brand when we talk about HPC AI going forward.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Agreed there, yeah. And they're not obviously the only company presenting here or sponsoring. You mentioned 4,000 names, some of the ones we cover on the channel. You can see Nebius going to be making a big statement there. Buzz HPC, so the subsidiary of Hive Digital, they've got Tiffany Bestwick, VP Corporate Affairs, and Gabriel, their general counsel, both of which we've actually had the pleasure of meeting. And our good friend Sam Tabar. You can see White Fiber also sponsoring the event. He's there on the ground looking to make more deals in the White Fiber neck of the woods. Keep in mind they've also got that key partnership with NScale at their North Carolina One facility. And last but not least, BitDear Anthony, with the VP of BitDear AI taking the stage in terms of the real edge in production AI.

SPEAKER_00 12:18

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, and what we'll see now is as most of the companies that we talk about on a daily basis are transitioning their power from mining to HPC, these types of conferences, um, you know, substantial countries like the RAID's one, we'll start seeing more of those companies attending instead of going to maybe some of the Bitcoin, because we know many of the CEOs, the likes of Tyler Page at uh Cypher Digital, the likes of Ben Gamon at Keel have basically said within the next 12 months, both of those companies will stop mining altogether.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

So, anyone watching from the Rays conference, if you need a couple of uh marketing or media passes uh thrown our way to cover the next event, we'd be more than happy to. Now, moving over to yesterday's podcast, Anthony, you talked about our interview with Patrick Fleury, Terawolf. This was yet again one of the top podcasts in recent memory for me. He's so transparent, he's so forthcoming with the information, the calculations. Uh, TeraWolf actually clipped some of these shorts from the podcast, specifically talking about his remarks in relation to Jim Chanos. So if you guys haven't had a chance to watch that one, I would definitely encourage you to do so. But another interesting topic we talked about was the ERCOT power market, their exit from the state of Texas, their location, Abernethy actually, and SPP. But Patrick

Terawulf Takeaways And ERCOT Power Reality

SPEAKER_02 13:40

was able to give us some pretty informative numbers in terms of the ERCOT backlog for these large load data centers.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yes, he was. And uh it was a fascinating conversation. One thing I like about Patrick is he doesn't take prisoners. Um, you know, he's happy to have a conversation with people out there and explain what's happening, but when he sees remarks that don't stack up, he's more than happy to call them out for it. And he did yesterday with Jim Chanos there, and uh someone he admired from a a long time ago when he was starting in the space as a cell side uh analyst there. Um and really uh you know he's read the comments there from from from a few people as a prime gym, one of them, and uh, you know, he wasn't uh enamoured with them because they don't they don't stack up at all in terms of reality. And the great thing is, I mean, he added more colour to the update that came out the day before. I mean, we were amazed to go down that granularity about you know how long it take took to have those conversations with Anthropic compared to when they had their initial um conversations and the and their agreement with their G42, Core 42, that initial 60 megawatt. I mean, we were talking about a five to six months uh round the table there, they've learned so much from that space there. You still have to go through and get the agreement, make sure both parties are happy. But when you've done three or four of these agreements, you're able to have that you know a bit more experience in the space there to deliver that. And um, you know, very pleased to hear that there, but also pleased to hear about his thoughts on on ERCOT specifically. And remember, you know, they actually uh pulled out of um one of their joint ventures um in Texas, not in the ERCOT area, but he was happy to talk about the fact that the demand for power, demand for power for data centers in the ERCOT was significantly higher than the power available, not just now, but in the near-term future as well.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Yeah, it was great discussion and timing is everything here. You actually got an update on LinkedIn out from Mara today, really confirming a lot of those numbers. So I think Patrick had thrown around the number 90 gigawatts for ERCOT total demand. You can see, according to Mara, it's in the 85 and a half neighborhood, so very similar. But to Patrick's point, Anthony, the future demand of which 90% of that is data center, you're looking of upwards of 440 gigawatts, just absolutely mind-blowing. And Patrick said, at least in his lifetime, he doesn't think there's going to be that amount of power.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

