Huge MARA & BDTR Site News, META Expanding Compute & IREN Shareholder Letter!

We zoom out on Bitcoin’s five year chart to make sense of the cycle, the pullbacks, and why returns may keep shrinking while the upside can still be huge. Then we walk through the week’s biggest AI and mining stock headlines and what they signal about power, compute demand, and long term execution. 

• Bitcoin cycle phases and the case for zooming out 
• Diminishing returns across cycles and realistic bull market targets 
• Dollar cost averaging habits and why patience matters 
• Miner stock moves and what can drive rallies beyond BTC price 
• Meta’s Alberta data center and why it pushes back on compute FUD 
• Why Alberta is becoming a data center and AI magnet 
• Bitdeer’s SEAL miner US manufacturing plan and tariff risk 
• Fox Creek vertical integration with on site power plus grid flexibility 
• MARA’s 2GW Texas land deal and the Starwood partnership angle 
• IREN’s RSU letter highlights and what lockups mean for shareholders 

Let us know in the comments section below what you make of today's headlines and your top pick in the space currently!

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Transcript

Welcome And Today’s Headlines

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys, welcome or welcome back to the channel McNally Money, the official home of power analysis, an action-packed episode for you. Today, we've got big news out from Meta, Mara, BitDeer, and Iron. We're gonna be dissecting in today's video. 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 comments section below what you make of today's headlines and your top pick in the space currently. With that being said, let's get into today's episode.

Bitcoin Price And Cycle View

SPEAKER_00 0:40

All right, guys, away we go. Thursday afternoon. I'm really looking forward to this one. Some big updates here, specifically as it relates to Meta in my home province of Alberta. Also got news out uh from many of the top companies we cover on the channel. Before we get into that, though, Anthony, Bitcoin hovering right around 63,000, but we wanted to talk about the cycle a little bit. We decided to pull a five-year chart here to give you guys a frame of reference. We talk about zooming out, you can see Bitcoin is alive and well.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, and the five-year chart shows you the uh the previous cycle's all-time high there. I think it was about sixty-nine thousand. And then once it reached that all-time high, you can see then from the end of 2021 all through 2022 and 2023 as it dropped to $15,000 before it started to turn into the next bull cycle. And these bull cycles in phases take you know two to three years, and you can see the period then all the way to October 2026 where it reached 126,000, and then we've seen that exact same again, that sharp decline over the next sort of you know eight months there, um, reaching you know where we are at the moment. We've been as low as 58,000, 59,000, but it looks like we're we're managing to keep it above the 60,000 mark, which is which is helpful. Um, and the question now is is how much further downward momentum is it before we start what we would class as like the next part of the bull cycle? I think you've got a sort of chart to show us what happened previously, Bryce.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

Yeah, I do. You can map out pretty much that history you were talking about. Uh, you can see a bear pre-bull, first bull, second bull. That's essentially the four quadrants of this cycle. But it's interesting to see, Anthony, as you point out, 2014, 18, 22, and sure enough, 2026, that same downward pressure. The other observation uh that I wanted to make and get your thoughts on the diminishing returns. You can see in that first cycle, uh, thousands of percent return. Then it gradually went a little lower, a little lower. Now, this cycle we're expecting maybe 200, 250. So we identify that the percentage-based returns have diminished, but looking at this four-year cycle, uh, it is eerily close.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

