$iren Ignore the noise; stay focused.
Hosted by @₿itcoin ₿utcher 🥩 🐑 🐷 · 2025-10-12 · Tags: IREN
TLDR
Participants presented an overwhelmingly bullish case for IREN, arguing that power scarcity, AI data-center demand, Canadian expansion, and favorable financing could support substantial growth. They also examined speculative Sweetwater solar and battery plans, possible Nvidia and EOS connections, regulatory risks, Bitcoin-mining strategy, and the need for investors to distinguish evidence from circumstantial clues.
- The host said US-China trade tensions caused a sharp market drawdown, but softer rhetoric suggested the bull market remained intact.
- Applied Digital's expanded CoreWeave lease and estimates of a 40-90 gigawatt power shortage were cited as validation of IREN's infrastructure opportunity.
- Sweetwater tax-abatement documents reportedly reference solar and battery-storage suppliers, raising speculation about on-site generation, storage, or Senate Bill 6 compliance.
- Satellite imagery, construction plans, utility work, and hiring were used to estimate that IREN's Canadian capacity could eventually approach 180-200 megawatts.
- Participants saw no announced direct Nvidia deal, although IREN's preferred-partner status and prominent placement on an Nvidia-related slide were viewed as suggestive.
- IREN's roughly $1 billion zero-interest convertible financing and 42.5% conversion premium were interpreted as unusually strong signs of institutional demand.
- Dolce argued that IREN's narrative has shifted from doubted Bitcoin miner to credible AI cloud and data-center competitor.
- Speakers generally considered a near-term takeover unlikely because of founder voting control, wealth, ambition, and a desire to build a lasting company.
- ERCOT's need for flexible loads and the economic benefits IREN brings to rural Texas were presented as protection against local regulatory opposition.
- The group expects mined Bitcoin to keep funding AI infrastructure rather than being retained as a corporate treasury asset.
Speakers
- ₿itcoin ₿utcher — Hosted the discussion, provided the macro and competitive backdrop, analyzed IREN's financing and valuation, cautioned against chasing volatile openings, and argued that power demand and AI growth favor IREN.
- Speaker 2 — Presented research from tax documents, satellite imagery, construction plans, utility upgrades, and hiring; explored possible Sweetwater solar and battery storage and estimated significant Canadian capacity expansion.
- Comma — Added site-layout and acreage analysis, discussed potential solar generation, clarified the lack of an announced Nvidia deal, interpreted financing terms as evidence of institutional confidence, and argued against retaining mined Bitcoin.
- Dolce — Delivered an extended thesis that IREN's market narrative and access to capital have fundamentally changed, comparing its potential rerating with Palantir and arguing that vertical integration could make it a leading AI infrastructure investment.
- This Way to Valhalla — Focused on the unusually favorable convertible note, possible near-term catalysts, institutional demand, market positioning, and the prospect of major announcements.
- Speaker 6 — Briefly thanked the panel and returned to listening after asking about the possibility of IREN retaining mined Bitcoin.
Notable quotes
- “I can tell you guys that we're still here and we're probably still in a bull market and iron will do well because power is still needed to produce AI.” — ₿itcoin ₿utcher
- “Don't chase the open like it's your first time ever buying.” — ₿itcoin ₿utcher
- “I just think this is very interesting because this opens, you know, a whole new pathway of due diligence for me to look into.” — Speaker 2
- “So I think there's a very high possibility that Iron would actually be doing some solar generation based on that, right?” — Comma
- “I think Prince George is going to go to 60 or 70 megawatts in the coming, let's just say nine, nine to 12 months.” — Speaker 2
- “So I'm expecting fireworks for end of year.” — ₿itcoin ₿utcher
- “if Iron achieved so much when the world was against it, what can it do when the world is with it?” — Dolce
- “And I have never seen a 42.5% convertible.” — This Way to Valhalla
- “So that just tells you how much interest and how much belief there is on the Iron story.” — Comma
- “It does become the stock that everyone has to buy alongside Nvidia.” — Dolce
Transcript
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Evening, everyone. That was a little Drake in honor of Comma, even though he claims to not listen to it. But we are here. We are live, waiting another minute or two for some people to join us. And we're really excited to talk about all things IRIN and everything in between. So let's give it another minute or two, and then we'll get this party started.
Speaker 2: Hey, Butcher. I don't know if you can hear me, but I didn't hear any Drake for your information.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Well, at least my mic's working now. I guess we can throw some on and for the people for another minute while people are coming on. Listen, listen, listen, listen, listen on me I've been moving calm, start up trouble with me Try to keep in peace while there's a struggle for me.
Comma: Don't put love at 6 a.m. and cut over me You know how I like it when you loving on me I don't wanna die, but I'm amazing If I say the things that they wishing on me Hope I got some brothers that don't let me.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: All right I think that's enough that was per comma from a few weeks prior.
Comma: Yeah I told you I listened to Bieber you have the wrong artist all right give me some Bieber next time then I'll be uh I'll be karaoke with it.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yeah if Franz lets me ever host again I'll uh I'll get some Despacito on for you. But anyways, looks like we got a pretty packed house here. Few people requesting to speak that we will address sooner or later. Just the ground rules again, everyone, if you do come up, try and raise your hand, try and respect everyone here, not interrupt anyone, and yeah, let's get this going. I'm going to kick things off with kind of a general macro overview. Franz had some Sweetwater updates that he wanted to walk through, and I believe Dolce is in the house, and we'll drop some more alpha and amaze everyone as usual. So anyone who was on their phone Friday and watching their alerts go from record high portfolio values to after hours. I personally, at the peak, to draw down, I think, at a 30% spread in my portfolio. So fun day, to say the least. If people aren't familiar with what the driver of that was, it's primarily related to a truth issued by President Trump regarding potential retaliatory measures against China with respect to their rare earth export controls. Those unfamiliar, the rare earth minerals are pretty popular in defense technology and manufacturing. So to the extent that if China were creating limitations that inhibit U.S. companies' ability to make technological progress for what we would have, as a country, a problem with that. Now, by the same token, playing a two-way street, the Chinese are currently trying to work with the US government on how the US government wants to proceed with ByteDance regarding TikTok, as well as Nvidia, more importantly, because we're essentially in a global arms race, and it's basically China versus the US, and whoever reigns supreme in AI probably has a good chance of remaining the global superpower for the foreseeable future. So high stakes, and I feel fortunate that we're able to be at the epicenter of it, and what an opportunity. But All that said, Friday looked like the end of the world, and I almost had an obituary written for the bull market. And then this morning, you wake up to new truth coming out from President Trump and JD Vance softening the rhetoric, and the futures market indicates what we believe to be not the end of the world. So I'm happy the world's not ending, and I'm happy. I can tell you guys that we're still here and we're probably still in a bull market and iron will do well because power is still needed to produce AI. So congratulations, everyone. Your portfolio may have been nuked temporarily, but it appears there will be a recovery. Tomorrow, I would say not financial advice. Don't chase the open like it's your first time ever buying. There's the potential to get wrapped up in the pre-market price action only to have sophisticated buyers sell into the open, close the pre-market gap, and you end up with a higher cost basis. So with that, I also, before I hand it off to Franz and Sweetwater, quickly wanted to go over one of our competitors, Applied Digital, who had a legacy Bitcoin hosting business similar to Iron, acquired all of this power to originally house ASICs, but now they're pivoting to AI. They had earlier in the year a deal signed with Coreweave for 250 megawatts for approximately a 15-year lease worth $7 billion. Well, that deal has now been upsized, an additional 150 megawatts, so 400 megawatts total for a deal that's valued at $11 billion. What's important about that call, more so from the success of Applied Digital, which is not the reason you guys have logged into this call, it's more their commentary with respect to the industry itself that I found super interesting. So their CEO mentioned the 40 to 50 gigawatt shortage estimated by the Department of Energy, which might even be 90 gigawatts if you talk to Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google. And then you realize that we're in the middle of the largest infrastructure project ever at scale in such a short period of time. And there was a comparison to the United States interstate system that took over 30 years to be built. And in today's inflation adjusted dollars was $500 billion. And then Apollo, which was for the U.S. to get to space, was a 10-year project. at a inflation adjusted rate of $150 billion. That took 10 years. Well, the top public hyperscalers have disclosed $350 billion. So almost as much as the interstate highway system, 70% of it, but in 3% of the time, which it's kind of crazy to imagine that we're living in such a world and what an opportunity and Iron's at the center of it. And furthermore, there was some additional commentary on just how now the challenge is assuming that you can work with the hyperscaler like Applied is attempting to through negotiations and core weaving, one of the more formidable neo-clouds that Iron will eventually track down, or at least that's our estimation. It's also interesting to see how they're trying to interact with local communities, especially considering how Microsoft recently had to abandon a project in Wisconsin that due to local pushback on, you know, use of water and potential utility prices. So I think all of those elements, the speed of the build, build out, the desire, the time to power, all of this sets up really well in favor of Iron. And so to give you that macro backdrop, that was my intention. And now I want to hand it off to Franz so that he can speak more to Sweetwater.