No, and the challenge is even if they were able to build nuclear sites, um, you know, a typical nuclear site will provide maybe somewhere in the region of one and a quarter gigawatts, maybe two and a half gigawatts of power. How many nuclear sites just in the region of Urcot would need to be um built to generate that requirement there? They are so they're literally only at 20% of the total demand, um, and that's the challenge. Now, you know, Patrick's more than happy to work in areas in uh that they, you know, there are more opportunity, and it's about you know having that ability to, you know, everybody wants the power, and when there's not a lot of power, it's gonna be a real challenge there. The demand will be obviously higher, and then you know, that might even affect prices down there to try and weed out um some of the people that can force to get in there and those that can't, and that's gonna be the challenge. But Pat they've moved out of that particular um area uh adjacent to the ERCOT area there, they're now operating in more comfortable um uh regions that they can have more control. And the fact that they're in a JV as well, when you're in a joint venture, you've not only got to keep the client happy, you've got to keep your partner happy as well. And the fact that they really um were enabled to um you know to achieve a 20% return on that uh JV deal in such a short space of time, that met their sort of like their their level um you know of return for a for a project. You know, 20% is about their return there. If they look at some of these uh um deals that they're doing at the moment, they're looking for the mid-teens in terms of percentage, and the latest deal there is is driving some in the region of an 18% return there. So achieving 20% on that deal for the JV in a very short space of time, that tick the box there, it gives them that capital to put back into their uh system there to utilize to drive other projects, and you know the the the big project uh um with with anthropic is um is one that um you know that that will need a significant amount of capital. But from what Patrick said yesterday, and listen carefully, you know, they've got a lot of the capital in place, certainly for 2026, and they can sort of like play this year out to see how the market's going to react and then start to to determine what they need to deliver in 2027. This is going to be over the next sort of 18 months or two years to deliver this whole project, and you know, if you look at the capital required to deliver a 401 megawatt project, you know, using that midpoint of 11 million dollars per megawatt, you'll need 4.4 billion dollars. So the 530 that helps towards that. There, other thing that Patrick said was they've been they were using the ATM as well to raise a bit of capital in May and not afraid to do so. You know, if the if the the stock price was in a really good position there, use that stock price to to raise more capital and you you get a better uh cost of capital percentage. I mean, he was quoting about five percent, and if they borrow the rest of the money in the round about the six percent there, they're getting sort of like you know, 10 to 11 percent

Policy Changes And Bring Your Own Power

SPEAKER_00 19:40

um weighted average cost of capital over that uh debt there, achieving 18%. You can see they're making a very, very nice return on their money price.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

They are, yeah. So nice to validate the numbers there. Also nice to validate some of those ERCOT numbers. Now, Mara goes on to talk about some of the ways you mentioned policy, compute, capital. We're gonna talk about all three of these. We've talked a lot about the batch zero policy in ERCOT, but at the same day, actually, the other six grid operator regions, so think of the MISO, the PJM, uh ISO, New York ISO, some of those other regions we know uh Ben Ganyon and Wolf operate in. They also did a reform or overhaul of their batching process for these large load requirements. So not only do you have batch zero going on in ERCOT, you've got this going on in the rest of the United States as well. In addition to that, MARA then starts to talk about the importance of bringing your own generation or actually owning the power production. Uh, we know they've got exposure in the wind farm. And now through the proposed long range acquisition, getting power generation and gas production as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah, so so you know it's it's it's easy to see from what MARA have been doing already. They've already implemented these strategies um in place there. They rapidly curtail electricity when demand requires it. They don't want to upset the domestic requirements, and they even put in a chart there to show that during the uh winter storm firm in 2026, they were reducing their power of 770 megawatts during that period of time there, which allowed the power to be utilized by the domestic market in that location there. That whilst already participating in demand response programs that support the grid stability and also enable lower energy costs because one demand rises in these locations here, if it's market rate there, some of the market prices for power are extremely high. So you have to have that sort of flexibility to switch off really quickly, something that MARA does as well. Now they're also expanding, you've mentioned there their own generation through natural gas, wind assets, and with this proposed long ridge acquisition. Partnering with digital. Sorry, partnering with Starwood digital ventures will enable them to invest in powered sites that are at an early stage or capital intensive for additional data send to the devil's developers. That gives them a sort of like the benefit. What you'll see is Mara will do is we'll put their sites into the pot that they have at the moment. Those sites will have a valuation, and Starwood will match that valuation as a partner in terms of capital to help deliver those sites into HPC facilities, accelerating that readiness for future AI as all these companies are trying to do. Now, one of the strategic advantages by combining these flexible operations with their generation of their own power is that they're able to use the Bitcoin mining revenue as an interim source of finance, whilst Starwood development expertise and MARA's reduction in that infrastructure risk will strengthen that grid resilience, enabling faster, more cost-effective, and deployment of AI infrastructure.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

