All right. Sorry about that, guys. A little bit of a technical difficulty, but we finally got it going. I am the Head of Comms here at Galaxy, Mike Wursthorn, and I just want to start with a little bit of a disclaimer before we get going. First of all, we're really excited to be hosting our latest quarterly X Spaces following our Q4 earnings. It's a great chance to connect with our retail investors and share more about what we're working on with Galaxy. And today I'm here joined by our CEO, Michael Novogratz, and our CFO, Tony Paquette. And, you know, as always, we're going to try to answer as many questions as we can. But as usual, there are some that we won't be able to answer.
So we won't be addressing non-public financials or other information that might be inappropriate or company announcements in some cases. Questions about specific crypto assets and new products are also off limits here. As always, if you'd like to submit a question, feel free to tweet us. You can tweet when the space is live, or just raise your hand and speak, and we'll select on you to talk. Lastly, I just need to remind everyone to refer to the link to the disclaimer provided in this space's post, and note that none of the information in this space constitutes investment advice or an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy Galaxy or any of its affiliates, or buy and sell any securities. But before we get started, anybody? Yeah. One place.
Yeah. All right, guys, can you hear us? Sorry about this. The last few times we seem to have gotten this thing right, and this time we are striking out. You know, I hope that doesn't say a lot for the Bitcoin price action, which has also been pretty shitty. Listen, I'm gonna talk to you a little about my macro view to start, then a quick update on Galaxy, and then we're gonna open up to Q&A. You know, this is a bear market in crypto right now. We are below every moving average. We had expected better performance last year with, you know, gold up. The Bitcoin narratives were working, and we had a good administration, yet we've... We're met with more sellers than buyers.
The only bright news to that story, from a Bitcoin perspective, is I really do think 60,000 was a 200-week moving average. It looks like a what feels like tradable bottom. We put a, you know, kind of a spiking low in and bounced. And so I'm thinking and hoping that there's enough support that will come in and around these levels to stabilize things. And we're probably in the 60,000-80,000 range until we get a new narrative that gets people excited about the asset class again. You can speculate what that new narrative will be. I do believe the market structure bill will pass, even though at times it feels like it's on its deathbed.
I think it's gonna pass, and I'm fairly certain that, that, the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is gonna come out of the gates dovish. Now, that doesn't happen until he gets approved. That's probably, you know, a couple months from now, but you'll start getting more and more signals that way. And so those are the two kind of net positives for Bitcoin. But what we've learned in every cycle is something else always shows up that gets people excited. This asset class is not going away. There are 200 million plus people that own Bitcoin around the world. Institutions are moving into it. It doesn't have a huge allocation in portfolios yet.
I'm sure, like, the institutions who aren't in it, are gonna be like, "Ooh, ah, God, I missed that, but man, is it time now?" And so I do think we're gonna see a new wave of people come in as soon as things settle. And so that goes for Bitcoin. You know, for the rest of crypto, we are in this transition from a world where we had crypto assets, that's all crypto people could trade. It was really a speculative asset class. Speculative asset class, while building infrastructure that we think will serve the world for the next 50, 100 years, right? Peer-to-peer, blockchain-based, digital plumbing for the world. And so we're in this transition now, where there are other speculative assets that people are playing, from sports betting to gold and silver, you know, to equity markets.
And so we've got competition for that wallet. But we're also gonna come up, and you're starting to see it with perp equities, with perp futures, with tokenized stocks, tokenized fixed income, tokenized mortgages. And that is a bull market. The amount of interest we see from our TradFi peers in aligning with us, partnering with us, working with us to help them build that infrastructure for the next 10 years is real. And so it's a very weird feeling to be at a crypto business that's busy as hell when prices are going down. You know, prices going down aren't good for our business. Right, staking revenue, asset management revenue is all tied to the overall price of the overall token. I'm not bearish Galaxy stock.
As you can see, we went into the market with a, you know, commitment to – or not a commitment, a program to buy up to $200 million of stock over the next, you know, period of time. We think our stock is cheap down here. Part of that is we have a monster data center business, and part of that is we see our crypto team busy as hell. And so, again, not fun to show up when your stock has, you know, fallen from great heights to support, and when the crypto markets themselves, you know, trade fairly sick. But that's where we're at. You know, we are 600 people strong, coming to work every day, working our tails off. And listen, if I was nervous, I'd tell you. I'm not.