Yeah, it is eerily close. And I think um if people think they're going to sort of get the returns uh from the first and second cycle, maybe need to sort of reevaluate that. It has been dropping in terms of that uh amount of increase to the next all-time high um cycle by cycle. And and so, you know, a sensible look at this might be you know closer to that 200, 250 um uh mark, which which, you know, majority of us have been in there, that would be a you know a great target. I mean, you know, having the money in the bank at the moment's not doing too much, maybe get two or three percent. If you have got it in Gilts or Bonds, maybe getting a few percentage more. But if you've got it in Bitcoin and at today's price is 63%, and we're suggesting maybe it gets to sort of 200, 250 during this next bull cycle, that's a you know, a 3x from where we are today. So uh plenty of opportunity um to reevaluate if you've got Bitcoin. Uh I've been buying Bitcoin for the last six years, six and a half years, haven't sold any yet. Um, I was just looking the other day at my my account because it tells it has little has little um orange dots when I've been buying it, similar to the sort of graphs that we see from Michael Saylor, not quite as many dots as Michael Saylor's chart. But it was interesting to see over the last sort of 12 months, uh, there's probably about 11 or 12 little dots on there where I've been buying, um, just you know, uh dollar cost averaging, um, you know, sometimes paying, you know, when the when the Bitcoin price was 90,000, sometimes paying when it was 50, 60,000. So um, you know, having it uh both sides there, but um quite happy with my stack. I am in currently in in in in profit. Um, if they consider I I was um you know receiving Bitcoin as as part payment, some work I was doing back in 2023 when the price was really low, and that was a fantastic decision to make there. Um, I know other people were also looking to get their salaries paid in Bitcoin, and I thought, well, I was doing a small amount of work, and and and and the company I was working for agreed, you know, they were a mining company and they agreed that they were paying me some uh Bitcoin instead of cash, and that's developed really well since then. But uh, as I say, I keep buying a little bit um, you know, month by month, um, just to add to it because you know, look at those that chart there. You can see if it follows anything like the previous three charts. We're gonna see some upside in the next two to three years.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

I sure think so. And you and I are pretty simple guys, fundamental investors. We dollar cost average in, we dollar cost average out, and uh that's how we do it. Interesting to hear your comments on the return on cash in your bank account. I'm a big Lego collector for those of you who don't know. And I read a funny thing the other day saying you would have made more money if you had your money invested in Lego than have it in a bank account. Uh,

Miners Bounce Back And Heat Map

SPEAKER_00 5:47

moving over to the miners, this is great as well. I said I'm excited about the episode. Yesterday we came on the podcast. We were saying the miners were pulling back. I don't know what happened in that last hour of trading, but the account absolutely took off. And today, really an extension of that. You can see a couple of the top movers, Mara, BitDear. We've got news on both. But Anthony, this is what we want green across the board.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, great, green day today. And you can see from the day range there, um, we weren't green at the start of trading or in pre-market. Um, there was a lot of red on the table, and then all of a sudden we've seen a nice uh movement up and not not linked directly to any Bitcoin movements either. So maybe some of the new stories we talk about today impacting some of these stocks, and we'll we'll obviously cover the news update on Mara and uh and BitDeer. Um, but it's great to see you know a number of those. Look at the 52-week range there, and you can see that you know, this pullback we've seen since the 22nd of June, where stocks were you know in a in a really good position then, and we saw a few of them reaching 52-week highs during that week. Uh, you can see that the the big pullback over that short period, we're not even a month away from that period yet, and we've you can see from the chart there, there's there's not too many stocks you know anywhere near their 52-week uh range high, whereas actually, you know, three or four of them were achieving that literally only two two to three weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

Yeah, and you you case in point, we move over to the heat map here. We have long-term faith in these companies, but we also understand nothing goes up in a straight line. Again, you can see kind of a mixed bag in the shorter durations, but longer term, Anthony. I think only two companies in the red on this list.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Yeah, absolutely. And and if you look at those two companies in the red, they're not looking to use their power um for HPC. ABTC are um been, you know, obviously been using uh their money to buy Bitcoin when it's you know a good price to buy, but also to mine Bitcoin because they believe they can mine it cheaper than the prices at the moment, and so they're growing their hodl over 8,000 Bitcoin. Yeah, and as you can see from the uh position of the five five-day change there, 30% down and the one month change 54% down, um, and the year-to-date and one-year change significantly down because of that reverse split there. So uh we'll be monitoring ABTC, but obviously, if the Bitcoin price starts to rise, that will give the the share price the same opportunity to rise in sync because it you know ABTC is is definitely correlated with Bitcoin price. That's the the one asset that they are um growing in their uh treasury. Same with Bit Digital in terms of Ethereum, though, they are an Ethereum staking company, they sold all their Bitcoin and converted that into Ethereum, and they've got one of the largest treasury positions in Ethereum there. They've had a bit of a challenging time for the same reason Ethereum, Bitcoin, and many, many of the other coins have dropped significantly in value from where they were back in October last year. So it has been a you know a real challenge for some of these companies, but the cycles tell us that things will get um will start to improve over this next uh couple of years.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

I sure think so. And Eric Trump put out a tweet yesterday saying volatility is short term, our strategy isn't. So at some point, we would expect Bitcoin, Ethereum to rebound and these companies in prime position.