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys. Yeah, apologies in advance for the probably very bad sounding microphone and ambient sound I'm not at home I'm traveling so I just have a makeshift headset that I picked up on the app at the airport yeah so we've been doing quite some research in in my subscriber group with the satellite imagery in the last couple of weeks and There was one thing that we actually discovered not through satellite imagery, but by tax abatement. So I posted about this earlier in the year. I think it was a month or two ago where when we found out that Iron was applying for a tax abatement for Sweetwater 1 and 2 in one big package for $600 million. over three phases per site so three phases for Sweetwater 1 and three phases for Sweetwater 2 and we were notified by someone that they were actually approved and recently signed so we managed to obtain a copy of this well yeah contract the tax abatement agreement and there was some very interesting details in the last two pages where the exhibits were displayed. So first of all, the area of the reinvestment zone where Sweetwater One is located was depicted on a map, which was in line with what we thought it would be slightly different, but almost the same. Interestingly, they're talking about almost 1500 acres rather than Iron, who's always been talking about 1300 acres. That would be a first of, well, a positive, I guess, if the site would be bigger than we would actually think it is. But there's another very interesting part in the final page where they are talking about that they have to work with certain suppliers from the county. If they, you know, if these suppliers from the Fisher County can be within a certain fair price range of 105% more than their other suppliers that are not located in the county. But a little bit further in that same paragraph, they're talking about specialist suppliers that they are not able to source from within the county. Among them, solar and battery energy storage suppliers. And that was a line that really, you know, made me go like, what? Really? So are we going to see solar panels and battery storage in Sweetwater? And it was not just a line that they said, like, including but not limited to. It was really like a special line dedicated to this battery energy storage systems that they may have to contract people from out of the county or out of state. And yeah, I mean, that was just really interesting for me to find out. So yeah, we talked about this yesterday and I thought it would be interesting to share with the group here. I'm not sure if anyone is very familiar with for example the Senate Bill 6 that was uh um signed in law in for Texas but this basically uh this could could be uh involved uh I mean this could be related to the to their plans for for battery uh storage so uh I thought this would be an interesting topic to talk about here. I'm, I haven't really made my own opinion yet. I just think this is very interesting because this opens, you know, a whole new pathway of due diligence for me to look into. Who are they with? Which battery supplier are they working with? I mean, there's a few brands that come to mind, right? The first name obviously was EOS that came to mind. I do have some circumstantial evidence with regards to EOS and Iron, but I'm not gonna talk about that here. I will make posts about that when I'm back. But yeah, so very exciting. I mean, this site is so extremely big. I could totally see that they would like have a couple of tracks with solar panels, maybe in the far edge of the site, you know, in the northwest corner where they're very far away from the substation. It could make total sense to have solar panels there and then fill one track with battery energy storage systems. So, I mean, it's something new. We know that Iron always said, No, we're not going to get into generation. I'm not saying they will. It could be, you know, a cooperation or something like that, like another party bringing the solar panels or I don't know. I think this could be looked at through a compliance point of view, like it could be just for compliance with Senate Bill 6. But on the other hand, it could also be an energy arbitrage play on the grid. So a lot of factors to look into and So this was the main thing I wanted to share for now. So I'll give it back to you, Butcher.
Comma: Yeah, before Butcher goes on, I'll just want to interject a few points. With the speculation of EOS, I know I have a feeling you know what you're going to post about the connections between EOS and that's a little bit interesting. The other thing about the actual site itself, I have a Sweetwater One. So I posted a map of Sweetwater One about a week ago. And yeah, you pointed to the northwest corner, right? And that seems a little isolated because if anybody has a look at the actual diagram of the footprint, the northwest corner is pretty much isolated itself. It's a very weird kind of shape it's not a rectangle or a square or something of that nature if you take here I'll post this up in the nest if anybody wants to see it okay so yeah my post is up there if anybody wants to look at what Sweetwater One actually looks like so in the northwest corner there's like a big patch of land that's isolated itself and it's the furthest part from the substation And the other thing that's noteworthy about Sweetwater One is something about the acres to MW ratio. So most of the data centers, right, they are somewhere between, you know, 0.5 to 0.25 acres per megawatt. But Sweetwater One has a lot of acres per megawatt. So there's a lot of land that probably won't be used, right? If you look at the ratio. Sweetwater one is 1300 megawatts, I mean 1300 acres for 1400 megawatts. So that's about 0.9 or just higher than 0.9. So that's quite high. So I think there's a very high possibility that Iron would actually be doing some solar generation based on that, right? You have a lot of land that's not going to be accounted for. And previously, You know, Iron before they, when they first started, we looked at some of their slide deck and they had things about, you know, hydrogen, like green hydrogen and other forms of storage and generation as well, right? So it would not surprise me at all if Iron was going this route, especially when there's SB6 that requires some kind of generation on site to be compliant. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were going that route.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but just to, I know what you're thinking about what I'm going to share later on, but it's not that screenshot of, I think it was a VP of product development or something who posted an iron slide on Twitter. And then I think Jack, who was just here with us in the space, he he quoted that and and one day or two days later, this guy from EOS deleted his whole Twitter account. So that was a kind of a suss. But yeah, no, this is a of course, that's that's one very circumstantial kind of evidence. But no, there's actually I'm just going to give a very high level overview. There is another site that I have my eyes on that potentially Iron could be interested in or has a possible off-market option on. And this falls into a certain new reinvestment zone of a company that is saying they are going to deploy 1.4 gigawatts of BES in Texas. And this company is not EOS, but they have been There have been mentions of them together with EOS in the same... So there are some very indirect circumstantial evidence that there is a future where Iron could be involved with a battery storage, not in Sweetwater 1. like we're talking like two three four years out from here this is the development area so I agreed not to post on that but I'm just going to give you a little view and my expectation here is that because of senate bill six they might have pulled this forward to Sweetwater One and maybe they are going to run like a trial or something with these with these guys to find out if it's suitable in the future or maybe they're just gonna start in 3101 and then build it out in future sites. So I will post about this in a way that I won't like reveal anything because that's basically my verbal agreement with Iron that I won't be speculating on development sites. But I think there is something going on. Let me just say it like that. I think that I do have some evidence which could suggest that there's at least, you know, a third party involved that could connect EOS and IREN, for example. So, yeah.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Franz, before we let you go, can you remind everyone who may not be familiar with the expansion in Canada at, I believe, Prince George, and then I forgot the other site, but I believe it was an additional 50 or 60 megawatts, I think 50 to get it to 210, but can you briefly bring us up to speed on that before we go to Dolce?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have a video from Glenn from, I think it was very early this year or maybe late last year where he was interviewed on his job in Canada and he just mentioned that there is 20 megawatts coming to Mackenzie and 30 megawatts coming to Prince George but that was obviously it could have been like years out but the whole thing that we're seeing now obviously first we saw that building being constructed that we found out before the iron told the market And, you know, if you count the footprint and the megawatts that they have, and then you're just going to, you know, do the math, you find out that they are building way too much shells for 50 megawatt. I mean, and then in August, they told us they had some scheduled scheduled outages for upgrading the BC hydro line. I mean, that's another indirect proof that they are increasing their transmission in and out or in obviously capacity. So, you know, there is another thing where in the original building plans of Prince George, they have like building pyramids since 2021 something. There are more buildings included and that they have currently built, even including this one. Last year during the analyst interview, the analyst day in New York, they made this PDF, you know, where they had a blueprint of Prince George with three extra buildings. And that came out to be 30 or 50 mega, sorry, 30 or 40 megawatts. And we found this this slide from McKenzie where it showed that there is a 100 megawatt interconnection construction going to happen in May 2026 for some steel works and light mast or whatever. So they're not talking about McKenzie 80, they're talking about McKenzie 100. So, you know, these things are all, you know, circumstantial perhaps, but it's all, you know, it's all clicking for me and for a lot of people. So right now, what we're seeing in Prince George is the way that they're building this new data center out, we can just see that they're doing the entire shell. So they've put these concrete slabs outside for generators, for transformers, or for any ancillary cooling components. So it's not like they're just focusing on the 10 megawatts side. You know, you remember in their earnings support, they had like a blueprint of Prince George where they showed a new data center with eight cubes and only two of them were colored blue and said 10 megawatt. So the other six are empty. And I don't think they're going to build an empty data center. I think they're going to prepare a 20 or 30 megawatt liquid cooled data center. I think it's probably gonna be 20 megawatts IT loads. And I think they're going to just go ahead and build it out entirely. So I think we're going to see more than 10 megawatts in the coming four to six months. I don't know how quick it's gonna go. I don't know how they are with long lead time items, et cetera, but I think there's, certainly certainty that they are going to be having more than ten megawatts extra there. So I think Prince George is going to go to 60 or 70 megawatts in the coming, let's just say nine, nine to 12 months. It's my personal estimation. And then Mackenzie will go to 100 megawatts somewhere next year. And, you know, as you've seen, they also started to hire people for for for Mackenzie to increase their AI data center capacity there like uh the hires just speak for itself so all in all I think that it's quite certain uh somewhere by the end of next year we will have at least 190 or 80 or 200 megawatts in Canada that's just uh I I don't see how they can get around that.