I... Little angry, 'cause whenever you lose a bunch of money, you get a little angry, but very optimistic on our future. With that, let's have some questions.
All right. Thanks for that intro, Mike. So we're gonna just start with a few questions that we got in the lead-up to this space since last week. Certainly, some questions asked more than others. One of the biggest questions that we got was around our dual listing, and if there's any plans to delist from the TSX, Mike?
Yeah, I wish I could tell you the exact details. Canada was good to us for a while. We will not be a dual-listed company forever, and stay tuned for timing. That's as simple as I can say it.
Okay. One other question we got a lot on was just our, our... In terms of capital raises and our positioning, and I think we just add a little bit of context, since we did report earnings just last week, but, you know, we announced that we ended the quarter with $3 billion in equity capital, $2.6 billion in cash and stablecoins. You raised over $2 billion over the course of 2025. Mike, can you just give us a little framing of why we've been on that path and why that's meaningful as we continue on things like Helios?
Listen, we raised capital because we needed it. We have a giant infrastructure build in Texas, and it felt really important to me for us to have both the debt and equity capital in the firm, in case something like this happened. So I feel great about those capital raises, and shareholders should as well. Again, if you bought it at a bad price, I feel for you. You know, you never know when you raise capital, if the market's going up or down. Quite frankly, when we did our IPO, I kind of felt the stock was cheap, and we sold a bunch of stock because that's how you get into the business, and the stock doubled.
You could have argued, "God, they were foolish to sell stock," and then, "They were smart to sell stock." We don't try to time the market. We literally look at our capital needs on a future, you know, 18-month basis and wanna make sure that we are protected. So, again, there could have been another story where I'm showing up right here, gasping for breath, thinking, "Oh, we got no liquidity. We got no..." Like, we feel good. We've got tons of liquidity. Post that, those capital raises, we were awarded another 830 MW of power in Texas, and that's like, you know, equity almost. Now, that is an unbelievable value asset that has been added to Galaxy, you know, since those capital raises.
If our stock was cheap at $20 when we went public, it's really cheap because we now have that extra 800 MW. You know, right now, do we have any, you know, plans to raise capital? The exact opposite. We're actually buying back our stock because we think it's so cheap.
Okay. And then, I mean, just while you're on the topic of, you mentioned the 830 MW, but we got a number of questions on, when should we expect an announcement on a new tenant? Obviously, you haven't announced anything yet, but they need to say there.
Yeah. Listen, we literally just got this a couple weeks ago, and while you have light conversations with people, you don't really engage aggressively until you actually have the paper in your hand. And so we are at full bore with conversations, being strategic. There are not that many counterparties that wanna write a 20-year lease on a 800 MW bulk buy of power. You guys all know who they are, and we're gonna talk to them, and we're gonna get the best deal for Galaxy. We're gonna find strategic partners to work with. And, like, the timing doesn't concern me as much, though it won't be so long because, you know, these things don't take that long. It's not that complicated. It's not 50 people we're gonna talk to. It's three to four.
You know, hopefully, within a short period of time, we'll have some information.
Okay. We have a lot of other questions, but we do have a speaker that's requested a longtime follower, Vinyl. So Vinyl, I'm gonna unmute you. Feel free to ask Mike your question.
Vinyl? Vinyl, can you hear us?
All right, well, we're waiting for him. I mean, I did have one other as we're-
Okay, I'm here. I'm here.
Awesome. All right, go ahead, man.
Sorry. So I've got a few questions. Thanks for organizing this. Actually, I appreciate that, and I guess many of us do. My questions are regarding the data center business, of course, and the first one I have is regarding the newly authorized 830 MW. My question is, if this capacity needs absolutely to be connected to the new Pitchfork, or some of it can be connected to Cottonwood, which actually has a 1.6 GW capacity?
Yeah, this is a Pitchfork. This is gonna be 28, 29, 30 power, and it's gonna come off of Pitchfork.
Perfect. Pretty clear. The second one I have is still on the data center business. My question is, when Chris spoke about the intent to do a parallel construction on the data center side, while the grid side was being constructed as well, is it the intent to have a kind of plug and play capacity to connect directly all the new capacity to the grid in 2028, 2029? Or there's gonna be more steps needed when the grid is gonna be ready?