Meta Confirms More Compute Demand

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Now, the other reason I was excited about today's podcast, Anthony, is an announcement close to home for me, Alberta. This was an interesting saga. So, correlated to that June 22nd fall-off, there was a lot of fear, uncertainty, doubt, or FUD going around in the market based on Meta. Uh report came out suggesting they had excess compute, they were gonna sell that compute into the market. We covered it on the channel. What does that mean for pricing? What does that mean for margins? Now, Anthony, just like Patrick Fleury predicted on his interview, uh saying this was FUD, we now have an announcement from Meta saying, hey guys, we don't actually have enough compute. We're gonna need to build more, and we're investing $10 billion to build a data center in Alberta, Canada. So a phenomenal announcement and really uh putting that concern or FUD to bed.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Yeah, absolutely. And um, they've now broken ground on that first Canadian data center. It's gonna be a one gigawatt AI optimized campus in your neck of the woods there, Alberta. And the the investment in there is about 13 billion uh Canadian dollars. If you look at that conversion for US dollars, it's around about 10 billion US dollars, and if you look at that from a one gigawatt site, that's coming very much in the middle of what some of the range that we've seen in terms of cost per megawatt. Well, we've been looking around about the 10 million, maybe 11 million in certain areas where they're having to attract some of these uh key workers, um, it might be going as high as 12 million. We've we've already seen Core Scientific make some announcements. I think they originally had it in at about 8 million per megawatt. That looks like it's grown to 12 million per megawatt, and we're asking CEOs as they come on the channel um as to what they're spending and as is it causing a problem. And actually, in the last two interviews we've done with Ben Gagnon and with Patrick Fleury, um, it was interesting to say that they didn't have that particular level of issue in the areas that they were um operating at the moment. There seems to be a a lot of uh key um engineering um uh workers and key construction workers in those regions, so they're not having to bring uh too many in there. Now, this is going to be interesting for obviously your neck of the woods, Bryce. You'll know more about um the you know attracting construction workers because they're gonna need 3,000 construction workers at its peak to deliver this site, and we know you know how how big these sites are. We went to the Childress site back in November last year, and that was like a mini town operating there with the amount of vehicles um on that construction site and the amount of key workers on that construction site as well, and that was just a 200 megawatt build out there for Horizon One to form. We'll come on to talk about that in a second, a little bit more detail. Um, but 3,000 construction workers, 300 plus permanent operational jobs, plus they're looking to also uh give something back to the community, 60 million Canadian dollars in local infrastructure improvements as well. So remember, we talk about these companies, it's not always about bottom line, these companies are going out there and they want to make sure that they are uh responsive in the local area there to uh you know the requirements if they're going into an area uh and you can think some of these areas are quite remote. Uh the you know, you might need extra schools, you might need power for schools, these companies going there and they certainly add value to the area and help the locals out there in terms of bringing that amount of revenue there. It certainly, in some instances, it can reduce the tax dollars that local people are paying because of these size of these contracts and the and the amount of revenues they're driving for the local economy.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

You're right there, yeah. And this one they specifically call out a closed loop liquid and dry cooling, so they're not reliant on the water uh in the local region. And you talk about that investment, Anthony. Luckily for us in Alberta, this is an oil and gas country, very similar to Texas, in the fact, a lot of energy, a lot of land, uh, very favorable government policy, lower taxation. So we're seeing Alberta attract a lot of these data centers. We talked about Wonder Valley, uh, Kevin O'Leary's project. We'll talk about Bitier's investment in Fox Creek in a second. But to your point, the nice thing here, we've got thousands of electricians, pipe fitters, welders, the oil and gas industry, no stranger to these large-scale infrastructure build-outs. And I think that's a big reason why a lot of these data centers are finding themselves in Alberta. Now, the other piece that was interesting here, Serenity, one of the big accounts on X, uh, put out a tweet today saying that a couple of documents were actually leaked from an internal memo at Meta talking about CapEx investment, talking about building out the uh compute, and talking about this new chip cycle. So, again, really putting a lot of those concerns about the AI build out to bed.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