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yeah thank you Franz I I think what's interesting about that um If it was 20 at McKenzie and 30 at Prince George, let's call that in the 50, and you'd spoken to that. And maybe there are some construction restraints, and it's possible that it is liquid cooled to show their capabilities up there or eventually transition the fleet. But in the event that they were to do air-cooled data centers similar to what they already have constructed there, they can do that a lot cheaper. and plug in V200s and V300s, which off of an article that we read earlier in the week, Microsoft is willingly turning away business right now. So there's definitely demand for this product. So in that event, 50 over 160 is 31%. increased and you had 20,000 GPUs able to fit in 160 megawatts in Canada currently. So if you were to take that extra 31%, that's an additional 6,000 approximately GPUs. And I say all that to suggest that Canada in itself is a very viable business that I had thrown together. I still haven't come up with my new target and I will work on that. And part of it was clarifying the size of Canada right now with Franz in front of everyone. But I think in my initial estimate, it was, you know, roughly 7 billion for only 20, or excuse me, or it was for every 50 megawatts, excuse me, it was It's 60,000 for Canada. So if it were 30,000 more, we're actually looking at 70,000. So apologies for the confusion there. So the point being, though, if I last week I had referenced an enterprise value net of those GPUs of, let's say, 18 billion. So still plenty of value that exceeds the current market price and just Canada alone and building it out. And if you can get that cash flow spinning and that flywheel running faster, that kind of addresses another opportunity or concern, however you want to look at it. But with Sweetwater being so large, you know, 1.4 gigawatts, what was also interesting from that Applied Digital call was how their future sites, they're having to look to Macquarie as a strategic partner so that they can scale faster and take advantage of their time to power. So that's why I brought all that up. I believe Dulce is still eating, so we're going to go to Bal and Rake. What do you want to talk about tonight? Yeah, thanks for taking my question. And I haven't been in the space very long, so I apologize if you guys have discussed this before, but we all know that the hyperscalers are struggling with capacity for AI training and inference. And I'm just curious why there's no talks about them acquiring AIREN or taking a stake in AIREN. You have a founder-led company with two brothers who had a vision in 2019 and were buying patches of dirt in West Texas that today trade at multiples of what they bought it for. Personally, I just think it, I think everything has a price or the right price, but I also believe that would be super, super high for the brothers to entertain, not being able to carry out their vision. And they just strike me as two super competitive guys who were ahead of the curve and the competitive advantage that they have now with this infrastructure. You know, Applied Digital was speaking to a four gigawatt pipeline on their call, and those guys seem relatively sharp, but that makes me think if they're speaking to four gigawatts that Dan and Will have more up their sleeve, that for strategic reasons they don't disclose. So what I would say to you is, There's a lot of pride in those two gentlemen, and I think they just want to take it further personally. But I believe Franz has something to contribute. So Franz, what do you got?
Speaker 2: Well, you're making a good point, but it's also important to note that the structure of the company makes it very hard to become a takeover target. So first of all, you have the voting rights of Dan and Will. I'm not entirely sure what their exact voting rights are right now, but it's definitely somewhere in the 40 or 30% range. At least it used to be before the recent illusion. So I think on top of that, it's also one other thing to note about Dan, for example, is that it's not just about his pride only, but he's also, he came into Iron already pretty wealthy, you know, so he's not doing this for the money alone. So there is a real legacy that he's trying to make with Iron. It's my personal understanding, right? That's one other detail that I would mention. So I'm not saying that there was never a takeover attempt. I'm pretty sure that they had unsolicited proposals, but it's just, yeah, I don't see that happening in the coming five to 10 years, honestly.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for sharing that perspective. I also do want to call out that I've been seeing a lot of content recently about an NVIDIA slide that was presented on CNBC. where they talked about key deals and then one of the main logos on there was Iron. Was there actually a deal that you guys are aware of related to that slide? Because I haven't heard about one specifically.
Comma: No, there's no deal announced between Nvidia and Iron. The only thing that has been announced between the two has been the preferred partner that Iron was able to get. just prior to the earnings call that Franz first noticed. But as far as any other kind of deals, no. And the interesting part about that is that on its own was already eye-catching, right? Because Iron has not done any deals with Nvidia directly, right? That on its own is very eye-catching because it's in a location where it's by itself and had the most prominent real estate on that board. Because if you look at that photo, or the slide, right? When it appeared on CNBC, everybody else was partnered up and they're like, no, lumped together, not lumped together, but like, no, in groups of two, Iron was the only one that was on itself. So I don't know who created that slide, but usually there's a process before, you know, the slides get onto air, right? It wouldn't be unvetted because that'd be a total surprise if it came unvetted. And, you know, like, you know, Iron was not involved in this call. So if there's anything that Iron didn't like, no, they can take legal action against, you know, these parties, but I don't think that's going to happen. But, you know, when these slides go on air, they do have to be vetted at the very least, right? Then you put onto the context of, Jensen Huang and where he was on the BG Squared podcast, and he kept on mentioning two gigawatts. That's a very specific number, right? If he was just talking about random, you know, how many gigawatts you need to secure, he could have easily said, oh, if you had an extra gigawatt or if you had an extra three gigawatt, if you had an extra four gigawatt or whatever. But he came back to that number several times. I've documented that on a post today. He says, well, if you could secure a two gigawatt, and he went back to that reference several times. So is that a Freudian slip? No, we don't know. But if you are looking at the breadcrumbs, I think NVIDIA has done a lot of investing in other companies that are in the sector, but the most obvious one is the one that has the most power and that's coming online fairly quickly. And they haven't made any moves with this company. And I think that's very conspicuous that they've done deals with Applied Digital, they've done deals with Lambda, they've done it with Coreweave, they've done it with everybody except for the one that has something that is the biggest bottleneck. the most abundant of riches, right? So we'll see what happens there.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: One other thing I wanted to add related to that, I found it interesting with the timing and there's so much going on where the days feel like months here where Earlier in the week, we had the convertible bond offering that will close most likely tomorrow or I believe Tuesday it is. And for them to raise a billion dollars and be oversubscribed and have it be relatively effortless and then command a convert premium higher than their competitors at 42.5%, I believe, was the final number. and not even have to disclose who they're doing business with yet. And I also find it pretty interesting that they stopped the monthly operating report right before we go into the last earnings report of the year. So I'm expecting fireworks for end of year. And for Citi and Goldman to lead the financing and for Iron to Get command that premium. is very bullish to me. And I think it's, I think there were some people trying to call into doubt their ability to convert this revenue that they're showing in press releases and then not having an operating report to support it. Yet Dan's on TV multiple times in the last week with the pretty confident look and rhetoric that suggests bigger things are coming. So now, to me, my theory on that is that it was purposely done. I think they can pull the report together fairly easily. Still, I think it was more strategic in that they have an opportunity to shock the world at earnings and go from a company that was monthly producing you know, $2 million in cloud revenue up to if they hit their run rate target, which management tends to sandbag. It wouldn't surprise me if in December we're looking instead of the 21 million that would hit the 250 run rate if we're looking at 25 or 30 million. So that's just something I wanted to add to that. But it looks like Dolce is here, is well fed, and ready to go and provide some alphas. So Dolce, welcome.
