The Pomp Podcast - #1510 Jason Les | Big Money Is Coming To Bitcoin Mining

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Jason Les is the CEO and Director of Riot Platforms, a bitcoin mining and digital infrastructure company. This conversation was recorded at Bitcoin Investor Week in New York. In this conversation we talk about the bitcoin mining landscape, regulatory changes, the truth around bitcoin mining, buying vs mining bitcoin, how to deal with bear markets, and more.=========================Bitwise is one of the largest and fastest-growing crypto asset managers. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed over $1.3 billion across an expanding suite of investment solutions, which include the world's largest crypto index fund and other innovative products spanning Bitcoin, Ethereum, DeFi, and crypto equities. Whether you’re an individual, advisor, or institution, Bitwise provides intelligent access to crypto with your unique circumstances in mind. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com to learn more. Certain of the Bitwise investment products may be subject to the extreme risks associated with investing in crypto assets. Visit www.bitwiseinvestments.com/disclosures/ to learn more.=========================Reed Smith is a dynamic international law firm dedicated to helping clients move their businesses forward. With an inclusive culture and innovative mindset, Reed Smith delivers smarter, more creative legal services that drive better outcomes for their clients. Their deep industry knowledge, long-standing relationships and collaborative structure make them the go-to partner for complex disputes, transactions, and regulatory matters. Learn more at www.reedsmith.com=========================Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/=======================View 10k+ open startup jobs:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a

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with crypto before you invest. Today's episode is brought to you by Reed Smith. Their practice of law has the power to drive progress to move businesses forward and support them in achieving their goals. By seizing opportunities and overcoming obstacles, Reed Smith is focused on outcomes. I personally use them as my law firm, and I think that they are fantastic. They know that your time is valuable and that your matters are important. Their deep industry knowledge, longstanding relationships, and collaborative structure

make them the go-to partner for complex disputes, transactions, and regulatory matters. Reed Smith delivers purposeful, highly engaged client service that drives progress for your business. Go to reedsmith.com to learn more about the best lawyers in the game. reedsmith.com go check them out today when we look at the bitcoin mining landscape how do you think about differentiating yourself or like what part of the market you guys occupy and like what your north star is so we're actually at kind of the verge in a new strategy we're employing here i think what's very exciting and valuable about riot is what bitcoin has done for us

Bitcoin has served as this, I think to borrow from Michael Saylor, this nuclear reactor that has helped us grow. It's created this asset base, both in the form of the Bitcoin that we hold on our balance sheet, we've been growing that for seven years now, and in the form of the power assets that we've been able to procure in pursuit of our Bitcoin mining strategy. So we've built up this enormous asset base that is compounding along with Bitcoin's growth. I think one of the differentiating factors for Riot now is that in addition to having this Bitcoin component, we are now looking at ways to leverage our power resources even further. A very common theme in the market these days is the rapid growth of generative AI data centers, cloud computing data

centers, and the incredible constraint on power in order to make that happen. There's this real arms race. People talk about the arms race in Bitcoin mining. It's really nothing compared to the arms race that's going on in AI and the data center development needed to support that. So what we're now doing is we have real premier power assets located in major markets with the attributes that hyperscalers are looking for. And we are looking to build out this business line now leveraging those assets. So it's a real, I think, new take, new approach that we're seeing in this sector where we both have this Bitcoin component. We're compounding our Bitcoin balance using our low-cost mining operations,

but at the same time positioning ourselves on the upside of this AI HPC sector, two rapid-growth sectors that we're pursuing simultaneously. Talk about maybe the two major facilities that you guys have or the energy kind of sources that you have in these major metros and walk me through, like, on the HPC side, what does that look like? So we have two flagship facilities in Texas.