And they've got some long-term agreements signed with Samsung and Sandis for memory and with some Atomo Electric for fiber optics, and they're expected to deploy about seven gigawatts of compute infra in this year alone, doubling that in 2027 and spending as much as 145 billion as we previously highlighted of CapEx uh this year alone. The other key thing to remember about Metro is like some of those other hyperscalers, they're not just going to be reliant on Nvidia or Amazon or other chip providers, they're going to launch their own chip and they want to do that on a every six-month basis throughout 2027. So looking to maybe do their own there and and get the benefits from that. There, we've certainly seen um obviously a demand for uh GPUs. If you can build your own, uh you may be ahead of the game. Remember, we talk about BitDeer entering the the ASIC market and how they've gone from strength to strength and built machines that are so efficient now, they've got some of the most efficient machines in the market. Maybe Meta can join that that uh that group of um companies out there, but believe you me, there's a lot to learn in that space, and that's you know, NVIDIA didn't become the biggest company in the world overnight, it took them a long time, but once the reality was there that they can deliver um a quality product, um, they did become the most uh valuable company in the world.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

And I was actually surprised in the Patrick Fleury interview to hear they're running hyperscaler chips at some of their facilities alongside NVIDIA. So I didn't really realize I know the TPUs were coming from the hyperscalers, but there's a lot more activity on the chip space than I realized here, Anthony. Now,

BitDeer Brings SEAL Production To US

SPEAKER_00 16:00

speaking of BitDeer, you talk about the SEAL miner. We'll talk about Fox Creek in a second, their Alberta uh data center operation. They came out with a big announcement today as well in terms of the seal miner and actually bringing some of that production into the United States to not only serve the domestic market, but hopefully avoid some of those tariffs as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Yeah, and when those tariffs were announced um by the president uh last year, uh you could see that ripple through to some of the companies there. And BitDo are very, very quick to say we're gonna start having to build some of those machines in the US to avoid the significant tariffs coming from uh, you know, where their current uh manufacturing facilities are in, sort of like Asia at the moment. That could be a challenge for the company. But they're gonna break ground as we speak now on a 36 million advanced manufacturing facility in Sparks, Nevada, and it's gonna be their first domestic production footprint. Now, the 36 million investment will provide 187,000 square feet, um, which will which will cover the plant, equipment, and the construction, and also establish BitDear's first domestic manufacturing assembly footprint in the US. Now, their key to driving this is they're going to want to produce a minimum of 10,000 seal miner units per month, and that targeted production capacity um is slated for completion by the end of this year. Now, the other key thing is that again, with the when you're building uh these facilities, and bear in mind this is not a tier three data center, nor is it a Bitcoin mine facility. This is more about a production facility to to you know to produce these seal miners. They're going to create 70 high-tech jobs there, of which engineering, skilled technicians, and support roles feeding that northern Nirvana's expanding electronics manufacturing ecosystem, and the onshore production brings them closer to a more responsive uh domestic customer completing existing US data centers and the San Jose Innovation Hub. So it shows that you know BitDear taking account of what out there, the market forces out there, you know, they have a uh a large client base in Asia. Um, they're one of the biggest providers over there, but they also have uh significant facilities in the US. We've been to the Rockdale facility in November during our Texas tour there, where we covered, I think it was 1,500 miles in the space of about five days. Uh literally airport back to airport with a lot of travel in between, no time off for uh any sort of like social stuff, but it was great to go to some of these sites. Rockdale was a fantastic uh visit there. That the team made us so welcome, and you know that the one thing that stood out for me from that particular visit, Bryce, was the was the actual staff themselves, the team work, everybody working together. They they hadn't hired a new technician for I think three to four years because when people get jobs there, they keep the jobs, there's not looking to move away. That industry's gone in there, and there was previous industries there before that have closed down, so they had a captive market, and you can see from the town where we stayed and went out to eat at some of the restaurants there, lots of people uh supporting the likes of BitDear and Riot platforms who also operate literally next door to each other in that area there, um, producing, you know, um, you know, Bitcoin mining facility, uh, which are both now likely to move to an AI HPC facility in the not too distant future, Bryce.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

Yeah, you could tell the local community just loved working here, loved having these data centers or Bitcoin mining facilities in their region. And I played a clip while you're chatting, you just don't understand the scale. The thing that stood out for me, we took a golf cart around this facility. Literally, hundreds of thousands of these machines lined up row after row. There's about eight of these rows on screen, so just incredible scale. And you can see why this stuff's so expensive to build.