Dolce: I'm going to start my monologue by discussing completely tangential ideas. So first, stocks are pretty weird. I know that's a great place to begin. It's not really clear why things are worth what we say they are. There's fundamental analysis, technical analysis, et cetera. It does appear, though, that the more we believe in a company, the more powerful it becomes. That's even the plot of some animes or cartoons that I occasionally watch. There was a time when Iron was universally hated. And It really seemed like no matter what it did, everyone doubted them, right? Like they couldn't grow their exahash to 50. They couldn't do CSP. They couldn't do this. They couldn't do that. Every decision was second guessed. Like why are you buying land in Texas and claiming that it can be used for AIHPC? That's what everyone was asking. Like a short report was published for exactly that reason. Like Iron is the Prius in a Formula One race, something along those lines. That's not, that was not a rare opinion. That was almost the universal opinion. There was even a, like a Microsoft expert who was interviewed about Iron. And the Microsoft expert said basically the same thing, that I corroborated the Copler report. I said, it makes no sense whatsoever to build data centers in Childress, Texas. Like, there's no water there. It's just, it's remote. The primary data center markets are in Virginia or, you know, some other urban area that you're very familiar with. Not Childress, Texas, not Sweetwater, Texas. And to think you can even build data centers for $650,000 and air cool hoppers or black, like they just could not comprehend, right? And so there was tremendous resistance, like Iron Face, tremendous resistance since 2021. From 2021 all the way up until the middle of 2025, there was not only like resistance in the chart, but resistance culturally, intellectually, systematically, just everyone opposed them, like their philosophy, their vision, just everything, right? And so they kind of had their hands tied behind their backs. Like it was, they had to use the ATM to finance their operations. They couldn't, they didn't have the access to the convertible nodes or to cheap debt, right? The cost of capital was very high. That made everything so much harder, and yet they still prevailed, right? They still managed to get that 50x a hash. They still managed to start a fledgling CSP business that is now whatever it is. And the narrative is turning. It's transitioned from iron cannot do anything right to iron can do no wrong. And its PE ratio, its P to S ratio, all those valuation metrics, they are reflecting a change in sentiment from being extremely bearish on a stock, being extremely pessimistic on its future and its potential to now being very hopeful and optimistic. And I think that's really key because as we've seen, due to the Iron Bulls and other, and just investors in general, strongly believing in the stock and pushing its valuation to these levels, Iron can now issue a convertible note and secure almost a billion dollars worth of funding for only about 4% dilution. Onbee completed some analysis and showing that this is better terms than pretty much any other company in history. To go from where we were, like in May or August, I don't know, not August, maybe April, where we diluted maybe a couple $100 million worth of shares at $6 per share, right? Like to go from that to this, something has changed, right? And I'm thinking, and I want everyone to like entertain this idea. This is just the start, right? Like I think that the market and the population in general they're starting to acknowledge that iron is different. We have been following this stock for years. Some of us shorter than that, but basically we've been following this stock for a long time where we knew it when it was basically a child. And like we've seen its flaws and whatever and like, okay, yeah, we get it. And like we saw when it was undervalued and the fact that everyone is respecting it now might almost be a little shocking. But Iron is now like that superstar. It's like we're seeing it on TV. The same way you might see like an athlete you went to high school with is now playing professional football. It's completely different. And everyone is like, my friends are talking about it. People are now seeing it without me calling it out, like without me even telling them about it. They're actually discovering it organically. And they're hearing Jensen Huang and other major leaders, thought leaders in AI say, it's not chips that are the bottleneck. It's power. The most important part of the AI value chain at the moment is infrastructure, they're saying. There's just not enough data center capacity. People have GPUs, but they don't have a rack to plug it in and to run it. And so no one is really saying anymore on CNBC, oh, Iron is just a Bitcoin miner, and they can't do CSP. Everyone has already accepted that Iron is a true competitor to Core Weave and Nevius. Everyone is accepting that Iron is a legitimate CSP, and they're valuing it already Like it is like a true CSP. They're giving it the appropriate metrics. And I say that even-- and many of you probably are like, OK, sure, who cares? Isn't that completely normal and expected? No. There are CEOs like Sam Tabier of BTBT who specifically predicted that none of the Bitcoin miners would achieve this kind of valuation. None of them would be rerated. So it was not entirely foreseeable that just because Iron tried to do CSP orgs or entered into CSP, that it would be rerated to the extent that it has. But now that we're here, I think that this momentum only grows. the same way that Palantir's momentum only grew. Because I'm changing topics now, talking about Palantir. I remember when I was investing in Palantir, there was like from late 2023 to early 2024, everyone doubted them and said, they just sell vaporware. No one understands the technology. It's completely useless, blah, blah, blah, right? Similar kind of resistance that Iron experienced. And then there was just some inflection point or turning point where all the bear arguments fell apart. And it just became abundantly clear that Palantir had won the narrative. Everyone just started to accept that Palantir was different. Palantir was the next big thing. And every dip was bought. and its PE ratio and its P to S ratio and all the other valuation metrics, they just skyrocketed. Because people could see it. They could see that they were going to claim all the market share and they were going to dominate because they solved a real problem. And the investors, both the retail investors and the institutional investors, understood well enough what they helped and that they were not going to sell it for just like a 50% or 100% profit, they were going to hold on to that damn thing until they really got as much as they could out of it. That's a unique property because most investors are mercantile, right? They're just in it for the money. Very few are in it for the long haul because they're committed to a vision and a story. But I do think that applies to iron shareholders. right? Especially those of us who have experienced that we swung round trip. We have, we understand Iron quite well, right? Because we have done our due diligence and we've held it from those low PE ratios of like 2, three. I mean, it was trading under book value for a window of time. And now we see it already trading at above 20 P to S, but that's just because it's trailing. I think when it hits, when it completely uses all Canada for CSP, right, and it has a $2.5 billion ARR, I do think it will be valued at 20x that. Not smaller than that. People are not going to start being pessimistic and saying like, oh no, we have to be value oriented and like we have to, you know, this is, fundamentally overstretched or something like that. I think people are going to look at the future and say, well, clearly, Iron is executing. Clearly, they have the capital. Clearly, they have the competent leadership. Clearly, they have the runway because of their energy pipeline. Clearly, they can deliver. Clearly, Nvidia favors them. This is predestined, right? And what investors want is a high-reward, low-risk investment. And that's what we're seeing here, where there is nothing that will actually pose a serious obstacle to IRIN's short-term and long-term plans. It has everything it needs, the long lead items, the interconnection agreements, everything. It even has the important relationships with the biggest vendors and suppliers in AI. It's attending all the conferences. It's meeting with the clients. It already has dialogue with all the hyperscalers, right? It has, you know, connections with Citi, Citibank and JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Like, it can clearly access, you know, external capital through the convertible notes. It's even gaining more and more retail support globally, like in Korea, right? Everyone loves the stock. So I guess to wrap everything up, and I said this before too, if Iron achieved so much when the world was against it, what can it do when the world is with it? Because right now, the world is behind iron, just ready to support it 100%, to give it everything it needs. And we have world-class leadership who knows what to do with that. And I just strongly believe that if you sell iron at $100 or $150, or based on some valuation metric that looks a little bit overextended, right? You're going to be disappointed when it just completely shoots way past that. Because this is not just an ordinary stock that's required to trade at some ordinary valuation. This is like a once-in-a-lifetime investment, a one-of-a-kind company that everyone is already starting to view like that. And so whatever valuation you might assign to Palantir, or Robinhood, or AMD, or Tesla, or any of those, you need to start thinking that's going to happen to Iron, too, because Iron does deserve that.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: We probably should just end the space right now, but we're not going to. Dolce, inspired as always. Thank you for sharing with us. Let's go to the crowd here. We got this way to Valhalla and then Shepherd to follow. Good evening, sir.
This Way to Valhalla: Hey, can you hear me all right?
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yes, sir.
This Way to Valhalla: All right. Hey, I wanted to talk about this convertible because I just don't think it's getting enough attention. And what I mean by that is, actually, I work at a publicly traded company today. I'm an officer, a publicly traded company. I've run convertibles behind the scene. And I have never seen a 42.5% convertible. That is just, and then 0% interest. And we're talking about a business that today, let's face it, really hasn't named a customer. And on top of that, look at how little from the original offering, Iron upsized that. We know from what Tyler shared previously about how overscribed their offering was. And I think this just tells us the very obvious here, is that they tried to sell as little as they could right now, because at this valuation, They don't wanna raise any more at this valuation. There is too much in the pipeline coming up. So I think this was a bare minimum offering to get them what they needed for a working capital up through the next few deals. And as a result of that, I think we really need to look into how little they went, the 0%, no customer, 42.5, and just, it's so obvious the bigger things are to come here. And I think the question is, well, why did they do this in terms of there may be better opportunities down the line? Again, I think the reality is the speed to market here. Dan spent a lot of time in New York recently. And I think a part of that was kicking the tires in terms of what was out there. They don't want an ATM here. I don't think they want to do a convertible here. But I think this is just the bare minimum they needed to strike the next deal. And I think the other thing about this, too, that as much as Friday was a little frustrating, Friday was a great day for the converts to hedge. And so that's done now. And I'll admit, like when that convertible first went down, I have options that, short date options that expired on Friday, short dated options that expire next Friday. And usually, let's face it, you take a beating for a couple of days there. That just didn't really happen at all there. I think if we don't have the Trump announcement on Friday, we could have broke 70. I mean, it's very possible. So with the Converse completely hedged at this point in time, with hopefully some of that noise calming down over the weekend, this could be a very interesting week. Other things I just wanted to mention too is that as we look forward here, if Iron has some of the big announcements that we expect in the next earnings release, Everybody from a fund perspective likes to window shop and add that to their fund before the end of the year. You could be seeing massive demand from that front. In addition to it, anybody that's bought iron early in this year has huge gains. And so no one's going to want to sell towards the back of the quarter from a tax perspective either. So anyways, I think from an announcement perspective, all the things I just mentioned here, I'll just say what I said in the past. We're not bullish enough. We're not.
Comma: Yeah, I just want to interject a little again. The 42% premium is crazy, right? We heard from Tyler and how much interest was in the cipher converts, and they only got a 37.5. So Iron got a full 5% higher than cipher, but yet they didn't go for any more. Right? So I think Valhalla is really on point here. From the demand, it would appear that Iron has even more than Cypher, but they didn't go for more. So there might be something coming up-- something up their sleeves and coming down the pike later on.
