Bitcoin Miner Riot Leases Part of Its Texas Mine to an AI Lab

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In Today's Note

• Riot Platforms signed a 20-year lease for 191MW at its Rockdale, Texas campus with an unnamed frontier AI lab, worth an expected $9.1B of contracted revenue through 2048, with two extensions that could take it to $16.1B. Its shares rose more than 25% after hours.
• Brent jumped from $83 to $89 as prospects for a Strait of Hormuz deal dimmed, with Trump now demanding compensation from Iran. BTC slipped from $65K to $64K, and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said a hiking cycle may be needed.

Market Snapshot: Overnight Moves

Macro & Markets

• A rally in oil coincided with a risk off move in crypto prices and US equities amidst stalling progress on a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz.
• Brent crude oil jumped from $83 to $89 and BTC fell from $65K down to $64K.
• Most shares in the S&P 500 traded in the red with the index closing modestly lower at 0.058%.
• The Nasdaq-100 closed lower by 0.34%, while chipmakers plunged 2.94%.

• President Trump lashed out against Iran's demands for war compensation as part of a deal to open up a pathway through the Hormuz Strait, dimming the prospects of a quick deal.
• On Truth Social Trump wrote, "I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran, for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts … Additionally, compensation should be paid to the families of the hundreds of thousands of innocent protestors that Iran has killed over the last 50 years."
• Earlier on Sunday Trump touted a new approach against Iran involving letting economic pressure build on the country,rather than another wave of military strikes.
• Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters yesterday that, "As long as hostile actions continue, the conditions for ensuring the safety of this waterway are not in place. Its reopening is contingent on the US ceasing its illegal actions, lifting the siege and compensating for damages."

• In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack suggested an interest rate hiking cycle may be needed by the Fed in order to reign in on five years of above target inflation, though caveated her point by saying she does not want to prejudge any specific end point.
• “I would say in general, one 25-basis-point move probably doesn’t do a whole lot for the economy. So it’s probably some number” but “I don’t want to prejudge what that number is going to be.”

• On the Fed, President Trump downplayed the frequency and length of his conversations with current chair Kevin Warsh.
• On Monday he said he had spoken to Warsh only once “briefly” since he joined the Fed, despite one of his own top economic advisers and people familiar saying the talks have occurred more often.
• “I’ve only spoken to him one time briefly a few days ago, just a conversation. They made it sound like I live and breathe, you know, I speak to Kevin all the time, every time” Trump said.

DeFi / Web3 / Altcoins / Crypto3

• Bitmine Immersion Technologies, the world’s largest corporate ETH holder, added 7,391 ETH over the past week, taking its treasury to 5.81M ETH, around 4.8% of Ethereum’s circulating supply.
• Around 5.07M ETH, worth $9.8B, is staked through Bitmine’s MAVAN platform and staking partners, with the company projecting approximately $257M in annualized staking revenue as it approaches its target of owning 5% of ETH supply.
• Bitmine also repurchased 3 million shares during the week, bringing buybacks since July to 19.1M shares, while its total holdings across crypto, cash, marketable securities and other investments stand at $11.6B.

• Zama, a blockchain privacy company developing fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology, has listed its native ZAMA token on Revolut across the European Economic Area.
• The integration gives Zama exposure to Revolut’s 70m+ customers, including more than 15m existing crypto users. Customers can buy and hold ZAMA directly through Revolut, with trading fees starting at zero, and withdraw tokens to self-custody wallets.
• The listing significantly expands ZAMA’s retail distribution and follows the token’s February launch through a privacy-preserving auction that protected more than $121m of activity on Ethereum.

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin highlighted privacy and quantum resistance as major new priorities in Ethereum’s latest Strawmap, a living reference roadmap outlining potential protocol upgrades through 2029, areas that were largely absent from his 2023 roadmap.
• The roadmap includes privacy pools, mechanisms designed to let users transact privately while limiting illicit use, wormholes, designs for moving value without exposing a user’s full transaction history, and FOCIL, a proposed mechanism intended to make transaction censorship more difficult, alongside post-quantum security and greater use of zero-knowledge proofs.
• These changes form part of Lean Ethereum, a multi-year effort to simplify and redesign major parts of Ethereum’s underlying protocol, potentially including replacing or substantially revising the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the execution environment that runs Ethereum applications and smart contracts.

• FlightAware, a flight-tracking and aviation-data provider, sued Kalshi, a federally regulated prediction-market platform, alleging it used FlightAware’s data and name without authorization to settle markets where users wager on whether flights will be cancelled.
• FlightAware alleges Kalshi stated that outcomes were “verified from FlightAware,” creating the impression of a partnership, and is seeking a temporary restraining order, a court order designed to immediately halt specified activity while litigation proceeds, alongside claims of breach of contract, trademark infringement and unfair competition.
• FlightAware also argues the markets could create incentives to interfere with flights and threaten safety, while the lawsuit adds to Kalshi’s broader legal challenges over whether its event contracts constitute federally regulated derivatives or gambling subject to state laws.

• Bitcoin miner Riot Platforms, signed a 20-year lease for 191 MW of capacity at its Rockdale, Texas campus with an unnamed “frontier AI lab,” reportedly Anthropic, generating an expected $9.1B in contracted revenue through June 2048.
• The first 96 MW is expected online by December 2027 and the full 191 MW by June 2028, while two optional five-year extensions could increase the contract’s total value to $16.1B; Riot secured $573M of interim financing from Morgan Stanley for initial development.
• Riot shares jumped more than 25% after hours following the announcement, which brings its AI data-center leases with the reported Anthropic deal and AMD to 241 MW and approximately $9.8B of contracted revenue, as the company diversifies beyond Bitcoin mining.

• Bitdeer, a Bitcoin miner expanding into AI infrastructure, reported Q2 revenue of $228.8M, up 47% YoY, and produced 2,694 BTC, nearly 400% more YoY, while AI cloud revenue increased tenfold to $14M.
• Despite the growth, Bitdeer shares fell more than 15% as its net loss widened 47% to $92.3M amid higher operating and financing costs, while the company continues its AI pivot with a recently announced 16-year, $4.7B data-center agreement in Norway.

• Keel Infrastructure, formerly Bitfarms, has shut down all of its U.S. Bitcoin mining operations as it converts the sites into AI and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.
• Keel has sold 1,085 BTC for $75M between April 1 and Aug. 7, leaving 1,861 BTC on its balance sheet, as it continues winding down its Bitcoin exposure and redirects resources toward its AI infrastructure business.

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