I'm gonna let Jonathan answer that question because it's a little more technical than my pea brain can handle.
Hey, Vinyl, good to hear from you. The short answer is, once we actually have a tenant leased up, we are going to be building both at the private substation level and then the data center level, while WETT, which is the Wind Energy Transmission Texas, who's building out that Pitchfork station, is building that out. So they'll happen concurrently. The oversimplified explanation is we will be able to connect our substation and data center to that Pitchfork switching station, and so we're able to do a lot of the work in advance and while the actual switching station is getting built.
Okay. So most of the cash flow from the 1.63 GW should more or less be in action in 2029, if everything goes accordingly?
Yeah, I would think of the new 830 as late 2028, 2029, 2030, and so, like, it will be energized over the course of that period. But as you know, the first 800, we do plan to be fully energized and online by 2028. And so think of it as a ramp schedule over the next five years.
Okay.
We're gonna have a lot of construction workers in West Texas, you know, for five years. I mean, that-
I guess. I guess. And-
100 people living down there right now. We think that's gonna max out at about 2,500. And so we built our own little city.
Incredible. And the last question, if I may, is regarding the new report we got from Morgan Stanley, which talked about the possibility to use a BTM solution. Is the BTM solution aimed at the newly approved 830 gigawatt megawatt capacity or regarding the 1.7 under study?
Yeah. So you can think of the 830 as fully grid capacity, that will come directly from ERCOT. We've done a lot of work internally about exploring different off-grid, microgrid type solutions. We do not discount all of the work that goes into making grids reliable and stable over time, and that's not lost on us. So we continue to explore creative, innovative solutions, but our focus and what we've got approval for across the 1.63 GW is fully grid power.
Perfect. Thank you very much, and thanks for the hard work you're doing on business street.
Thanks, Vinyl. I appreciate it. All right. We're gonna go to the next person asking questions. Ape My Bags, so go ahead. You're on.
What's the name?
Ape My Bags.
Oh. Hey, can you guys hear me?
Loud and clear.
All right. Just wanted to kind of understand what appears to be a hesitancy from Galaxy to really lean into the data center business. I mean, I'm looking at your peers, such as WULF, Cipher, Applied Digital, who have fully pivoted into the data centers, and they're all kind of trading around the all-time highs, whereas Galaxy's down around 60% in the last few months, and every day kind of seems like there's a new article about how Meta wants to build 10 GW, Anthropic wants to build 10 GW, and then Galaxy has had—still has bigger balance sheet in terms of cash available to invest, and buy, and build out capacity, but all those peers are forecasting to have around 500 MW of capacity online around the end of 2026 versus Galaxy, that's only 133.
What is stopping you guys from pulling the trigger on new development opportunity to really ramp up the growth of the data center business?
Yeah, no, we're-
It seems-
It's a good question, and it's a fair question. We are completely engaged in looking for good opportunities and have a bunch that are, you know, on the hot plates. And hopefully, we'll come back with one in the next, you know, three to six months. Listen, we're commercial guys, and we look at, you know, what the cost is, what the risk is, and where the tenants are gonna be. And it's easy to go buy a bunch of power that might or might not be developable. Like, a lot of this stuff in Texas is now gonna be stuck in this bureaucracy of this new batching process, and so you can think you've got a ton of power, and you might not get approval for a long period of time.
And buying approved power, you know, the market's pretty efficient, and so it's pretty damn expensive. And so we're gonna we're working to get better relations with the guys that actually use it, to work with them to say, "What do you need?" And so you can bet your bottom dollar that we're every bit as focused on the growth of this business, and we're not scared to use our balance sheet. Listen, we started as a crypto business, and it's a business that we still believe in. It's been a shitty place to be recently, for us for every crypto business, and I do think our, our stock gets punished, because people say, "Well, it's crypto business." Like, we got a better balance sheet than most of those peers you talked about.
Exactly.
We've got equity, we've got... and we've got an amazing capital markets team. You know, Chris Ferraro, that's, that's his DNA, his background, so he, he feels more comfortable looking at, you know, data center leases and data center financing than I ever will. And than most people that are in the market. And so, like, I'm willing to bet big on this team, and I do think you'll see a year from now, a data center business that's a lot bigger than the two, you know, approved 1.67 GW that we own.