This Way to Valhalla: And let's keep in mind, Colm, again, no Google, no Fluid, no major customer announcement. And they still pulled this off.
Comma: I agree. So, you know, all the people who always like to dog iron, oh, they don't have contracts, they don't have this, they don't have that, right? No, the proof is in the pudding. For them to be able to get the highest premium ever for a convert, right? And somebody put a chart out on the day it happened. I don't have it with me right now and I got to pull it up sometime later and repost it. So, you know, all the other converts, the premiums, are around 30 or under 30 percent, right? Cipher, before that, they, I do believe they hit the highest at 30, 37.5 percent. Now Iron has to pass that at 42 percent. So that just tells you how much interest and how much belief there is on the Iron story. So all those people who keep on telling you that, oh, Iron doesn't have this, Iron doesn't have that. No, the proof is all in the pudding, right? Look at the numbers that they got for the converts.
This Way to Valhalla: I don't honestly know of a 42.50% instrument out there. I'm sure they exist, but off the top of my head, I can't point to one.
Comma: No, somebody posted it previously. I don't know for sure if that is the highest, but they've posted it, you know, what the some of the other deals this year and previous year got, right? And 42 was the highest.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: I'm double checking right now, Comma, but I'm pretty sure it was only 30% for Cipher, which would only make your point stronger in this way, Valhalla's point on the premium commanded. I believe it was seven times oversubscribed with a 30% premium. And that's with Google publicized with FluidStack. So The Citi and Goldman and whichever institutions bid on this saw behind the curtain. And I'm convinced that there's something that's going to be released in November at earnings that will really throw a rocket booster under us because it just feels like they're purposely withholding information, yet coming off super confident on their execution. And if they really needed that much money for working capital beyond the billion dollars and they were unsure of their trajectory going forward, they probably would have tried to raise $2 billion. But instead, they just took the 1 billion. And as a reminder, there's a cap call structure in it. For those unfamiliar, if you're a shareholder, they use part of the proceeds from the convertible to buy call options in order to reduce the dilution so that the dilution only occurs to the extent that shares, you're essentially, that billion dollars, you're essentially selling shares into the market for roughly twice the share price in which they closed that, which was around $60. So they basically get to sell shares. Instead of using an ATM at $60 at current pricing, they get to delay the dilution into the future at $120. And that speaks to this way's point about just get what you need now and later when this thing's trading at $100, that's potentially $200, or $150, that might be $300. So all that's to say that management is being prudent and trying to preserve shareholder value despite, and then Dolce mentioned in April when things with Tariff Liberation Day, how uncertain they were where they had to sell shares at $6. And now we're talking about selling shares for 20 times that price now and potentially 30 or 40 times in the future. What a transformation. You had something else to say this way.
This Way to Valhalla: Yeah, I just wanted to also conclude, not financial advice. I'm playing it. Hit those $80 strikes, hit those $90 strikes, hit those $100 strikes and not too near the near future because big things are going down in November.
Comma: Okay, I have to interject here again. Not financial advice. Okay, we're not giving out financial advice. We've done this a few times and we Make sure to tell people is not financial advice. Oh, and by the way, Butcher, for the Cipher, I have posted it in the nest. So I might have been confused with the 37.5% and the 30%. So what it says is if the last reported sale price per share of Cipher's common stock exceeds 130% of the conversion price for the period. So I guess that would be 30% premium, right?
₿itcoin ₿utcher: You know what, I was actually, I'm reading the press release and it's saying, and Fuller had mentioned this, it says the initial conversion price represents a premium of approximately 37.5%. So I owe you an apologies, sir.
Comma: Yeah, so that's what I thought. But then I get confused when you said the 30 and I went back down to the bottom and see, okay, where's that 30 coming from? Okay, so that's why I said 37.5 in the beginning because I saw the 37.5% at the top. But no, I was a little confused with the 30%, so we're glad we cleared that up.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: I think the conclusion is iron is higher, so we will take that. I believe Shepherd's up next. Shepherd, how are you this evening? Not too bad. Just relaxing this Sunday evening, looking at some, if you want to call pre-market or after-market hours, and just seeing how everything's moving. So I was just coming up to, I guess, clear some of my ignorance or probably a bearish case. And the reason I'm kind of getting at this is I've been reading in some news and some local articles about a, not Iran in particular, but a miner who was looking at capturing 400 megawatts within this area with the promise of only using 50 megawatts. And it seems like there's a little bit uproar, I guess, from the local community in terms of what that would do for megawatt usage in the local electrical grid. I'm just curious, because it seems as IRIN has that level of vertical integration, they have that renewable build. Would you ever see anything in terms of IRIN or Cipher in terms of megawatt exposure from a regulation standpoint. And I haven't really heard that in these spaces yet.
This Way to Valhalla: I just see and I agree with the overall sentiment that there's this insatiable amount for compute, which will become this insatiable amount for power.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: And I think regardless of how you frame it, there's that instinctual, hey, our electric bills are going to go up. And then you see these local regulations start trying to strangle some of these projects. Do you think?
This Way to Valhalla: Overall, there would be exposure to iron in this regard in terms of how they try to do that renewable and that renewable integration or the greater mining community as a whole.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Franz, what do you have to answer that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important to note the distinction of ERCOT here. Iron is mostly operating in the ERCOT power region in Texas. And I'm not sure which miner you were talking about, but there has, you know, basically been no precedent in ERCOT for local communities complaining or, I don't know, filing any kind of lawsuit or voting against data centers or megawatts being distributed towards Bitcoin miners or data centers. simply for the reason that Texas is open for business on a very high level. That's what it is. And the utilities and ERCOT, they need large loads to grow. And also they need flexible loads to take off the excess renewable energy that's on the grid. So there's a reason why ERCOT has a large load work group. It used to be a large, large flexible, large flexible load task force, but they have upgraded the task force to a real working group. That's because, you know, the grid needs loads to grow. It's not just, oh, let's add renewable energy generation here and there, and the grid will figure it out. They need loads as well to take off the excess power that's being added. So this is very much a big cooperative, you know, it's a big cooperation between air called utilities, local communities and large loads and generation projects. So this is all one big breathing organism where the companies like the Bitcoin miners and data centers, they bring, you know, the economy to these small rural counties. So they bring their business there and local communities will benefit from that. And it's this by doing this, they get approval from local communities. If you look, for example, at Childress, iron has really been a big contributor to the economy there. They've brought a lot of business there. They bought items from local businesses there and they have hired people that live there or near there. And that's why they're getting tax abatements. That's why they have, you know, sponsorships with local football teams. A lot of people from Ireland actually live there now, so they are becoming locals. And so yeah, I just honestly, I don't see this issue arising for Ireland at all, or for basically for that reason, for most of these former Bitcoin miners or hybrid miners simply because Texas wants them and air code needs them so I think in other regions you have a lot more in other states you have a lot more of these possible issues and I know that for iron for example it's a lot harder to get megawatts in Canada so yeah that's my take on this I just don't think it's applicable for iron in I called region.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Thanks friends. That's where I was kind of looking. It's clear some ignorance in that regard. It is a different minor and it's not in Texas. I I just they're having this issue right now, so I just didn't know if I ran. I assuming they didn't within their Sweetwater region within Texas. I just want to ask the question in terms of. Because I know you guys have visited more of these sites and have more of that anecdotal or that at the area knowledge, how the communities were receiving it, because I've kind of seen it different, different areas to your point. And not for Iron, again, I want to point that out. Calling up Stack meetups to the stage. And you're up, sir. Stock meetups, you ready? Hey, one quick question, folks.
Speaker 2: I don't know whether that topic was discussed.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: There's a tweet from the US marketing head about Iron.
Speaker 2: Do we think there'll be any kind of relationship with them because a two hours of backups? Apply from storage, from EOS would be beneficial for most of this, you know, data center operations. Which tweet are you talking about? I.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Think there was a tweet from one of, if I'm not wrong, I mean, that tweet was deleted today where the EOS marketing head or somebody tweeted irons. EOS is the storage company for...