One, our original facility was called Rockdale. It's about an hour outside of Austin. It has 700 megawatts of developed capacity today, and it gets grid power. All the power you're going to find in Texas is grid power, a mix of a lot of renewables, but a lot of baseload, nat gas generation as well. So we have a facility there, 200 acres, 700 megawatts of power. that is in operation today with all the water and, you know, dual fiber that's needed. And then our latest facility that we've been developing since really the end of 2021,

so a long time coming, is called Corsicana. That's an hour outside of Dallas. And there we have a one gigawatt interconnect approved. We've built 400 megawatts that's in operation today. And we're building an additional 600 megawatts that's coming online in the beginning of 2026. Also, we have The water and fiber there. But just like rock deal, that is An hour away from a major data center market. So when you think about the power demands that hyperscalers And ai companies need in order to succeed, these are two Assets, particularly our course that fit that demand profile.

So what we're trying to do is not necessarily build a data Center and rent to a bunch of enterprise customers. That's kind of the traditional data center model that you see. we're looking to find a hyperscaler customer who's looking to take this capacity at a very attractive rate over a long term. That allows us a blue chip counterparty where we can securitize the cash flows. And frankly, these are cash flows that the market is valuing really high. Data center REITs trade at 25x, 30x multiples. And we believe we have the assets to get there. So it's something new for us. But I think we've built an incredibly strong foundation

in order to execute, and we're rapidly bringing in all the pieces together to make this happen. When you have excess power or undeveloped power, but you're moving towards it, how do you decide Bitcoin mining versus the HPC? Is it just pure economics? I think the first thing you have to look at is, does this site have the attributes that would make it valuable for an AI HPC data center? For example, we have operations in Kentucky as well. These are smaller operations spread out over an area. Now, that's not something a hyperscaler would be looking at. So for us there, it's really no question. We can monetize stranded power with Bitcoin mining. That's the foundation that got us here. And what's interesting

is, you know, previously these sites were considered stranded power, and now they're in high demand. So we look at these, and the market today, because of the power constraints, yeah, is offering, at least with deals that we've seen signed in the market so far, generally economic terms that look very competitive better than bitcoin mining but it's not just the revenue or margins that's important here it's how the market values them the market is valuing bitcoin mining cash flows you know forward multiple of eight times right now and like i said data center reads uh trading at 20 25 x and what you know our peers that have dived have first in the strategy trading a 20x forward multiple right now. So it's not just what you can get in that

contract, it's how the market will value it. And that is what can help us create more shareholder value and allows us to execute on the other strategies we have as well. When Bitcoin miners first came to the market, they were rightfully so very proud to be Bitcoin miners. And it was all about the consumption activity. It feels like the businesses that are saying, look, we're going to do Bitcoin mining, but we're also going to do the HPC work. They're almost like pulling back and saying, no, no, no, we're actually an energy company, right? It's more about what you're providing rather than how it's being consumed. Talk a little bit about kind of why that's occurring. Is it because people believe it's not just HPC, Bitcoin mining, there will be other

use cases for this energy as well? Or do you think that it's just a cleaner way for the market to understand, hey, we do more than just one of these activities? I think it comes down to simply maximizing the value of the assets, right? We're not being dogmatic about this. We are looking at our assets and we're looking at what is going to get the most shareholder value out of those assets. So if we see the excess power and the demand for that and see something that can monetize that at a higher value than Bitcoin mining, that's something that we want to pursue. Now, at the same time, we have this Bitcoin side of our business as well. This Bitcoin foundation, the growing Bitcoin balance, like MicroStrategy and others, Bitcoin yield is a metric that we're

focused on. We generated a 39% Bitcoin yield, so increase in Bitcoin per share in 2024. And we're focused on that in 2025 as well. And it's really, we feel as Bitcoin is unlocking these opportunities in other sectors. If it wasn't for what we were doing in Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, we wouldn't have these assets and we wouldn't have them developed to the extent they are today that now have valuable other use. So, hey, as a public company, our fiduciary duty is to our shareholders. We look at these assets and we're driven to see what we can get the most out of it. And that's what it is. When you look at the regulatory environment, I think most people look at regulation and crypto and it's everything that's non-Bitcoin. That's where a lot of the questions

were. But miners have the energy regulation is a huge component of what they're doing. uh trump going into office drill baby drill energy deregulation i mean it was like every speech he was talking about this stuff um what are you seeing already change and then what do you hope changes throughout this administration we're seeing a very dramatic shift uh as a result of the shifting political landscapes if i was sitting here a year ago and i did say this at panels i did a year ago, our industry was at an existential crisis. There was a cabal of government actors out there to absolutely kill us. We were seeing it all over government from some agencies you wouldn't expect. The FDIC is trying to debank or assist in debanking cryptocurrency-related