Fantastic. That answers my question. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Thank you. So, while we're waiting for the next question, I just want—I have one quick one for you, Mike, since we're talking about Helios again. But, has Galaxy ever considered energizing a data center off grid, where we're using maybe solar batteries? What do you think about that generally? I mean, right now we're connected to our ERCOT, right?
You know, listen, to me, and I'm not the technical guy, having spoken to the people that use it, it is a lot easier to be on grid, a lot easier. And, you know, and every business you get into, you want to develop domain expertise, really understand what you're doing, and you want to take the straightest path to victory. And we think this is the straightest path to victory. I do have friends that are building monster off-grid solutions, and I look at the amount of risk versus a reward that happens 2031, 2032, I kind of like the bet we're making.
Thanks, Mike. All right, so we're gonna go to Cognitive Capital. You're unmuted. Go ahead. You there, Cognitive?
Yeah, shy.
All right.
Hello?
That's it.
Hey.
You're in. You're on. We can hear you, man.
Sorry about that. I just wanted to ask you about what your thoughts were on the implications of data centers in space. I know Elon Musk is talking a lot about how we don't have enough energy and power on Earth, and so he wants to bring that all up to space. How do you see that as a legitimate, you know, opportunity, or you're not paying too much attention into that?
No, listen. You know, anything Elon Musk talks about, you have to actually sit back and say, "Yeah, the guy, he's been right on a lot of things," and so, like, I'm not gonna discount it. When I talk to people in and around the space, they think it will happen one day. One day is not three years, it's closer to ten. And so, yeah, I hope he's right for the good of humanity. I don't see it as a near-term threat to our business, and I don't see it as something that we're suited to, you know, put any capital into. And so we're gonna monitor it. If I thought, "Oh, my God, Elon could do this in two years," I'd have a very different opinion.
But, you know, he, he's done an amazing job of setting the high bar way high, building to it, pivoting when he needs to. Like, again, the thing about self-driverless cars, we all, we'd all be in self-driverless cars yesterday, given that the timeframe we thought, and it's gonna—we will all be there one day. It's just taking a lot longer than you think, and I think the same thing with data centers in space.
I appreciate that. Thank you.
No problem.
All right. I have a few, Mike, before we go to the next person. But in terms of, I mean, you talk a lot about clarity in terms of competition. How is Galaxy thinking about the competitive landscape now in the future with something like clarity coming on, and then, obviously, you'd imagine more banks just getting into the space?
I think, listen, the good news about more people in your space is it brings in more capital and more energy, and so I've always said I want TradFi to join our space. The bad news is they're gonna compete in some businesses that we've done well in. And so our strategy is to collaborate with them where necessary, and where appropriate, to partner with them, and to, in our own business, skate to where they're not gonna be. And so for us, that's on-chain credit. We think there's a big opportunity there, and we're gonna continue to push. Basically, everything on-chain, I think bringing on-chain to the masses, and being that intermediate between the on-chain liquidity and the on-chain innovation and our customers, is important to us.
The other part is, you know, that infrastructure business we talked about and supporting that group. But yeah, the standard credit business, the derivative business, all of that's gonna get more difficult.
Thanks, Mike. All right, we're gonna go to Sam 247 KSW. You're unmuted. Go ahead.
Yeah. The unmuting process takes longer than we thought.
Hello?
There we are.
We can hear you.
Hey, all. Thanks, Mike, and thanks, all, for taking the time for this call and for everything. Definitely appreciated. Just wanted to refer back to what you've said, Mike. Maybe it might have been last year, definitely, not sure when the exact timing was, but you had the belief that maybe two businesses under one roof may be suitable for Galaxy. And then, obviously, if you just look at the performance since then, especially within peers, data center peers, obviously, that might not hold true. Just wanted to know your thoughts, and if you still believe in that notion about two business under one roof, between the data center business and the digital assets. Thanks.
Yeah. When we were trading 40, it felt pretty good. And down here at 20, it doesn't feel very good. We're trying not to make a decision based on, you know, three or four months of stock price movement. Right now, I don't think we're getting value for having two businesses under one roof, period, end of story. And so we're looking at all kinds of ideas on how to create that value... You know, if I had the right answer, I'd give it to you. It's not as easy as snapping your fingers and having two separate companies, and so it's something we will work to if we decide that's the way we're gonna go. But right now, like, you know, the jury loudly is saying you're not getting value for having these two businesses together. I'll leave it at that.
