Bitfarms & Core Scientific News: IREN, BITF & CORZ Stock News!

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel McNally Money, the official home of power analysis.

An interesting day to start off the week, widely expected the market to sell off today,

doesn't appear to be the case, at least for the AI slash Bitcoin mining sector.

We're going to be talking about that in addition to news out from Core Scientific and Bitfarms

in today's presentation.

Before we get into it, take a second, smash the like button, guys, big help to myself

in the channel.

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feel free to join.

Let us know in the comment section below if you're currently holding either Core Scientific

or Bitfarms and your thoughts moving forward.

With that being said, let's get into today's video.

Alright guys, Monday afternoon, the start of another exciting trading week, a lot of

geopolitical drama over the weekend.

We saw Bitcoin price fluctuate futures opened up last night or pre-market trading, looking

very scary, however, both Bitcoin and the miners seem to be fairing relatively well on what's

been dubbed Black Monday 2.0.

So we'll start with Bitcoin here, Anthony, you can see starting to trend once again up towards

at $70,000 range, currently sitting just below $69,000 and up a healthy 4.5% over the

last 24 hours.

Yeah, had a nice bump today.

The last of the three or four days, we've seen it pull back from its higher, about $74,000.

As I say, these one day swings, just try and zoom out a little bit and focus on bigger

picture.

But yeah, start the week, ages come online and help bring the Bitcoin price up, followed

by Europe and US now trying to keep it in that $68,000, $69,000 range.

They certainly are and you can see on the five day down 5% over the last five days, but

up 5% in the last 24 hours.

So essentially trading where we were Friday of last week, now one individual taking advantage

of the dip, Michael Sayler, interestingly enough, paying nearly $71,000 a coin, but aggressively

adding to the strategy, hurdle position.

Yeah, I mean, this is a normal Monday update for strategy and Michael puts out a tweet

basically saying, how many is bought?

It's a significant amount this Monday though.

And it looks like based on the price and looking at the five day graph, this was probably

done towards the end of last week when the Bitcoin price was about $70,000 or $71,000 because

that's how much he paid for it.

He's bought just under $18,000 Bitcoin for $1.28 billion.

Now, so around about $71,000 per Bitcoin, and that takes his hurdle, as at yesterday's

date, to $738,731, now he's paid a total of $56 billion for that, which if you work out

the average cost per Bitcoin, it's around about $75,862 per coin.

So currently showing, you know, a bit of a loss, probably about $7,000 per coin, but

as I'd say, he's got his eyes focused on the future, not on the day-to-day moves of

Bitcoin, and he's been very, very bullish in recent interviews, suggesting that the Bitcoin

market can grow to something like $200 trillion.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy to think he's working his way close to the Satoshi wallet over

$738,000 Bitcoin, and you'll notice now the buys have actually increased in size strategy

leveraging their products stretch, which is essentially the preferred yield or equity

product.

That's going to allow them to raise money and purchase Bitcoin on the dips, as opposed

to using the ATM at the highs that we saw last year.

So an interesting approach, and continuing to stack.

Now strategy, obviously leading the corporate adoption curve, however, if you take a look

at all of the public companies now, not just the top 100, showing over 190 corporations

that have put Bitcoin on balance sheet.

So we often talk about the HODL 15 top 100, but to your point last week, Anthony, the

list is quite a bit longer than he shows on the top 100.

Yeah, I mean, at the moment, it looks like we've got closer to 200 public companies that

now hold Bitcoin, and bear in mind, you only have to go back 15 months ago.

I think we were at 70, and our good friend, HODL 15, used to have the table there now to

get on that table of 70, had to have about three Bitcoin as a whole different ballgame

today.

To get in the top 100, you've got to have 150 Bitcoin on the balance sheet, and that really

then sorts out those that are really growing their treasury from those that are trying to

grow their treasury.

So a hundred of these companies have significantly more than 150 Bitcoin on the balance sheet.

And obviously, strategies in number one place there.