It almost reminds me a bit of Iron. We're seeing so many of these pieces, announcements come together, come to the table, but we haven't yet seen that full masterpiece for Mara. But you talk about uh the curtailment, obviously supporting local communities. You talk about the bring your own power, the power generation exposure, and of course, now these new policies in terms of the energy markets and ERCOT. A lot going on under the surface there. And we're excited to have uh Mara on this round of earnings to talk through it. Now, Anthony, Mara isn't the only company curtailing in Texas. We know ABTC, they actually just put out a post today talking about that, being good stewards of the community. They operate a major facility there in Texas as well. And Riot, interestingly enough, through their PPA program, can not only curtail but actually generate some revenue for doing so.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah, and and we don't want to limit to these two companies. All companies uh that are operating in Texas and other um areas um are behaving as good um public citizens in turning the power off when the domestic requirement requires it. And a lot of these um um areas, these areas of power, uh these jurisdictions have what they call demand response programs to enable companies to sign up for that and they get some benefit of doing that. They also get some benefit on future cost of power. The great thing about Riot is they mentioned the fact they've got this PPA, 345 megawatts of power at the Rockdale facility there, where they've got a fixed rate there. When the power price spikes, uh, they're able to switch off. Um they could stay on and and and still pay that three point, I think 3.9 cents per kilowatt hour. But when power power spikes, uh price spikes, they're able to switch off and sell the power back to the grid. And um, you know, I'll just having a quick look at their previous um full-year accounts. If you look at 2025, uh $57 million of power curtailment credits were received. In 2024, only $33.6 million were received. And go back to 2023, $71 million received during that year there. So, really, you know, that's really helped uh the company out there. I mean, some of those numbers are larger than uh some of the mining revenues that some of the people that we speak on a daily basis are achieving there. It was phenomenal uh for their business model. It enables Riot to have one of the cheapest power costs of all the companies that were operating in the Bitcoin mining space.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah, not to mention flows right to the bottom line. You don't have to worry about the gross margins, the Bitcoin difficulty, uh halvings, any of that kind of nonsense. Now, Riot put out another tweet stating, okay, not only are we able to curtail, we're able to make some money from the PPA, but we're then able to invest that money now back into the data center business. So just like Dan Roberts bootstrapping AI with Bitcoin mining, this is an interesting stat. Uh, Riot stating for every dollar they invest in local communities, they're using Corsicana, obviously, as the example, that generates two to three dollars in local economic activity. So a huge economic stimulus. We talked about that in South Australia. We've talked about that with some of Ben Ganyon's sites, but this is why it's so important to have these kind of data centers in the local community because of the tax revenue generation opportunities. It also helps employ the local community. And we've heard this firsthand, Anthony, when we went out to Corsicana. They've now launched a series interviewing some of their staff. It really does make a big difference in these people's quality of life.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah, absolutely. And you can see that through the fact that, you know, suppliers, jobs, contractors, all from the local area will be working with these companies,

Curtailment Economics And Local Jobs Impact

SPEAKER_00 26:55

helping them uh achieve that, but also bringing the economy of these communities um together. Um, you know, we we also heard about the the the benefits that uh that Clean Spark were driving through some of their sites. They make sure before they set up a site there that they have the local approval. They don't have the local approval, they don't build a facility. Um, you know, this is all about making sure that um, you know, there's jobs put into the situation that a lot of companies hive of sponsored schools, they've given, I think, free power to some of the schools in Paraguay. Mara were giving um you know reduced power to um or power at cost price to uh uh houses in in Scandinavia. I think 11,000 houses benefited from uh close to one of their sites there and and and were able to have cheaper power uh driving their their costs down there. And you know, we can talk about every miner that they they do this as part and parcel. They are good citizens in general. That's why we we enjoy having them on the podcast to discuss not just about what they're doing from the business side, but also what they're helping in terms of the communities as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Yeah, and we got a good chuckle. You can see the clip from Devin here. He's talking about the commute time for his old job out to Dallas, an hour and a half. You and I have been to Texas, Anthony, and we can attest this is definitely a place you don't want to be commuting far to your job. So we'll play you the clip here, and then we've got a great example from Hive as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Riot is important to me because it gives me the opportunity to be a lot more present in my family's life. My name is Devin Coleman. I am a people partner here in Corsicana. I've been here for about two and a half years. I am the main contact when it comes to all things people. Previously, before I came to Riot, I was commuting very far into Dallas. My commute was about an hour and a half. That left me very little time to spend with my family. Riot gives me that opportunity to be more present. It offers me a sense of security and stability, not just me, um, but for my family and also the community.