companies. We saw the White House trying to implement taxes that would have taxed Bitcoin miners energy out of being competitive. And we had the Department of Energy trying to collect sensitive, confidential information on how all Bitcoin miners are using energy. And as an industry, we pushed back on that. Riot led, along with other industry partners, a lawsuit against the Department of Energy to stop that. And we succeeded in federal court and got an injunction, and that stopped in its tracks. And that's the kind of stuff that we were facing. An industry being singled out for using energy for no reason other than what we were using the energy for. What kind of country is that? Energy is such a fundamental thing for human flourishing.

Who is to decide who gets to use energy and what type of energy consumption could be taxed? What's next? Websites that have unpopular thoughts or opinions, they don't get to have energy to operate their data centers. Businesses that go against the grain, they don't get energy to operate as well. This is a freedom of speech thing, and it was a huge existential threat. This industry, not just Bitcoin mining, but Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry broadly was faced with. The presidential election and the other national elections around there completely changed this. We saw the attitude change from a lot of state lawmakers even when they saw the tide changing because of the Trump administration's pro-Bitcoin position. Now, it's something that legislators still have an obligation to look at, how the energy grid in their jurisdiction is functioning, what types of market tools are needed to ensure a reliable grid.

But the shift has been dramatic. So I think we're in a much better place. We don't take it for granted. We still do an incredible amount of work and lobbying in public policy. But we feel like we're operating more like a normal company at this point. So when you see that kind of sea change in regulation and in the political arena, what do you do differently now, right? It's one thing when it's, hey, I've got this huge headwind, and if the headwind becomes a tailwind, I can just keep going down the road. But it's another thing if you say, okay, now that I don't have that headwind, I can actually do things that I previously maybe thought I couldn't do, or there's opportunities that now are available.

And so are you changing any strategies or anything internally because of the change in regulation? I think what it does, it gives more certainty to the deployment of capital. When we build these facilities, we are thinking multi-decade timelines here. There's bigger expense up front to build up the campus infrastructure, but we're thinking about generations of miners are now, you know, multi-decades of AIHPC use that would be utilized there. So to know that there is a much less chance of, for lack of a better phrase, the rug being pulled on us, that gives us a lot more certainty in capital deployment. And then in turn, that makes a lot of other things easier. It makes it easier to work with strong counterparties, strong partners in achieving your mission. I'll tell you, when Riot was first doing this seven years ago,

basic things became very hard um very few if any investment banks would want to work with us law firms wouldn't want to work with us um different vendors partnerships that we had were falling apart because everyone was afraid of this industry because of the political and regulatory uncertainty around it with that eliminated it really i guess what i'm coming at is it makes us stronger what we're doing what we do we're able to bring in stronger team members internally. We're able to work with stronger external partners, and it just makes the execution of our strategies that more certain. Do you see a change in shareholder behavior now that it seems like there's going to be energy deregulation? There's more pro-Bitcoin political kind of

apparatus. Certainty for the company deploying capital obviously makes sense. What about on the other side? Like the people who are putting capital with these companies, is there more certainty and more excitement there? I do think we're starting to see the shift in how different pools of institutional capital think about this space. You know, historically, you don't see too much active deployment of capital. You know, mainly index funds, passive investors have been in Bitcoin miners and the likes. I think what we have seen is those Bitcoin mining companies that are also pursuing an AI HPC strategy as well. They are the ones that have been most successful

at diversifying their investor base and bringing some of these blue chip names in. I think one of the biggest stories recently has been a Cypher mining and the private placement that they did with SoftBank. I mean, talk about a major institution bringing $50 million into that company. I think that was a landmark thing.