And it also includes obviously, you know, the Bitcoin infrastructure here, which is, you

know, some of the miners that we highlight the day-to-day basis, the likes of, you know,

Mara, Riots, Hote, Cypher, Mining, A, B, T, C, Bit, Foo, Foo.

These fair are actually on the first column of that top 100.

So in the sort of top 33, still got a number of miners in that space there.

But we have seen in recent months now some of the miners have been starting to sell their

Bitcoin to cover their operational expenses.

And you know, there's only so far you can go with pushing other levers until the point

in time when you're then left to think about, you know, do you start selling some of

the sets?

And it looks like, from the recent updates that we've had, a number of miners, like Clean

Spark, like DMG, like Bit Foo Foo, selling a bit of their HODL, still maintaining significant

amounts, but still using some of that regular monthly production to cover their operational

in some instances, some of their capital costs as well.

And this has been going on, you know, for the last five or six years since I've been

in there, but in some of these miners were actually building a bit dear building a stack

over the last couple of years.

They've sold their whole stack now, core scientific building over the last couple of

years.

Once they were allowed to remember chapter 11, basically get prevented them from actually

owning Bitcoin for more than 10 days.

So they have a caveat within their agreement coming out of chapter 11 that they had to

sell within 10 days of mining.

And that was because they had significant debt to manage.

And once that debt was in a more manageable position, that came in the ability.

So once it was, they started to grow, we've just heard literally from the company that

they started to sell significant amounts.

And they had something like over two and a half thousand Bitcoin as at the end of the

year, but that's now down to about 700 Bitcoin.

So they've been selling as well to cover some of their costs.

So a bit of uncertainty in the space, they're in terms of treasury for miners, but believe

you me, there's enough of her entities out there wanting to buy Bitcoin and strategy

leads away in that point.

They certainly do.

Yeah.

And we just heard from the number two corporate hotler, Mara, they've updated their strategy

to enable Bitcoin sales as well, if needed.

So interesting development there.

Now moving from corporate to personal adoption, we've often quoted around 50 million Americans

involved in crypto.

That now appears to be 50 million Americans just in Bitcoin.

And if you compare that to gold, not only have we already surpassed gold, but you can

see the rate of growth is just incredible, again, all things pointing to a positive adoption

curve for Bitcoin.

Yeah.

We saw this with the ETS, you know, that the time it took the Bitcoin ETF to achieve, you

know, within I think a year of the ETF being out there, it already achieved something that

took gold.

I think it was nearly 10 years to get to that same level.

So people have definitely been investing a lot longer.

But, you know, that 37 million Americans owning gold, been done over a long period of time,

you know, people have like generations, two or three generations before them, who are

sort of like we're doing this on a regular basis.

Bitcoin hasn't been around that long, it's something around what, 16 years, 17 years maybe.

And so, you know, there's not that opportunity to have had a long time to get involved, but

we've seen sort of like more and more adoption these last four or five years.

A lot more people coming into the space, a lot more opportunities to buy Bitcoin through

things like the ETF as well.

And so, no real surprise that is significant amount.

And also, Bitcoin starting to appear as a sort of like a political point, really.

And this is something that the Republicans jumped all over during the last election, because

they were very much positive.

You look at the cabinet for the Republicans there, it's very much predicated on people

that have an interest in Bitcoin, you support Bitcoin, you want Bitcoin to be potentially

the strategic reserve for the US.

And so, you know, this is just basically saying what the vast majority of Americans are doing,

they're buying Bitcoin.

They certainly are, yeah, and despite this buying again, the headlines completely torn,

you can see the prediction markets still high probability of Bitcoin falling below 60,000.

At the same time, we've got analysts, including Michael Sailor saying it's going much higher.

So, your guess is as good as ours, but the dollar cost averaging approach seems to work.

And to your point, Anthony, you can actually get Bitcoin today at a better price than Sailor's

average himself.

Now, the other headline we were following last week, the Clarity Act, it sounds like the

Democrats are starting to come around here, another version of the bill.