SPEAKER_02 28:52

Now, Anthony, you just mentioned Hive's local involvement in terms of the schools in Paraguay, the ice hockey team and facility in Scandinavia. They posted an interesting milestone today. You can actually see a picture of the Paraguay team stating they've now surpassed 2% of the Bitcoin global network. So, again, stating the construction jobs, the tax revenue directly flowing back into those communities.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Yeah, absolutely. And as I said, they're also powering local schools, and they'll be doing a lot more than that now. And the great thing is, is that you know, at the moment using the 300 megawatts for mining down there, but they've got their foresight on the future and effectively, you know, one company, two engines, energy in freedom and intelligence out there, they've firmly got their eye on using power in the future to deliver more AI. They've they've just recently purchased some of their lease sites in Scandinavia to drive the HPC AI strategy over there. Um, they've also got the sites in Canada, and now they've got this the big sites that they purchased from Keel Infrastructure uh last year, and you can see how how that's really driven their hash rate and achieving that 2% of the global uh network, a real a real achievement in a very, very short space of time, might add. But uh I can see the future for Hive, and I can see um HPC AI driving uh in maybe you know three to four years' time across all their power sites.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Now I want to double-click on engine number one there, Bitcoin. You wouldn't uh guess guess this based on the price action we're seeing, but in terms of the actual transaction volume, Anthony, on the Bitcoin network, it's higher now than it's ever been. So this is a big vote of confidence for adoption. That's obviously critical to Bitcoin's long-term success. We all want to see the price go up, but at the end of the day, the more people that are using it to transact, the better it is for the network.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

Yeah, and and you can see from the chart there 673,822 transactions per day. Um, this is the highest uh full year on record at the moment now. 92% increase on on the previous year, so it's nearly doubled what they did a year ago. And if you look at the total number of transactions, we're already at like 1.4 billion total transactions. So this is um all about adoption. Um and you know, this is a key indicator to where you know Bitcoin having that use um out there, and if we're seeing this grow there, then naturally, you know, demand for Bitcoin will increase and and price will increase and everything moves um you know in sort of like a timely fashion there. So a great chart by by Hive Digital. Uh we'll be paying close attention to see this number um as it progresses over the rest of 2026 to to continue to rise and see how it compares then maybe towards the end of the year.

SPEAKER_02 31:55

Now, going down our checklist, we've talked about capital, we've talked about policy. Now let's talk compute, Anthony. Galaxy has now completed phase one, the initial 133 megawatts at their Helios site. This is an interesting saga originally owned by Argo. Uh, they picked it up pennies on the dollar, they've converted it into this major core weave deal, and now uh appearing to complete phase one on time, on budget.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Yeah, this is uh this is a site I'm very familiar with. Um, this was a site that Argo uh blockchain purchased and developed that first 200 megawatts at the site there. The site itself had power for 800 megawatts in total. Argo as a sort of like one of the smaller miners started to develop the first 200 megawatts, and literally within sort of six or seven months from energization, got to a position where they could no longer continue there. They had a quite a serious debt uh structure and the interest payments were getting too high. And um, before they went into chapter 11, because they'd sent a facts uh suggesting that was the way they were going to uh see out the the remaining time as a business. Um, Galaxy came in and offered them, I think it was like 65 million dollars for the site. Um, Argo had probably spent in the region of just over a hundred million dollars on the site, including the cost of the land. So um effectively got a Galaxy got a great deal, but Galaxy at the time they were buying this site for mining there, and they and they put their machines into the site, they let Argo be a tenant for the for the next 12 months. Um, and then really as we started to see companies moving into the HPC space, this is when uh Galaxy saw that uh potential,

Bitcoin Network Use Hits New Highs

SPEAKER_00 33:40

uh not just with the 200 megawatts, but with the size of the site, and as you can see there from the from the um the the the the picture of the site there, you can see that first 200 megawatts now completed. There's a further 600 megawatts to complete, and I believe um they've already got uh permissions to grow the 800 megawatts to 1.6 gigawatts. Now, Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy, I've I've seen him speak about this particular investment, and he's suggesting it's one of the best investments that he and Galaxy have made over the last few years. Um, a phenomenal piece of work. And if you remember, they've got uh a deal with Corby for that first 800 megawatts. Now, this first 133 megawatts, if you think about the 200 megawatts and the PE suggesting around about the 1.5, they're getting 133 megawatts of compute, and they'll hopefully be able to drive the remaining 400 megawatts of compute power, bringing that 533 megawatts, the deal with core weed there, um, in in the not too distant future, there. But a you know, a phenomenal site there. As I say, this is growing and growing. This is going to be a 1.6 gigawatt site, and there may be potential to expand it further. But as I say, uh this is just a starting point for Galaxy.