Fox Creek Site And Cheap Power

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Now, Fox Creek is the other one I wanted to double-click on. They broke ground in June, June 1st. You can see the timeline here on timeline for Q2. This is gonna be a hundred meg facility again, located in Alberta, citing many of the same benefits we just heard from Meta. But you can see that this one, Anthony, some pretty pretty big aspirations in terms of compute power, taking advantage of that excess uh power and energy.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

Yeah, and this is gonna be their first vertically integrated facility as Alberta starts to become that, you know, effectively an AI magnet for companies. Now, they've got the 101 megawatt natural gas plant, they want to provide about 100 megawatts of compute power, which will give them that vertical fully vertically integrated facility uh with on-site generation with computing on a fully permitted energy asset to over a 19-acre site. Now, the projected energy cost on that site there is is going to be extremely low, you know, uh, in terms of um uh cost per megawatt, there $20 to $25 per megawatt. That's probably literally half of what some of the other sites are are literally going to be costing there. So, really, really low. On-site generation and consumption reduces the transmission losses and it delivers cost-efficient power for Bitcoin mining today and the AI workloads of tomorrow. Now, again, we talk about what these companies do in the local area. BitDear are going to invest about 155 million in that local area there. They're going to provide 300 construction jobs and 30 permanent roles, prioritizing Alberta based contractors. Um, Q2 2027 is the targeted energization date. Now, the great thing about having That grid flexibility built in there. It's deregulated Alberta market. Let's BitDear curtail mining and sell power back during the peak demand. In the same way that we talked about uh Wright yesterday on the on the on the podcast yesterday. Remember, right have have received somewhere in the region of about $160 million, uh $170 million over the last three years in terms of um selling power back to the grid because they had a PPA. It looks like BitDeal are going to have the same position because it's their own power. If they want to sell it back during peak demand, they'll be able to optimize uh the return on that investment for that power and at the same time provide supporting grid stability whilst optimizing the energy use of their assets in that part of the uh uh Canada that you're familiar with.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Interesting. It's basically a tenth of the meta deal, 10% of the megawatts, 10% of the workforce, but great to see that magnet uh traction into the province here. Now,

MARA’s Massive Texas Power Deal

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Mara has also come out with another big announcement today in terms of sites. This one again, interesting. We just had Patrick on the channel talking about exiting Texas. Now we see Mara enter Texas in a major way here. Two gigawatt site acquired off a company by the name of Hive. I'll let you walk through the details, but the share price really responding positively to today's news.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