We're still waiting to finalize dates and headlines.

And we're widely anticipating the Clarity Act to be that next big catalyst in the space.

Now, you found an interesting clip or note from Plan B, Anthony.

I'll pass it back to you.

Yeah, Plan B's, obviously, been in a space of quite some considerable time now.

I think the 2015 started looking at this stock to flow concept and looking how the cycles

were working and sort of effectively how they were repeated themselves.

And if we're now to believe that we are in any other sort of effects than we'd like a business

cycle, he's suggesting looking at where Bitcoin is on the stock to flow diagram,

that it's got some way to go higher because he's potentially seeing a really big number,

something like $300,000.

Now, time frame, that could be 2026, but he's shown the last time he had this sort of like a forecast

of this level was back in 2019 when I think the Bitcoin price was 4,000 and he was predicting

55,000 and lo and behold, in 2021, we sort of like got to 69,000 as an all-time high during there.

So he sort of like was was very much at the early stage of forecasting that that rise in the

previous cycle. He's now coming along now saying looking at the charts, looking at the last four

cycles and doing the analysis on there.

So as I say, just have a look at all these various analysts in the space there.

There's no one right way. As we say for as many people saying we're going to 300,000 or a million

or 13 million over the next 10 years, whatever, and there is enough people saying the opposite

direction as well. But he just gives you a different perspective on it. He has a big following in

the space and generally, if you look at his stock to flow compets where the Bitcoin price is going,

he tends to follow it quite well.

It does. Yeah, and he's a well-known name in the space. I've seen a lot of those rainbow

diagrams, so to speak, talking about the trend lines and Bitcoin trading towards the bottom of

that range. So it'll be interesting to see if that prediction comes true as well, Anthony.

Now, oils, another one we're watching right now broke through $100 per barrel. This is the first

time since 2022. You can see over the weekend up 23%. I know this is obviously impacting local

gas prices, but you start to think of this on the transportation, the procurement, the energy

price side of things. This could have big impacts on our sector if things continue.

It can do. And I was actually looking this morning at what the fuel price in the UK is.

If you look at our liter of fuel costs and compare it to where it was just literally

one month ago, it's up about 20% in that period of time. And I was quite surprised. I tend

to believe that some of the petrol companies they have enough stock to cover the next few

months and therefore, any sort of short rises or spikes in prices won't impact the consumers

quickly, but this one, you know, the war only commenced just over a week ago and we're already

seeing big spikes. I also heard that in certain countries, they're starting to run out of fuel,

which is like, wow, this is something really quick. So this has got the potential to get worse

before it gets better. And we've been through these issues before, whether the oil price does

escalate significantly. Fortunately, there were a few people that managed to get some investments

into oil stocks just before the wall was broken. There you go. Yeah. My wife's an oil and gas.

And it's a pretty happy time in the sector right now. I'll say here in Calgary, Alberta. Now

moving into data center news, this is another story we wanted to tie up from last week. We heard

there was some drama between Oracle, their Stargate project and open AI, potentially delaying or

canceling a few buildings within that portfolio. Over the weekend, it sound like Meadow was willing

to step in, maybe make a bid. And now Oracle's coming out and saying, hey, maybe pause on that

story. We're still on track. We're still moving ahead. So again, overwhelming demand. We'll talk

about that in relation to iron a little bit later, but all systems go in terms of Bitcoin adoption,

corporate adoption and AI or HPC demand. Now that brings us into the miners. I mentioned in the intro,

a nice little surprise this morning. You and I were buckling up for a very red or volatile day

to kick off the week. It looks like the miners holding their ground relatively well,

perhaps on the move in Bitcoin, but right now about half of them showing some strength with

Mara actually in the lead. Yeah, Mara showing it at some fair and also DMG, but the rest

really just bubbling above zero or below zero. And as I say, Bitcoin price, whether it's some

decoupling, whether it's world events, but maybe some of the retail investors moving away.