And I think that's kind of a, maybe somewhat of a watershed moment of the type of capital that is coming into this space now. When you look at these facilities operating the Bitcoin mining sites themselves, there's been a ton of critics and even politicians who have said, there's too much noise there's pollution there's not as many jobs being created as previously you

know thought how do you think about you know maybe like what do the critics get right where you're like hey bitcoin mining as an industry needs to improve in these areas and then what do you think that they're actually wrong about and yeah they're just manipulating data or trying to unfairly attack the industry there's certainly a lot of manipulation and i think there are a good amount of special interest groups and i don't always know what drives them but they drive a lot of this FUD and you know if you would about bitcoin mining you hear noise complaints um hey our facilities are our air-cooled facilities are far away from any you know residential um um properties but you know i i stand at our facility and i stand outside and it's really not that loud right like

we're people talk about low frequency noise whatever we're in new york city right like with trucks and ACs, all right, how much low frequency vibrations do you think are going on around here? So I think it's largely overstated. I think nonetheless, the industry is getting better at insulating itself from these types of criticisms. People are getting better at noise control. The use of immersion cooling and liquid cooling obviously takes noise down a lot. One of the things that we did when we came in with our Corsicana facility is we committed, we were building that with 100% immersion. And that was a big undertaking. We built a 400 megawatt immersion facility, the construction side of which took place in under a year. No one's ever built,

as far as I'm aware, 400 megawatts of immersion cooled infrastructure. And we did it, you know, both for operational and financial reasons, but also to make sure that we were protecting from any potential criticism around that. You know, as far as the water use goes, that's something that, That's a criticism data centers more broadly face. Bitcoin miners use a fraction of the water that data centers use. Nonetheless, we have seen substantial improvement in that over the recent years. As we have different vendors competing for our business on the immersion side, the immersion does use some water for cooling.

And we've seen water consumption go down over 50% in a very short time period. So there's a lot of motivation, not just in Bitcoin mining, but in the data center space to get this a lot better. Now, as far as you ask, what do these critics get, right? Generally, not a whole lot, to be honest. I can't really give them any credit. I think historically, Bitcoin mining operations have maybe been a little crude in just their appearance.

And I think we're at a phase of really the kind of industrial scale, institutional development of Bitcoin mining now, where you're seeing these facilities look a lot more clean a lot more professional. At Riot, we take things like safety and security very seriously, but we do not ever want to put anyone or anything at risk. And we built out a safety program befitting a very large company in order to enforce that. So I think the industry is getting a lot of things right. I think there's always room for improvement, but we've come a long ways. renewable energy the last numbers that i saw i think that over 60 percent of the energy mix

was coming from renewable or around 60 percent um the average american industry is at like 18 percent which would suggest that bitcoin mining uses three times as much renewable in their energy mix as the average american industry why is that not held up as you know the example that what every industry should try to do is get to over 50% renewables versus kind of the standard 18%. That's something I have been shouting from the rooftops for some five years, and people are still skeptical about that figure. And the reason is, is they don't understand how it happens. The Bitcoin mining industry isn't 50 to 60% renewable because we're out there buying RECs and, you know, different types of renewable credits. It's that way because Bitcoin mining

has been capturing stranded energy. Stranded energy is renewable energy. You would be very scarce to find some nuclear nat gas plant while they exist. Generally, there's not a ton of stranded nat gas power that's not being used, at least once a generation facility has been constructed on that.

The surplus energy is from this wind that is blowing and generating power at night when no one's using it, or the solar that's generating power during the day and hours that are not using it. That's where Bitcoin miners are coming to solve a problem. Texas has some 40, 45%, I think now, wind generation, in its generation, fuel mix.

Solar, I don't know the latest number. It's over 10, probably going on 20% now. And at the same time, Texas is some 15% of all Bitcoin mining globally. Bitcoin mining is helping solve supply, demand, imbalances in energy in Texas. and it's also doing that all over the world. So it's because Bitcoin mining is location agnostic, because it's interruptible,

it is able to consume more energy and solve these real energy problems. And I think it's something the industry should be proud of. And I think it's something that should be noticed more. When you have capital, you now have a couple of different options. You can invest more to mine Bitcoin, get it onto the balance sheet.