It certainly is. It's the biggest mover today and at the time of the podcast there. It was up as high as 18%, literally about half an hour before we started. So there had to be some really, really strong news out today for Mara uh based on that. There, it's had a bit of a challenging uh period, um, basically because I think you know it's that it's you know, I think retail investors now are looking for you know update after update, and you've got some companies who sort of like like to get out an update literally once a week, and you have other companies that will only put out an update when it's sort of you know the right time to put out the update, and it makes sense because of the um because of the size of the update there. Mara um put out a fantastic update today. They've acquired two gigawatt powered land sites in Texas from um HIF and it doubles their potential portfolio now to 4.8 gigawatts of power. Now, up to two gigawatt capacity, that's a 1200-acre uh site at the uh Matagord County site, and the initial first gigawatt is due to be um energized by October 2027 with the remaining one gigawatt by April 2028. Uh, and it's already, uh even though we haven't got to those positions yet, it's already drawing plenty of HPC tenant interest. Now, as that portfolio doubles to 4.8 gigawatts upon that full energization, um, which includes uh the anticipated long-ridge energy close, this is materially expanding MARA's long-term development pipeline. And remember, they have that Starwood Digital Ventures partnership. You know, site develops as a large-scale digital infrastructure campus for HPC workloads, plus flexible compute, including Bitcoin mining. And during that partnership, Mara have been putting their sites that they've been purchasing, or they own the sites, the value of those sites are going into the pot, and Starwood Digital Ventures are basically matching the valuation of those sites with a capital injection to help deliver those sites to HPC. And when you've got someone like Star Wars Digital, I think they've already produced uh data centers totaling around about seven gigawatts of power, so they've got plenty of experience, and a lot of these companies we talk about on a regular basis, they were you know uh you know predominantly Bitcoin mining companies. Mara still mines over 50, 60 exahash um at the moment. There, uh, a lot of these companies moving from that space into HPC don't necessarily have all the expertise at the time of that decision, they're having to bring in new staff, and we've seen uh you know companies like Mara and many other ones highlighting new additions to the team. Well, Mara went one stage further and partnered up with Starwood Digital Ventures because they believe that they've got the experience to help deliver some of these really large-scale uh facilities there, and when you've got that sort of power in place there, uh that's going to uh give you the opportunity uh with a strong partner to deliver it. Now, the only the final bit here is is HIF retains a minority stake um which um you know uh enables the sustainable fuels company to keep some interest once the HPC lease execution occurs, and that switchyard construction already has given the notice to proceed on this development. So um, you know, yesterday we talked about that portfolio of power in the Urcot area, and the fact that you know there was 85 or 90 gigawatts of power available in total, but the demand was something like four times that amount there, certainly getting towards 500 uh megawatts, and how much of that demand uh would be suppressed because of the lack of power and the lack of ability to grow power that quickly. It would be interesting if we can get you know Fred on the channel to talk a little bit more colour about this deal and the expectation. Are they in a queue for power or is this these dates that they provide here? October 2027 for the first gigawatt, April 2028 for the second gigawatt, are those sort of like locked in in terms of power, like we've seen some of the uh pier miners, and and I suppose you know an ideal comparison here is the sweetwater site uh that Iran are building out there. That sweetwater one and two is a two gigawatt site as well. So we're talking similar-sized sites, similar location in terms of the state of Texas. Um, we'll be paying you know close attention, but hopefully we can get Fred on to give us a bit more colour, and I'm sure you guys out there would appreciate um a member of the team um to do that in the very, very near future.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I'd like to ask them about the valuation of the sites. In the example they used in the shareholder letter, they ascribed a million dollar per megawatt value in terms of the portion from Mara. So it'd be interesting to see where they came up with that number. They also put out a note uh kind of tampering expectations, stating this is an early stage development. They'll continue to update as those concrete milestones are hit. So this is a great one to watch. And again, that Starwood uh partnership or JV. So a very interesting setup for Mara.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah, I have to agree with you there. That the one key thing, and remember, we've had Ben on the podcast, and um, when Ben comes on, we all stop and listen to Ben. I mean, he's talked about things like uh approvals and permits, and Mara put out a note on what to expect because, like you say, this is very early stage uh milestone uh based development, and it still needs some regulatory approvals with the phase construction and the multi-year build out ahead. So they'll keep up with that commentary as and when they get more information. So they're playing the right the card here in terms of you know, they're being um telling investors exactly where they are and going to keep everyone up to date in terms of that design and the milestones as they are achieved.