You look at the volume, I always look at the Bitfarm volume because it's not too many months

ago. We were quoting 100 million shares a day in Bitfarm's down to 17 million today, which is half

the three month average. And we're about halfway through the trading day. So looks like volumes

are down there. And looking at the 52-week range, it's not looking any better than it was a couple

of weeks ago there with only sort of terror wolf and putate, really arguably probably halfway

towards 52-week high. So that's the challenge at the moment. I think a lot of people in the space,

if they've held a stock over the last three or four months, will be sort of like, look,

sort of looking at their portfolios and thinking, well, I'm down maybe 20-30 percent. What's the

opportunity to recover that? And as I say, we'll wait out for more news on Bitcoin price, but

more importantly, for the amount of these companies now, it's all about deals in HPC because pretty

much all the companies on that list have sort of now started to focus delivering power from their

strategy into HPC and slowly move away from Bitcoin mining. They certainly are. And we have an

update directly related to that from Core Scientific and actually Bitfarms, as you just mentioned.

However, I did want to jump into the heat map quickly. Maybe you can walk us through the story

you're hearing here. Again, the one year we've got some strong producers or results, but things to

your point are definitely waning off a little bit from those highs. Yeah, if you look at the year

to date change now, so we're now sort of coming towards halfway through March and we're seeing

6% down as an average for the first two and a half months of the year. A couple of stocks that have

been OK, Walt Terri Wolfe, or up 20 cents to start the year, right also 12% there, but the rest

really not really doing anything. Bit dear, probably having the worst position from the start of

the year, that's down 36%. But yet a lot more red on the heat map today. A couple of days ago,

it was like we were seeing a lot more green or white on the today and the five day clones.

It just shows you how quickly things can change. Even the one month period there, down 15% on

average with only Mara having any upside in the one month period there. But the year ago,

obviously stocks did do really really well, actually. I remember the Bitcoin price rallied all

the way up to 126,000 and that took a lot of the mining stocks with them and also the news with

all these deals coming online there in terms of HPC. It's those companies that have really managed

to do well over that last 12 months, but at least half the stocks there, still in the red from

over a year ago. That's disappointing for retail investors to see that not everyone's

been able to move as well as the likes of Ira and Terri Wolfe and Cypher.

It's interesting to see how the sentiment changes around these companies too over the past few

years. We've had favorites. We've had companies that were favorites that maybe fall out of the

spotlight. Mara seems to have kind of hit bottom, getting some attention now. I've started to see

a lot more posts about that, maybe a potential value opportunity. Now Bitfarms is another one you

mentioned has pulled back from their highs. We know Ben Gagnon was buying shares on the open market

late last year. They've now come out with a big press release talking about expanding the

experience, the depth of leadership, but again, moving into that HPC AI space and recognising

the importance of human capital. They've brought in a number of strategic highs in terms of

their infrastructure and also building up their corporate teams as well. With these additions,

they bring plenty of expertise in power development, last scale construction, permitting and

corporate scaling as the company accelerates. It's built out across its portfolio. I've just

mentioned a few of the names, Michael Byrne, Senior Vice President Construction. He's got over a decade

of hyperscale data central experience across continents. He leads Bitfarms into end-to-end HPC AI

construction from concept to commissioning, not Christopher Ruple, SVP, Power, 20 plus years in

end-to-end optimization for computing for structure. He's also developed four gigawatts of

project and he joins from Mara to handle power strategies for AI environments. Paul Peterson,

Vice President HPC Operational, he's got over 20 years in data center engineering, overseeing

operations, compliance and reliability for hyperscale clients at Bitfarms. Kevin Roberts,

no relation to the two at Iron, he's direct to permitting. 20 years in regulatory leadership

for energy and data center manages permitting and compliance for Bitfarms HPC AI campuses. Tara

Goldstein, who we have dealt with, cheesed the SVP for marketing, 20 plus years in marketing,

for real estate tech and builds Bitfarms, global brand communications and positioning from New