SPEAKER_02 35:02

And really cool to see the images here, how different the

Galaxy Helios Milestone And Miner Updates

SPEAKER_02 35:05

design is or the concept for all these data centers. Uh, compare this to maybe what we saw at Childress or what we're seeing from some of the renderings uh out from Kiel. Now we move over to Clean Spark, one of the few companies still focused on Bitcoin mining, still putting out the monthly updates and still not having a deal signed uh in terms of the AI space. So, this is one a lot of people, there's a lot of anticipation going into earnings, Anthony. I'll let you walk through the uh monthly production report, but really all eyes on AI moving forward.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yep. So during the month of uh June, uh Clean Spark produced 614 Bitcoin. Um, they've managed to uh increase their holdings now, so their HODL now stands at 13,924. That's up from 13,470, so the majority of the Bitcoin produced has been added to their HODL. Uh they maintain a 50x hash operational hash rate there with 225,000 miners deployed as at the end of June with a fleet efficiency of 16 joules per terahash, one of the lowest in the mining um um business at the moment. There, I think only iron and hut eight have lower and potentially we don't know what bit dears is. Bit deers if they're adding seal miners 3 and and and seal miners A4 to their to their um sites, that will bring their efficiency down there. But one of the lowest is 16.7. Now, if you think about the power that uh CleanSpot got, they've got 808 megawatts of utilized power from a total of 1.8 gigawatts under contract. Remember, they bought two sites in Texas there, they've got the Sandersville site, 250 megawatts there, that they're looking to utilize those sites for HPC, but they're well positioned for a multi-gigawatt AI digital infrastructure expansion across their US footprint. Now they did sell 179 Bitcoin at spot uh plus 250 via call exercises. So basically they realized um about $69,056 per Bitcoin, which when you compare to the uh Bitcoin price today was probably a shrewd uh move.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

It certainly was, yeah. And again, we're looking forward to seeing how that story progresses. Many sites we talked with Patrick yesterday about the advantages of having single large sites. We know Clean Spark has around 33, maybe smaller locations, so that'll be interesting. Now, to bring things full circle, the first slide we looked at was the Rays conference talking about those sponsors, NScale Nvidia were listed on there as well. NScale's already raised $2 billion earlier this year in their Series C funding. This is the company with that white fiber partnership. Now, the NVIDIA-backed NSscale looking to raise an additional $900 million in terms of revolving credit.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

Yeah, this 900 million revolving credit facility now closed will be adding flexibility borrowing capacity uh for this London-based AI infrastructure firm as it accelerates data center and GPU deployments across not just the US but Europe and Asia Pacific as well. Now, to raise this funding there, they used a 12-bank syndicate, which include the likes of names we talk about on a regular basis: JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, and many, many others helping to deliver that. As it quite rightly says, it follows that uh that $2 billion Series C raise in March, um, which have now valued NScale at $14.6 billion. Um, and if you think about that as a market capitalization, I was quickly looking at what the iron market cap was at the time of the podcast, and theirs was just a uh a shadow under that $14.55 billion. So when you think about uh NScale, they are a sizeable company um with uh real potential, they've got a lot of contracts, they've got 1.35 gigawatts um uh with Microsoft under an LOY, uh the Monarch Compute campus in West Virginia, is scalable to 8 gigawatts using that NVIDIA via Ruben um NVL72 deployment, which is beginning in late 2027. So we know them from the deal that they have with White Fiber. That's a 40 megawatt deal there, but it's going to bring in $865 million over the next 10 years for White Fiber. So, you know, um even the smaller deals are quite significant, Bryce.

SPEAKER_02 39:42

Yeah, and I really didn't realize the market cap. Again, that was based on the last round of funding that close to Iron. Another commonality these two companies have the NVIDIA exemplar cloud status. We just covered

NScale Financing News And Closing CTAs

SPEAKER_02 39:55

Iron getting that certification last week. NScale already has it. So definitely one to watch as they continue their IPO progress here, uh, expecting them to go public similar to anthropic or open AI. So, with that being said, you guys, a lot covered today. We'd be curious to hear your thoughts on Ray's conference, what you thought out of Galaxy and Clean Spark in terms of the press releases. Make sure you pop over to the website poweranalysis.io, sign up for the newsletter coming out on Friday. We've got some great insight in there. And of course, if you didn't get a chance to watch yesterday's uh Terra Wolf interview, make sure you check that out as well. Thanks so much. We'll see you back here tomorrow.