Okay, that's. Thanks, all. That's fair.
Thank you. All right, we're gonna go to Will T, 2118. Just unmute it and, it's gonna take a second, but, speak up when you're ready.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes.
Hey, thanks, guys. Yeah, actually, my question is gonna be related to, I think, what Mike was talking about, related to trying to break up the company a little bit. And just kind of curious to hear about some of the potential tax advantages and the pros and the cons of doing it now and some of the complications associated with it. If you could be a little bit more specific. The second question, related to the TSX listing, are there internal conversations going on about us getting delisted from off the Canadian exchange? And what are some of the advantages or disadvantages of going down that path? Third, final question.
If you could provide more context on GK8, kind of what's going on in that business, in regards to, you know, what they're seeing on the tokenization front, and the possibility of us seeing some bigger developments on that side and commentary on what we should be on the lookout for. Thank you.
Yeah, listen, I'm gonna go in reverse order. So, like-
Thank you.
On the GK8 side, you know, we're plugging along. We've had some good news that hopefully we'll announce soon. But the bigger story there is, we're combining, and we already, you know, made this announcement internally, maybe externally. All our infrastructure business is under one roof. And taking the strengths of GK8 and the strengths of our, our team here, the tokenization team, the staking team, the team that builds, the guts of this place, we put them under one lieutenant. He's, he's captaining that ship, and we're already seeing great synergies there. Things that GK8 is good at, we're gonna leverage here. Things that we're good at, we're gonna leverage with them. And so hopefully, that becomes a really big and, and important business for us. Early...
You know, some -- we're gonna get some early wins, it looks like, and that'll, I think, increase my confidence. But we're spending money there. We believe we need to win there, or we at least need to be in the group of winners there. And so that's the GK8 story. I'll let Tony talk about the Canadian story, real quick. So-
Yeah. Hey, it's Tony Paquette. So you had two other questions on tax and TSX. I'll just say on tax, we're not gonna get more specific in details, but what I will say is, first of all, any consideration we would take around, you know, maximizing value for shareholders certainly takes into account the tax implications. As you're probably aware, we are an Up-C-listed company, which is a bit unique into its own right. The operating partnership, it underneath the publicly traded shares is a partnership structure, which has its tax dynamics.
And then, importantly, our investment in Helios is in what's called a Qualified Opportunity Zone, which has a set of very distinct tax benefits in terms of deferrals and step-ups, which, you know, is all well known. But from our standpoint, that is a really, really important consideration when we think about the after-tax considerations for value for shareholders. So, you know, it is to your... I think the essence of your question, a complicated piece underneath the surface, but we're just not gonna be specific on what that means other than to say: rest assured, we're very focused on, you know, the after-tax impact for shareholders here. You know, on TSX, you know, I think Mike addressed this briefly at the outset.
We're not -- again, we're not gonna say a lot more other than it, you know, we are considering the nature, the liquidity, the diversification of the shareholder base, who the shareholders are, and, and frankly, their ability to invest in our company, you know, in, in the context of where, where it trades publicly. You can look at the volumes today and see that something like north of 90% of all trading volume on Galaxy stock is now traded on NASDAQ or in the U.S. and related exchanges. So those are some of the things we're thinking about in the context, but, you know, we'll stay tuned, and, and we'll share more with you when the time is appropriate.
Yeah, and just listen, the little news—nuanced differences, you know, are real at times. There's just a different set of reporting metrics in Canada than there are in the U.S. on lots of things. And that, you know, that becomes, if there's not a big advantage for it, becomes a disadvantage. And so, that probably is heading in one direction, and we'll keep you posted. The only other thing I would say on tax is that, you know, if you read the guts of the big, beautiful bill, CapEx spend on manufacturing is, you know, you get to amortize the spend to the year you start producing. And so, like, this is 2026, we're delivering data halls, and so all that CapEx spend is gonna be a deduction against earnings.
I just need Bitcoin to go up a little bit. But, but so we're in a very, very good tax position for a long time, given that just on the first phase, we're gonna spend $7 billion of Galaxy money. So if you put the two together, and you assume it's gonna be close, we're probably a $15 billion-$20 billion CapEx spend here in the next five years. And so that's a lot of earnings that will, in essence, be protected.
... I appreciate you guys being as transparent as you can. Thank you.