IRIN RSU Controversy And Lockups

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Now, the next part of today's discussion, another exciting one. This was big drama on X over the last few weeks. The RSU grant at IRIN. We've actually got a letter from the independent chair at IRIN essentially talking about the decision-making process, some of the factors we brought up on the channel, and how this positions the company moving forward. So, an interesting read. I would encourage everybody to go over there, but we've basically taken out kind of four key points here, Anthony, uh, that we talked about last week on the channel as well. And I think honestly, fairly good rebuttal from Iron.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Yeah, I mean, the letter tells you a couple of things. We'll just put some of the highlights in there. You can go on to the Iron website and the the letter is in their news section there, so you can download and read it in more detail. But here are some of the sort of like the key parts of it. Um, they talk about the fact that you know this um stake, um, when you look at the the the last two um RSU awards for 2025 and 2026 will take their um uh each stake of the of the two co-CEOs, co-founders, to around about three percent uh combined across both grants uh with no further equity provided until at the earliest financial year 2031. So there's a five-year um you know freeze. This is the last uh set of uh shares here. Now the timing uh drives the headline number, and these uh sizes were set during mid-2025. We go back to mid-2025. You know, we were talking about the share price was five dollars in April, probably at the 12, 15 dollars uh mid midpoint last year. Uh the thing is when the companies are going through this procedure, they're looking at the number of shares, not looking at the valuation of the shares. Um, so they've issued the shares, and the timing of the of this obviously is July this year, and the share price is now in the sort of mid-40 range, which is a significant amount different there. So initially, obviously, there was a lot of um uh social media posts saying, you know, uh 800 million uh shares issued. Um, one thing that that that they haven't got control of, I suppose, is the is the share price. Um, they have set previous allocations of grants on performance, and that hasn't always worked out because performance was extremely strong. And when you have strong performance, sometimes you get significantly more shares than you actually thought you would do, and they've had really strong performance. Think about how quickly they achieved the 50Xa hash all on target there, and then again using their power at chill just to um uh get a strong deal with Microsoft, and now looking to sort of like really build out all their sites to deliver HPC, and they've got you know the best part of six gigawatts of power available over the next few years to deliver that. So, you know, lots of things have have caused that share price to rally. I mean, it's 40, bid $40 range today, $43, $44 today. It was $76 in October. Um, and I remember last year when they when they received a sizable amount of shares last year in that 2025 uh award, and nobody batted an island because the share price had gone from the five up the way up to 76. And um, you know, I remember that you know we had the conversation previously, Bryce, you know, you sold some shares at $73, I sold some shares on the way up to sort of like the $50-60 dollar range, lots of you know, shares in small tranches. Um, because it was a case of you know, let's take some profits, you know, have some shares at $5, and if the share price goes to $56, you want to make sure you've you've locked in a few of those profits there because in this industry, the share price can drop quicker than it rises. It might take two or three months to get to that level, it can drop in the space of two or three weeks, and you know, then you're waiting for the next opportunity, and that opportunity might take a number of years with these stocks. I'm fortunate, you know, we've been through a couple of tranches now of these cycles, and um, lessons were learned massively in the previous cycle, um, and that's put both of us in good stead as we go through this current cycle, taking those profits, and so you know, we're going back to you know that the shares here, again, they've been issued you know a lot of shares, and the shares are quite valuable at the moment in terms of you know the value of the shares out there, but they they're locked in those shares for you know um the next four years, and even when you get to those four years there, there is a two more years uh post-vesting that they are not allowed to sell. So effectively, you can't sell these new transit shares until financial year 2020, which is the main emphasis. You want to keep your top talent at the company for a long time, and effectively, what we're saying is here, or the chairman saying is we've given them a lot of shares, but they're here for the next eight years, and so you know, seven or eight years, and so that means if they're still at the company that period in time with the same goals that the company's anticipating, then what does that mean? Where's the company going to be? Where's the company now compared to where it was not too long ago? I mean, it's grown from a four billion dollar company to a sixteen billion dollar company in in probably less than about 14 months. And, you know, where's it going to grow in the next year or two years? Is it going to be a $30, $40 billion company? I don't think there'll be too much um, you know, um issue if that um if those share prices get to that and the market capitalization gets that and shareholders sort of share in the benefit of how the company's performed. That's the key thing. You don't want to see lots of shares issued when the share price is not doing anything. That's the that's the sort of that's where it starts to get shareholders uh feeling a little bit disappointed. But I don't think too many people can be disappointed with Iron's performance. The shares pulled back from its all-time high back in October, but everything they're bringing out the moment, everything that they're doing is is giving you a sense that there's an expectation that the the next update is going to be uh a significant update. Remember, they've got that that deal with Microsoft, they're already ordering stacks of GPUs through Nvidia, they're very, very close partnership with NVIDIA there. Uh they've just obviously energized 300 megawatts at Sweetwater, they're having machines sent to Childress and to British Columbia to bolster their sites in both those locations there. I think the the future looks really bright. They've bought a uh you know a site in Spain, 500 megawatt site there. They've planning to build an 800 megawatt site in South Australia, and they've got another 1.6 gigawatt site in Oklahoma. And so, you know, that the there's a lot more to see from this company. We're only talking about probably six or seven percent of their total power has been put into HPC at the moment. Wait till the other 95% or 94% gets put into that uh HPC. Where will the share price be then, Bryce?

SPEAKER_00 36:40

And we've said many times it's like a masterpiece or an artist building a painting here, all the pieces coming together. What I like about this is now the artist is locked in for the next six years. And obviously, with the floating share price, they want to see that share price as high as possible because their RSUs are valued on that as well. So let us know in the comment section below what did you think of the letter here? What are your thoughts on the meta announcement, BitDear? And of course, Mara, a lot of big headlines today. Also,

Listener Questions And Newsletter Plug

SPEAKER_00 37:11

wanted you guys to pop over to the website poweranalysis.io. Tomorrow being Friday is newsletter day. Make sure you sign up. We've got some great features in this week's article. Thanks so much for your time today. We'll see you back here tomorrow.