York office. And finally, Thomas Thurie, the third, he's the Senior Vice President, Finance

and Strategy. So his expertise is obviously in the finance for energy infrastructure and he's led

an IPO and financing at Stronghold now handles Bitfarms capsule HPC AI partnership. So we've

talked about teams before and building teams in readiness for this transition from Bitcoin mining

to high-forms compute. Bitfarms obviously making sure they've got all the rights attributes

in the right place at the right time to deliver it because believe you me, they've got a significant

amount of power available in that sort of Pennsylvania area ready to drive there. They've already

started to work on their Washington site and 18 megawatts site there. They managed to get the

funding put together for that. That's about 128 million dollars. And we've talked about this before,

you know, these companies, when they're going to HPC, the money that that capsule that you need

to deliver some of these projects is significantly bigger than they were for Bitcoin mining.

If you think it's an easy option, it's not an easy option. But the rewards are there for those

that are successful in delivering it and the markets, obviously liking what they see in terms of

none of these companies and Bitfarms, one of those companies that we talked about on the heat map

there. They're certainly in green territory from the year ago position. So hopefully once they

start to announce more use for those sites, including Panther Creek and Skruggrass and Sharon,

which are their Pennsylvania sites all located around hyperscaler. So we know that particular area

is strong for HPC and they've got three sites there. They certainly do and the sites up in Quebec,

Canada as well. So funny update here. We've seen many press releases with one or two key hires,

Ben Gagnon tops out with half a dozen and a huge step in the right direction. Now core scientific,

we covered their earnings last week. There was a lot of information in there. We haven't heard from

the company since their last quarterly presentation around the Halloween time frame. We wanted to

double click on a key piece here. I think a lot of people are overlooking. Now core scientific

is trading below where the share price was last year on the rumors of that core weave merger

acquisition. It's now pulled back despite announcing an expanded portfolio. So they added 730 megawatts

just in this last update. There was a couple of site expansions. There was a new site acquisition

and we wanted to spend a little bit of time on this because when you look at core scientific,

the size of their deal compared to their peers, they are still punching well above their weight

and it doesn't seem the market has given them that re-rate despite starting to see revenue come in.

Yeah, they haven't been given the re-rate as some of their peers have

considering at the moment in terms of compute power, they still have the largest deal out there

and it's a great deal. In terms of borrowing, they've got advanced on the capital from core weave

to deliver those refurbishments to the sites that they're operating. There's five sites across

their portfolio that they're delivering buildings in readiness to let core we've put their GPUs

in and obviously start their HPC from there. But this announcement today covers two particular

areas. One is the increase of current sites and those current sites are Peacos in Texas and Dalton,

which are going to be extended in terms of capacity. By around about 300 megawatts in total,

the remaining megawatts from this increase of 730 comes from the purchase or the signing of a

a new long large land and power agreement at one of the fastest growing co-location markets

sites there. This is the Hunt Campus, a 265 acre, which is expected to deliver 430 megawatts

of growth power. Now, I'm looking where it says it's the head offices for Hunt Campus are in

Dallas itself and the actual site is strategically located less than 50 miles away from Dallas

and already has key PAL milestones complete, including a clear-int connection path with an

ERCOT approved energization schedule. So from that 430 megawatts of growth power, they should be

able to achieve a run about 285 megawatts of compute customer-leasable capacity. This is another

positive update from Core Scientific. Remember, they're still going to quite a bit of power

in their developed stage already for new partners around the US. This is just another

addition to that there, taking their power to probably now getting closer to two gigawatts

in total. It is. It's just a bit of a head scratch. I'm not sure if it was the drama with CoreWeave

or what the concern is, maybe with the partnership, but it seems they're well along in this process

and just not getting the recognition that we would expect. Again, a great example of a company

that was in the spotlight, the retail darling, went quiet for a couple of quarters and now maybe

regaining a bit of ground. The other topic we wanted to touch on today, Iron. Now, we're still waiting

for our interview with Kent Draper, obviously looking forward to discussing with the team. We did

hear from Dan Roberts, the co-CEO last night on a spaces courtesy of Bitcoin butcher and friends

backer. This was an interesting one, Anthony. You and I both got to tune in a bit of confusion in

terms of the daylight savings there, so an hour later than expected, but great to hear Dan

addressing many questions around the ATM, the gross strategy, and this air cooled strategy in Texas.