You can buy Bitcoin, put it on your balance sheet. You can invest in the HPC work that you're doing. And there probably will be other things in the future that you can kind of add in. But specifically on buying Bitcoin versus mining Bitcoin, how do you think about the tradeoffs there and kind of a one-time purchase for future appreciation versus investing in, let's say, infrastructure that then can mine for, you know, for some number of years? Yeah, of course, capital allocation is one of the key decisions management teams and boards are always making. At Riot, what we do is we use our Bitcoin mining operations to effectively buy Bitcoin. And because of our low direct cost of production, because of the low cost of power, we're able to achieve 3.4 cents per kilowatt hour all in in 2024. What we're effectively doing with our mining operations is dollar cost averaging into Bitcoin every single day.

For most all of 2024, except for a few beginning weeks in the year, we retained all of the Bitcoin that we mined onto our balance sheet. We added, we also issued our first convertible note and with the net proceeds of around 570 million, we bought Bitcoin with that. So we added over 10,000 Bitcoin to our balance sheet in 2024 after starting with a little over 7,000. That's where we had, that's how we generated this Bitcoin yield alongside equity issuance that we had to support all of that. So I think what you see Riot doing is leveraging its low-cost mining operations to add Bitcoin to the balance sheet gradually over time and effectively doing so with our low direct costs at a cost less than the market price of Bitcoin. And that is the most accretive way that we have found to add Bitcoin to our balance

sheet, in addition to the convertible note. Great opportunity, something that MicroStrategy has certainly led the way on. Very low cost of capital route to add Bitcoin. We did a convertible note with a 75 basis point coupon that matures in five years and you know the way bitcoin performs that's a very comfortable time to maturity that we felt we could deploy uh that capital to bitcoin behind so it's really using the tools that are uniquely available to us to buy bitcoin not just going out there and you know buying it in a vacuum when um you think about the business a big focus i think for you all uh has been driving efficiency talk a little bit about like what does that mean and then what are the things that you guys have done so far that has gotten you the most gain in

efficiency right because it's a lot of different actions you have to take but what have been like the big winners or the big areas where you've made up uh some room on the efficiency front yeah my mind goes three different directions when you ask that i think about efficiency from a power perspective i think about an efficiency from a machine perspective and i think about efficiency from an operating perspective. I think Riot has really led the pack in our power strategy. We've assembled a very strong capability in both procuring power, but also executing an ongoing power strategy. What we've done with procuring power hedges, participating in the ancillary service and demand response programs in ERCOT and other grids now is what has driven

that low energy cost. And that is the key input cost for Bitcoin miners. So if you are exceptionally good at your energy cost, you are going to be an efficient producer. And that makes machine efficiency, how much joules per terahash a machine requires to generate hash rate, that makes that less important, still important. And for that, we've been driving, procuring the latest generation equipment. But operating efficiency and how you execute there, I think is really important too, especially because we're you know riot and others are are doing this at a scale that's never been done before um there's been so much growth in bitcoin mining over the last year we're operating now these multi-hundred megawatt sites very few of those exist and operating things at scale it's a

lot it's a lot more difficult to operate uh uh you know 400 megawatts 700 megawatts than it is You know, four or seven megawatts. And the complexity scale is a little different than what you Might think. And the way we've driven Efficiency there is finding good people and empowering them to Make decisions. It's something we talk a lot About is decentralized command. And giving stakeholders the Ability to drive decisions up the chain.

You know, it's not a top-down approach in how we're going to accomplish something. It's putting the input and decision making to those on the ground that know it best. And I feel like what we have seen is empowering leaders on the ground drives better results. When you're watching this all play out, Bitcoin's price has been going up for the last year. That's good news. When you see the Bitcoin price go down, miners historically have had a lot of pain. HPC seems to be diversifying a little bit of that cyclicality. What else have you guys learned about how to deal with the bear markets? And do you expect a bear market to still happen in these kind of four-year cycles? I don't know what the future will look like. You know,

the four-year cycles are certainly clear to see looking back on the charts now. I would like to think that the increased adoption and the changing political and regulatory landscape should dampen the downturns. And you think about the downturns we've encountered in the past, there's always been a sense of is this it right like people wondered you know ftx goes down three hours capital we were like is this it is this the end of the industry you know going back chinese money chinese bitcoin ban is this it um the uh mount gox going down people want is this the end of the whole industry so these things have happened in the past that have felt existential and every time we we make these new leaps and reach new heights with this industry i think we reduce that