Speaker 2: Yeah, we actually covered this earlier in the space. Yeah, so yeah, no, I mean, there's, that was like one tweet, and I think he even deleted his entire account later on. It was certainly interesting, but there are a lot of these instances where companies that could potentially be working with Iron are somehow referencing them, quoting them, or congratulating them. I see a lot of this happening on LinkedIn as well, and I have to be very careful with drawing any conclusions based on that. So for now, it's a work in progress, but I mean, it would let's just hypothetically look at it, right? I mean, EOS would be the perfect partner for Iron. I'm not entirely sure if it's the best solution for a data center storage. Like I think that Bloom Energy is a better solutions for that, like for backup. But long term storage with paired with solar would be perfect fit for for EOS and It's a it's a very green product, so it would fit the ESG all that Iren likes to wear. And it's I think it's like 91 or 92% made in the US. So it's very it's not depending on a lot of import components. So It's also very safe. It's inflammable. So yeah, it does really match Iron's MO very well. But I mean, right now we just don't have anything to go at. So it's still due diligence in progress. Yeah, two to three weeks back, the CEO of EOS came to CNBC and he was giving a small town. So what was interesting was they are now able to store.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: The energy from gas also, because now if you look at Grock, there are a lot of their energy is sourced from gas turbines. So EOS battery is now capable to store even gas turbines energy as well. And he was quoting something like it can give two hours of 1 gigawatts capacity, which is kind of good. I just initiated some little position asking, but I just wanted to Check with you folks because you are more deep into the weeds. Alright, thanks for joining us tonight. Stock Meetups. As far as the week ahead, you know, I think it's interesting that I felt fortunate that that bond, the terms of it and getting that price happened before Friday's. fireworks, but it does look like things should clear up here in the next few days. And certainly optimistic going into Q4 here and seeing what management has been working on behind the scenes. See if we have anyone else who requested. Got someone that I'm bringing up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to drop off, Butcher. Thanks for hosting, and I will keep listening, but I can't speak any longer. I have to go for breakfast with my family. So I'll talk to you guys later.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Franz, thank you, and I hope your son's doing well. I heard him in the background a little bit, and take care of my friend. This way, you had something to mention before we go to our new speaker.
This Way to Valhalla: Can you hear me all right?
Comma: Yeah, I should be okay.
This Way to Valhalla: Yeah, you hear me? Okay. Just one thing I wanted to mention is late last week we saw the release getting out there that Microsoft was potentially in a shortfall situation and losing customers. I just want to warn people, anytime you see something like that slip to the retail world, it's by design, be careful. So when I see something like that go down, I say, Yep. Somebody is going to be selling here soon, and they're trying to build up a rally. So I just want to warn people out there that that stuff doesn't slip into the retail world by accident. And I think we saw what happened on Friday.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Very good point. I think the same reason I had mentioned earlier, why pre-market? While it's nice to see 65 after we went down to 50, and after hours on Friday. I am happy to sit on my hands tomorrow morning and just kind of let things come to us a little more. Looks like we got Lev on stage, ready to roll. What do you got, sir?
Comma: Hey, thanks.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: This will be real quick. I've been following Iron for a while, just knew him as a Bitcoin miner. I didn't know about this grand plan that you guys have been following so well, and I appreciate all the work you guys put in. My question is, now that they seemingly have all this extra cash and everything, do you think there's at least a chance that they start to hold on to some of the Bitcoin they mine, or that's just not part of their plan? Thanks, guys.
Comma: Yeah, I'll take some of this first. I don't think there's any plan to hold on to Bitcoin at this point. They need a lot of working capital, right? don't think you'll see any part of holding on to Bitcoin might be ever because most of their Bitcoin mining is I don't think it's going to go away 100% because there is value to having Bitcoin mining um paired at the sites as a load balancer right and they're also profitable so that is very rare if they have a profit generating load balancer on site to be paired with the AI data centers so I can see them if you know if they're rolling so much in the AI revenues and the the Bitcoin mining part is used to stay on site as a low balancing generator, then they can use that as a huddle. But going by their philosophy, if they're still trying to aggressively expand for the next three to five years, right, then I don't think any of that will be used for a huddle. And then beyond three to five years, which is the next cycle, the S21XPs they would probably be not profitable again, right? So at that point, the question still remains, will they be buying any new rigs to pair with the AI data centers, right? If they do, then at that point, then you might look at, you know, a potential huddle if that was the case, right? If somebody else has a different take, they can, you know, add to it. Yeah, I really appreciate you guys.
Speaker 6: I'm going to drop back down and listen. Thanks so much.
Comma: Yeah, no problem.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: It just gets back to the opportunity costs of megawatts and to Kama's point, like to certainly to expand and replace those ASICs versus funding CSP. And by the same token, having a huddle for, you know, you're basically at that point trying to bet on the rate of change of the spot price versus And while you're doing so, you're losing time. You're not able to just simply sell it into the market, take that cash, and immediately put it to work. So I don't see it myself personally. And I think it's more of a luxury. And quite frankly, I would, at this point, we're talking about Sweetwater's 2 gigawatts, let alone if you have five or six gigawatt pipeline. That's just a luxury we can't afford. And I almost equate it to a company buying back shares in the future. Like they ran out of ideas to grow. So to generate equity returns, they just take shares off of the market. Dulce had something to say. And then I think we have a new speaker.
Dolce: When I talked to Brian Fry a couple months ago, he said that Dan obsessed over maximizing shareholder value, doing whatever was most accretive to shareholders. And maybe back then, that would have sounded laughable or somewhat false. But in view of the stock price today, I think we can all agree that Dan has done an excellent job, because things are just more obvious in hindsight, I suppose. So If you look at their presentations, Iron has consistently stated that the purpose of Bitcoin mining is to bootstrap more compute intensive operations like AIHPC. And I don't see why that would change, right? Like as long as they need to spend billions of dollars building these liquid-cooled data centers and filling them with the state-of-the-art GPUs, they simply cannot hold the Bitcoin on their balance sheet. They need that cash flow to reinvest into the flywheel that will further grow the stock price, that will further increase access to more capital, that will then be redeployed, and so on. So I know that Dan and Will are very strong believers in Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin personally, but I mean, just look at the stock price, right? It's very clear what the market is rewarding, like what aspect of the business the market wants more of. And so it's like, do the treasury companies appreciate a lot in stock price? I don't think so. Do the ones who mine Bitcoin? I don't think so. Really, it's the stocks that are doing the best right now are the data center companies that have AI HPC exposure like Iron. I do want to go on a slightly different topic just because I think this is interesting. So we talked about Iron and everyone is starting to agree or accepts by now that it is a legitimate AI/HPC player with CSP and co-location optionality. When we compare Iron to Nevius and Coralweave, I think it really matters that Iron is the only one that's profitable due to its vertical integration. Now, this is a little bit of a complicated story to tell because the profitability stems from Bitcoin mining. And then even that, like the composition of its revenues is going to change dramatically over the next few quarters. But if you look at CSP, CapEx and OpEx, it's going to like Bitcoin mining already covers all of the company's overhead. And so any additional profitability from HPC is almost just straight profit, right? Of course, there are associated costs, but it's not like NEBIUS where they have to cover a lot of other expenses. In this case, with iron, Bitcoin mining already pays all the electricity and the SG&A and so on. So it's a very good foundation for the company. When institutions and I guess fundamental investors just look at stocks, they really do like to look at the spreadsheets and the numbers. And if you go on like FinBiz or something and you look at irons, like the trailing 12 months do not seem that attractive. But Next quarter, when Iron releases its earnings, it's going to report significantly better profits, significantly greater revenue, significantly better margins, significantly better everything, right? And then the quarter after that, it's going to be the same thing, like another 40%, 50% improvement. And then the quarter after that, the same thing. And you're going to see all these numbers just look much, much better compared to these new peers, because Iron's peers are no longer CleanSpark and Riot and Marathon, Iron's peers now are Core Weave and Nebius. And when you stack them against each other, Iron is already going to have a greater ARR by end of 2026, most likely, because they're going to fill all of Canada with GPUs, which should yield a $2.5 billion ARR approximately. They're going to be much more profitable than Nebius and Core Weave. they're going to be much more profitable than probably like . That might be a stretch, but it starts to show you that iron starts to become more profitable than many of these other very famous blue chip stocks that we've known about for years. And so when all that happens, right, and Even when you go on Bloomberg Terminal and you look up iron and it looks fundamentally reasonable, what do you think happens? You go from iron being a retail favorite to just being a universal favorite, where it becomes impossible not to buy it. And then at around that time, I'm sure iron will be added to indexes like the NASDAQ 100 or SPY and QQQ. and then those valuations improve even further. So I think what you want to do, I think what stocks try to do, the ones that are on the public market, is they want to make it so that there's no reason not to buy them, right? So Maybe in the past, people say, ah, Iron's a Bitcoin miner. I don't invest in Bitcoin miners because I think Bitcoin is too volatile. Or I think the business model is dumb. Or like, oh, I don't want to invest in Iron because their AI HPC is too speculative. Iron has systematically dismantled each of these bare arguments. And with every single quarter, the objections become fewer. And I think the last real objection that people can possibly have against iron is, oh, it's just when I look at these valuations, it seems too pricey. And those valuations are all trailing, right? They're backwards looking. But given iron's exponential growth, over these next few quarters, those numbers are going to look significantly better. They're going to look-- iron will look extremely undervalued compared to peers like Nebius and Coreweave. And then it's going to be growing at and achieve almost hyperscaler size by 2026, by late 2026 and then 2027 and beyond. So if people start to see that where from every angle, Iron looks extremely attractive and there's no major weakness except just AI broadly failing. then it does become the best way to trade the AI trend. It does become the stock that everyone has to buy alongside Nvidia. And that just means that you, as a shareholder today, should hold it and not be fazed by pretty much any noise.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yeah, I would just add that every time, you had spoken to the indices, Dolce, and especially the S&P 500, given that it takes a committee to approve. There's the opportunity where you start seeing this flywheel come into fruition and their valuation, they could very well be over 100, $150 a share and still not be in the S&P 500. And then there's this idea of rebalancing where the indices have to just start purchasing shares to include in the index so that the index composition reflects and I believe the threshold right now is like a $20 billion market cap. But in the event that we get to that $30 or $40 billion, the further it goes along without them getting approved, it's actually in some ways more bullish because that initial purchase from the S&P specifically would be more violent. So I'm looking for that. And then to your point, Dolce, I think it's more about showing especially this upcoming quarter, assuming they hit their targets, if they're able to show a run rate of 225 million and then five or excuse me, 250 million and then 500 million by the first quarter and eventually 2 1/2 billion and by Q4, You know, everything is forward-looking at that point, and people will be able to connect the dots, and they're not going to be looking so much at past performance at that point. I think it's just about throwing together one ****** quarter that shows that this is super profitable, we don't pay co-location fees, and we do this better than everyone else. And certainly, along the way, they found building efficiencies and we'll do this at scale a lot more efficiently. So we got Anon up. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Good evening.