All be it for the issues with sound quality and delay, because of daylight hours, I thought it was

a good update and Dan said that it dodged any questions. One of the big questions that was raised

was obviously the $6 billion ATM, which we highlighted on the podcast last week. Now, in previous

ATMs, Iron have gone out there and used lines of those ATMs in very, very short space of time,

but Dan gave assurances last night that it wasn't the case of we've got $6 billion, we're going to

go and sell now and raise that money very, very quickly and dilute shareholders. From what he was

saying, he's got all the funding he needs for the children's site there and growing that 200 megawatt

deal with Microsoft there. So they've raised the $9 billion for that. Remember, they gave an

update in their earnings, which showed they had about 2.8 billion in cash. They have some

convertible notes and also a leasing structure for the Nvidia machines that will be operating in

a Ryzen 123 and 4 there. So, plenty of opportunities, but what I suppose the $6 billion

gives iron, it gives them optionality. Dan was clear that they don't have to go down the routes

of the leasing deal, if they feel they can use the ATM there to cover the cost of those machines.

Also, remember, they've just purchased another 50,000 machines, the most of which will go operational

in British Columbia. So they're constantly delivering a similar CSP deal there. They obviously

quite like this type of strategy. It's a very much risk and reward. You're taking all the risks

of the GPUs, but you're getting the rewards of having the revenues at first hand and not having

to effectively get that water down in terms of maybe some of the deals that we've seen already

for co-location. I've said a long day and I still like the co-location. Maybe the sweet water sites,

which, you know, sweet water one, Dan clarified that not only are they going to get energised,

it's sweet water one will get energised in quarter two, but also the fact that he reminded people

that April itself was in quarter two. So I don't think people's too concerned about that, but I think

it's just showing that, you know, in the next sort of three to four months, we'll see that

energisation. They are in constant communication on a daily basis with all the sort of like

relevant companies that people are talking about in the space there. They didn't want to really

go into too much more detail than that there. They know they have the power. They know they have

the ability. They know they're proving their proof of concept is delivering at the moment in

British Columbia. They've been doing HPC now for some considerable years now. One of the first

companies to sort of like really start this along with the lines of Hive Digital and Bit Digital.

So they've got plenty of experience. This year was going to be a massive year for iron in terms

of that growth. Remember they originally started, stated that they get to sort of like 500 million

annual lines revenue in the first quarter of 2026. Whether that happens, we'll see from the next

earnings update, but they've clearly got a very, very big number to achieve by the end of the

year. They really do 3.7 billion. And yes, funny about the April month discussion there,

answer to the question. To me, it's really a question of strategy here. Dan talked about some of

his peers locking up their power for 10, 15, 20 plus years. So essentially saying, why would you

want to sell away your power as the demand's increasing? The other camp, I guess, are the side

that some of the peers are saying is we know power generation is coming on. We know the hyperscalers

are building out their own power generation. We've got a window here where we have the power.

We want to optimize it. So it'll be interesting to see how that CSP model versus the co-location

works out in the long term. But right now, it sounds like iron is focused on the GPU acquisition

and CSP model. Now with that being said, you guys, we got some big news out from Bit Farms today

in terms of staffing. We had some news out in terms of sites from Core Scientific and Update

from Iron. We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. Also keep in mind,

minor madness 5.0 now about two and a half weeks out from the finale. Make sure you check that out

on the power analysis website. Also available on there is the heat map and individual minor pages

as well. So with that being said, Anthony, a good start to the week could have been a lot worse

and we'll see you back here tomorrow.