risk. But for us at Riot, the key thing that we have found to withstand this volatility is balance sheet strength. We've always prioritized having a lot of cash on the balance sheet, having Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and keeping debt very manageable in order to ensure that we can make it through this volatility and reach the long term. I have no doubt in Bitcoin's success long term. I have no doubt at all. So what we need to do as a company is get there. Historically, we've had no long-term debt, the convertible debt, I think unique product that we felt very comfortable with, especially its size relative to our asset base and the amount of Bitcoin that we've held. But we continue to prioritize keeping a strong cash balance, understanding that we need

to make it through all market conditions, not just the best ones or not just the normal ones. Innovation is really the name of the game in mining. We have innovation on hardware. You guys mentioned, building out the infrastructure for the energy itself. I would even argue the innovative business models that people are starting to kind of pursue and figure out how to do this. What are the areas of innovation that either you guys are working on that you're excited about or areas where you say, hey, there hasn't been enough innovation here and that's something that we are looking for people who can go solve these problems? I think the immersion cooling is a key area that Riot has focused on, you know, perhaps as much as anyone because we first built

our large-scale immersion cooling in 2021, we announced 200 megawatts of immersion. At that time, that was the biggest immersion deployment ever made. We learned a lot from that. And when we built our new facility at Corsicana, we're like, now we're going to build 400 megawatts. And in fact, we were originally looking to build one gigawatt of immersion at that site. So there was a lot of innovation involved working with partners to make this better and better. For example, we talked about the water efficiency improvements. That was important. We have felt that immersion cooling is a really important technology to keep machines operating at stable temperatures in order to prolong their useful life. I think especially with what we're able to achieve with a low cost of power, we can get a lot out of machines for a very long time as long as they continue operating.

Hash rate, mining hardware, that's the number one expense that a Bitcoin miner has. And I think our innovation here is going to help prolong miner machine life cycles. We depreciate them at a three-year schedule on our financials. That's more accounting driven. But we believe that we can get much more time out of them. And I think that's going to be a very important part to being competitive in Bitcoin mining to drive a strong return on capital because it's going to reduce the amount of machine refreshes you ultimately have to do.

And it's very important that's coupled with a strong power strategy as well by keeping that power costs low doing things in demand response programs helps helps you achieve that so similarly extends the competitive life of those machines do the other miners help you or do they hurt you when it comes to capital markets and this is something that i've thought a lot about if there's this classic like restaurant problem if you have one restaurant at an intersection does okay you put a second one everyone always thinks the second one puts the first one out of business but what studies show is the more density you get at the intersection then that kind of becomes like ah what do you want to eat let's just go down to the corner

and we'll figure out what restaurant we want to go to um is that what's happening in the capital markets with miners is like as there's been more miners who have had success capital markets are becoming more familiar or do you see it being more of a zero-sum game from an investment standpoint i think it is something that the market has become more familiar with right there's a ton of institutional there's a ton of investment bank coverage of this space now of lots of different miners. I do think that the space is a bit more wider, a bit more wide than it will be long-term. There's a lot of capital obviously flowing around the space. I still think it's often difficult for investors to differentiate between these different companies and decide

which one is better for me, which one has the best long-term value proposition. So while this is a theme we've talked about on Fireside Chats like these for a while, I do believe there will be industry consolidation over time, but I believe alongside that will be an increasing flow of capital into this space. There's been a good amount of miners in the public markets for a while. I believe Riot was, I won't say the first in case I'm wrong, but at least one of the first Bitcoin miners on NASDAQ back in 2017. We've been doing this And there's been a number of names around the same time Period, and we see, you know, more dspacs and ipos kind of

Every year now. So i think there is a bit of An education that's going on in the market right now, and over The long term we'll see more consolidation amongst those Options. But it's overall good because It's driving competition, which is driving management teams to get to better results ladies and gentlemen jason les riot ceo thank you