Dolce: Hey, how you doing? Can you guys hear me?
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yes, sir.
Dolce: All right, cool. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate, you know, the space and everything that you guys do. I really feel like this space is awesome and I hope this keeps going on. I feel like a lot of great alpha comes from this. So I just want to say thank you and, you know, keep doing what you guys are doing. But I just have a quick question. So and and just for the record, I'm the fairly new investor. I've only been in this. I've been in this stock for about a month and, you know, I've done plenty of research and obviously I've bought into the whole thesis that you guys are preaching here, and I really appreciate it. But I have one question. So essentially, you know, Iron has all the power, and that's the main thesis going around it. But I did like, you know, AI searches and everything, and it says that, you know, to fill all of their, you know, 2.91 gigawatts of capacity, Iron will need approximately over a million GPUs. And I see, the latest trend or the latest press releases of them getting, like 16,000, 20,000 GPUs. How do we get to filling 100% capacity with the GPUs? Because I know that's very expensive and I know that's, you know, we're really not anywhere near filling capacity of our power. How do we get to that level? I can answer that. So it's very likely that there's going to be dilution along the way. The silver bullet is support from a major hyperscaler like Nvidia. So Nvidia described itself as an accelerator, not a financier. It said that its role in the AI HPC ecosystem is to enable all these new businesses like OpenAI to achieve their full potential. That's why Nvidia invested $100 billion into OpenAI, is exploring GPU leases to OpenAI, and is in general trying to enable OpenAI to become a hyperscaler type CSP, or to have that kind of potential and ability. If you saw that CNBC interview with Jensen Huang, then you noticed that Iron was listed as one of the top Nvidia deals of 2025. And then Iron was conspicuously placed next to Webton and Nvidia, which at a minimum required like like you had to intentionally do that. It was not like an accidental byproduct. So whatever that implies, we can only speculate. But the point I'm making is that for IRIN to truly have like almost no dilution whatsoever, it obviously needs the support of a big player like Nvidia. So if Nvidia was willing to lease like, you know, 500 megawatts worth of GPUs, the Rubin CPX, for example, to Iron. And then those Rubins paid themselves off in about a year or so. And then the cash flow was reinvested. That flywheel would enable Iron to fund the rest of its portfolio quite well, given the fact that it also has CSP in Canada and Bitcoin mining revenue. Another aspect is what I was talking about earlier, which is that Iron's market cap is skyrocketing, right? So if Iron trades at like 20X P to S, and I guess that's a forward P to S. So what I mean is like, let's say it has a 2.5 billion ARR by end of 2026, I think it trades at a 50 billion market cap. And then if it trades a $50 billion market cap, it's so much easier for it to access debt and just capital in general. It can issue another Convert OneNote for $1 billion or $2 billion, right? And then dilute just 1% to 2% of the company. And then once it plugs those in, that's like another, what, $1 billion worth of ARR? And then it adds another $20 billion to its market cap. So Iron has proven that it's able to use dilution effectively in a manner that is accretive to shareholders. And given that it's now actually being valued pretty richly, I guess, relative to more normal stocks like Western Union, right? I don't know, just pick some random stock. Yes, Iron is above average. But then that means that its cost of capital, quote unquote, is cheaper, right? It's not as bad for it to dilute. And in fact, it's expedient at times if pursuing traditional debt is much more cumbersome and slows execution.
Comma: Yeah, the only thing I want to add to that is, you know, It's a lot about the flywheel, right? How much they can generate in terms of revenue on their own. And also, like you said, who else is available to help them out? You know, if there are deals, you know, in terms of their megawatts, and if they can do types of deals like the ones that Nevius did with Microsoft, and you have a lot of, you know, the big chunks of those, big chunks of those megawatts accounted for. And they're IaaS deals, so infrastructure as a service. So those deals would include the compute. So they would pay for the GPUs themselves. And we actually looked at the Nebius deal with Microsoft earlier today in our chat. And they're getting the break-even number is about $379 per GPU hour. That's what we worked it out to be. And the net profit, if you're using the Iron model, we adjusted for higher cost of data centers and slightly higher cost of operations. Though Nevius is still getting $3 million per megawatt in net profit. Right. This is not gross profit and net profit from Microsoft. So, you know, I think it's only a matter of time because there's enough demand that if Iron gets these kind of deals, then you'll see a big chunk of these megawatts being eaten up right at very good prices. So they're not having to worry about underselling the assets. And then you invested it back into your own CSP and then your own CSP is also very profitable. So it all becomes a flywheel, but it all hinges on one thing, and that's the demand for compute. If the demand for compute is out there, then there should be no worries about Iron being able to fund the full buildout of no matter how many GPUs. It's all about demand because they are profitable enough, right? Their cost of build is low, they are the lowest cost of build compute provider out there. I'm pretty sure of that because the fully vertically integrated, their bill costs should be somewhere around two to $3 million lower. And they have probably lower overhead because of the vertical integration all the way up to the bare metal. So if it had to come to it, right, they will win the wars of attrition, of commoditization. And, you know, the main point is if the demand is out there, then people shouldn't really have to worry about how Iron's going to fund all that CapEx. That's going to take care of itself. Demand is the biggest thing.
Dolce: Appreciate that answer. And correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of these hyperscalers are also in the process of trying to create their own GPUs, which would probably work in Iron's favor, because now all those hyperscalers probably want to be purchasing GPUs from Nvidia. So Nvidia is going to probably want to have someone like Iron use their GPUs and form some sort of a deal.
Comma: Yeah. No, all of the hyperscalers right now, they have their own silicon, right? They have not a general purpose GPU, but they have application specific, which would be an ASIC. So, Iron is hardware agnostic. They have ordered some AMD now, and it makes no difference to them, right? As long as there's demand for megawatts, not just from Nvidia, right, not just from GPUs, as long as there's demand for rack space that can power any type of compute, whether it's GPUs, TPUs, or ASICs, not Bitcoin mining ASICs, but AI ASICs, right? If there's demand for Rackspace, then you shouldn't have to worry about how Iron's going to fund, you know, that CapEx. That money's going to be there.
Speaker 6: Thank you.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Looks like Grant's up next. Good evening, Grant.
Speaker 6: Hey, guys, how are you? Can you hear me?
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Yeah, we got you.
Speaker 6: Good deal. So my background's in ERCOT Power. I'm both the gen and on the load side. I've been there for 15 years or here in Texas for 15 years. And with my day-to-day job, I'm actually out in this market. I've been following iron for a couple of years. So know a little bit about what's going on here. The previous question's a good one. How do they get their hands on enough chips? I thought context might be pretty helpful here. Nvidia manufactures between 7 and 14 gigs of chips, GPUs each year, depending upon which bank's estimate you believe. Iron has three gigs collectively that we're aware of. I think gravity is a really big thing here. There's only so many places that the hyperscalers and Nvidia itself can go to place a large amount of that demand. I mean, so you're talking about a three and a half trillion dollar company that makes 7 to 14 gigs of chips each year. They want to exist for more than a few years, right? They want to keep making chips, you know, and then you've got all the hyperscalers with their trillion dollar market caps that, you know, rely on AI and data. As far as I know, you guys may know better than me, I don't know if there's any other Bitcoin turned AI data center company that has three gigs, but I have load requests in the system right now and have for some time. I don't know, when I see people talking about moats and business models, that's above my pay grade outside of my expertise, but from a pure grid power availability perspective, which we all know the hyperscalers still currently favor, right? There's enough slack in the system until there's not, and then I'll have to go behind the meter and do stuff like that. But until the grid slack is soaked up, there is a huge premium on pure grid megawatts, which is exactly what Iron has. So a little bit of a statement, but I just wanted people to, you know, any comma or anybody here, like, Do you all know where Iron sits? I am not aware of any site, single site that's, you know, Sweetwater One and Two, that's two gigs. That is in a class of its own. Yeah.
Comma: Grant, you know, you coming on here is a godsend. No, there's a lot of things. No, because you're from ERCOT, right? And I'll get into this, you know, the discussion with you shortly. But to answer your question in terms of sites, So there isn't any other single site that is bigger than 1.4 gigawatts contiguous right now, right? The closest ones would be Corsicana. That's, if it's fully energized, it's supposed to go to one gigawatt. The other interesting one would be the Helios site, you know, that's connected to the Cottonwood substation. So it is supposed to go to 800, and then there is another massive I believe, 2.7 gigawatts for approval. So this is the question I want to ask you, right? So I don't know why Galaxy Bulls, no, the ticker is G-O-X-Y Galaxy Digital, right? So they always like to FUD iron saying that they don't have, quote unquote, official approval from ERCOT, which we dispute because we said, look, the connection agreements are signed. There is a process. to get to the point where you can sign a connection agreement. It's not from ERCOT, but it would satisfy a lot of the ERCOT requirements. And there should be no reason for ERCOT to reject a connection agreement once it's signed. They might delay it or ask for other provisions to meet requirements if they're not met. But to say that, oh, this is all fake in smoke and mirrors is complete-- no, cow manure, in my opinion. So my question to you before we get to further discussions is what kind of final approval is there? I know, like to my knowledge and I've spoken to other people, but not who work at ERCOT. Right. There isn't any kind of final approval until you get the COD. Right. Is that correct?
Speaker 6: So the you know, I'm not going to I don't want to speak out of turn here, but the key approval is going to sit with between Iron and whoever their TSP is, their transmission service provider. And I believe it's Lone Star at Sweetwater, right? Yeah. So the I have followed. I saw some commentary on that last week. It may have been you and some of the Galaxy guys. I don't know enough about that, but what I would say is they got in years ago. I'm not going to say when I got in, but it was more than a year ago. They were in well before this boom hit off and they started going aggressively towards procurement and signing their agreements with Lone Star for sure. The way I've heard Dan talk about this publicly within the last two, three weeks, to me, I think they have certainty on those megawatts between Lone Star and them at Sweetwater. The way they speak, you don't speak about that. We talk about these guys liking to sandbag it. I don't think there's any way that Dan's out there saying that he's got two gigs of certain power unless he's got two gigs of certain power. It passes the smell test for me for sure because they got in so much years ago, several years ago for Bitcoin. The load queue in ERCOT is different than the GenQ in ERCOT. The GenQ is hyper public. I could tell you in two seconds if a generator had an interconnection agreement because it's public. The load queue is not ERCOT and the PUC is working towards something to make that potentially a little bit more public. But That's a long way of saying I can't say for certain, but I can help you look into it on the side because it is something that needs to be addressed for sure.
Comma: Yeah, and I really appreciate it. I appreciate that. And what you said about the load queue and the gen queue is very relevant because I was trying to do some research on this before and it was all gen queue. There's nothing for load queue.
Speaker 6: There's no load queue, correct.
Comma: And even the gen queue, I think ERCOT should be able to to improve upon this, because right now, everything that you want to look for is not on a database. There are spreadsheets. Yeah. Right. So that's a little archaic. That's something that should be.
Speaker 6: Welcome to the power business.
Comma: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Comma: Yeah, I was going to bring up another point. So, okay, I think we should know anybody, if there's anybody who has doubts that Iron actually has you know, the power availability, I think that should be put to bed by now, right? Because if they have signed connection agreements, like you said, it's with the TSP and, you know, that approval, there shouldn't be any real problems with the approval, right? If there's anything, there's usually going to be delays for, to make sure all the requirements are fulfilled, but it's not, will not be an outright rejection. So having said that, see, one of my counter arguments to the, you know, the galaxy bowls who like to fight iron I was, I'm always asking them, okay, can you give me energization dates for Helios? And none of them can, right? And this goes back to your other question. Are there any other gigawatt sites out there or two gigawatt sites? And the answer right now is no. I've gone through so many, so many databases looking for contiguous sites, right? There's no site that is two gigawatts that's already through the queues and into a connection agreement. So that's why I come back to Iron all the time saying how valuable that is, that contiguous space. 1.4 contiguous on one site, and then you have 600 megawatts contiguous on another site. And then those are interconnected within about 40, I think 40 kilometers, not miles, 40 kilometers. That's a very short distance. That's a massive two-gigawatt site that nobody can replicate right now.
Speaker 6: It is in a class of its own. There is absolutely no doubt about it. Full stop.
Comma: Yeah. Well, when that was announced, I speak to other people who work in the power business. And I do believe 1.4 gigawatts is the maximum allowable by ERCOT on a single breaker. If it's more than that, then it has to go on a separate breaker.
Speaker 6: That's for the engineers. I don't know if that was a question or not.
Comma: Yeah.
Speaker 6: It's incredible. Yeah.
Comma: I'm so glad we had somebody from ERCOT. So, you know, it puts the bed to a lot of the FUD, right? It's like, no, I'm glad this is recorded. And, you know, some of those Galaxy Galaxy bowls that love to flood iron in the Sweetwater sites, I think they just feel threatened by the size, the size of the Sweetwater sites and the speed to energization of the Sweetwater sites that they always try to hype up Helios. But Helios, we know, no, only 800 is committed so far. There's nothing beyond that that's committed. And we don't know the energization times. We know Sweetwater 1 will be June, by the latest June, it'll be between April and June of '26. And then the other 600 megawatts is end of year 2027. So like you said, full stop, this is such a unicorn, right? That's something I've been trumpeting for a long time, is to have a contiguous site of this size. It's an absolute unicorn in terms of the space. if it's ever turned into a campus for data centers.
Speaker 6: Can I ask a really simple question on something I don't have any idea about? And I'll be done? Yeah, sure, go ahead. OK, great. So the two, and I actually saw a tweet about this from somebody. I was talking with my friend a few days ago about, you know, Iron participating, you know, having a front row seat to these two macro trends, the two biggest macro trends, probably the next 5 to 10, who knows how long, right? AI and currency debasement. My question is, does anybody roughly know on today's AI metrics that Iran's assuming what the break even in Bitcoin would have to be for them to swap back? I know they love optionality. I was even thinking down the road, to the extent debasement becomes a real thing, Bitcoin, rockets, et cetera, Iron becomes like a normal company and starts issuing a dividend, right? And what does that all mean to large shareholders? But does anybody know roughly if Bitcoin's 500K today, that equals today's GPU hourly rates? You know, anybody?
Comma: Yes, I've actually looked at that. So this was a question that was posed by somebody else on one of my threads, right? Because I have the numbers worked out, sorry, the numbers worked out for the profitability per megawatt, right? It's always good to look at things per megawatt. It's the easiest way to compare. So right now, if you're assuming the hash prices won't change, and that's a big assumption because the hash prices will always change, right, and the GPU hours are not gonna change. But at today's value, at what Iron can generate, then you're looking at somewhere around a $400,000 Bitcoin to be the equivalent of what they're running in Canada, right? And Canada's a little different because in Canada, the CapEx is so much lower, there's so much more profit margin. But if you're looking at the liquid cold versus what the the Bitcoin mining would look like it will be somewhere around $300,000 to $350,000 Bitcoin for it to match up provided it's today's current hash prices and the GPU hours of today because going into the future nobody knows how that's going to play out how the you know there's going to be decay with the GPU hours because of commoditization and you know and how the hash prices will go, right? Because it's also dependent on the network.
Speaker 6: Excellent. Thank you, guys. Appreciate these spaces.
Comma: You're welcome anytime. You see, we always need somebody from ERCOT.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Looks like we had stock meetups back up, and then we'll probably wrap this up for that.
Comma: Yeah, I have a question to Grant. ERCOT is an approval. I mean, it's a grid, right? So like other, government agencies which actually publishes the approvals and applications and their approval stages, et cetera, do you publish anything like that or it's just everything is private unless it's done completely?
Speaker 6: Is the question are large load approvals by applicants made public in the centralized spot. No, the closest you'll get to that is following the ERCOT literature when they're published at the like RPG, which is the Regional Planning Group or RTP, Regional Transmission Planning. You have to follow the ERCOT committees and it's not specific to companies because it's proprietary.
Dolce: Oh, I see.
Speaker 6: Thanks.
₿itcoin ₿utcher: Well, Grant, thank you for coming up on stage. Hope you can have it back. I think it's always interesting to get a neutral industry perspective that kind of keeps everyone from their respective factions honest so that there's no misunderstanding in what we're communicating or what is being insinuated by groups that are incentivized to promote their own interests. So thanks again for joining us, everyone. We're pushing two hours here. Really appreciate everyone's time on Sunday nights. Arguably the best part of my week. Thanks for joining us tonight. It's going to be a strong week, and the world isn't going to end. Look forward to seeing you guys next week. Have a good one.