No problem. Thank you. All right, we're gonna go to Data Center Danny. You're unmuted. Just feel free to start speaking when you're ready.
He's gonna ask me about Bitcoin.
Danny, can you hear us?
Oh, Danny boy. Give him a few more seconds.
How is like Big Dog Crypto?
Big Dog Crypto? Well, let's go to a repeat question first then. All right, we'll come back to you, Danny, if you can come back on, but Cognitive, you're I think we tried to go to you before and you had a question. You wanna ask anything else?
Hey, can you guys hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks again. On the $200 million share repurchase program, I wanted to know, were there any specific triggers or market conditions that would maybe accelerate repurchases under this program? What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. Listen, we're gonna look at things week to week and make what we think is the right decision for shareholders. I think giving any more information on like that is a fool's errand. So I'm gonna leave it at that. But we take our capital and our capital roadmap very seriously, and we're trying to do the best for shareholders.
Do you have any other questions, Cognitive? All right, we're gonna go to-
That's it. Thank you.
Thank you. We're gonna go to Bizarre Coin. You're unmuted. Go ahead. Can you hear us? All right, well, if you come back on, we'll go back to you, but Mike really wants to talk to Big Dog Crypto, so we're gonna unmute him and let him go.
I like anyone with the name Big Dog.
Hey, hey, everyone. How you doing?
Excellent.
Hey, Mike, happy first weekend of Mardi Gras from here in Nola.
I'm hoping to get down there for a day.
Yeah, well, it, it's in full swing. As you know, the first weekend, not as big as the second, but getting started. But I just have a general question. I think a lot of people wanna know, and it's kind of a, I say, a challenging one, but with the new Fed chair coming in and just, just a generalization, you know, we know that the markets maybe for everybody, hasn't been exactly what we expected. But when you look at liquidity, you look at the rates, do you even want to gander or guess or a timeframe of when we could perhaps see, you know, more liquidity coming into risk on assets and in particular, you know, Bitcoin, Ethereum, going on a bit of a run. Would just be interested in your thoughts.
Yeah.
Thanks, brother.
So listen, Kevin Warsh is a great pick if you're an American. Right? He is a guy of a lot of integrity. He spent the last 10 years of his life sitting, you know, 20-odd feet away from Stan Druckenmiller, who is pretty much the hero of every macro trader. Makes Stan so good, it's his discipline, and I think Kevin is equally disciplined. And so disciplined guys take their integrity seriously. And so I think Kevin is gonna make the right decision when he needs to. And what I mean by that is, right now he's dovish, right? He believes that AI is gonna crush inflation and that we have inflation heading lower and therefore rates are too high and he's gonna cut rates. But if the world changes, he will change.
If Donald Trump is arguing with him, I've never seen a better and more eloquent debater, negotiator, communicator than Kevin Warsh. He's smooth, he's smart, he's got a high EQ, he's got a high IQ. And so I think I bet my bet is that if we really need to stop cutting rates, he'll convince the president that we need to stop cutting rates. And so what does that do? It means it takes the tail risk away from us becoming Turkey, right?
The risk was, "Oh, my God, the president's gonna force the Central Bank governor to do anything he wants." And that risk has gone away because the Fed chair has independence for six years after he gets voted, and the president can yell and scream, but as you saw with Chairman Powell, he stood pound sand, even when they threatened to sue him. And I think Kevin will take a different approach than Chairman Powell, in that my guess is he'll talk to the president all the time and keep him posted and keep him, you know, making the president feel like he knows what's going on and that he's got a close relationship. So I think that part is actually an advantage given this president. But yeah, when he gets in, he's gonna cut rates, and that'll help the risk asset.
And of course, coming up into the more final part of that, coming up to midterms and stuff, do you think when you look at the economy and look at where things are, with markets and stuff, do you... I don't want to say, do you see them juiced up?
Listen, every single. This is not me being left or me being right. Every president-
Effort to kind of-
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Every president who's looking at an election figures out, how can I buy some votes? How can I juice the-
Right.
Juice the system? So, yes, I think you're gonna see rebates, you're gonna see, you're gonna see we'll back away from tariffs on this person or that person. Like, the Republicans want to win.
I was gonna say, if you just look at history, though, right? You look at the midterms, you look at the party in power. Now, I agree with you on that. Just interested in your thoughts, so all good, brother. Enjoying the... Listen to everything, and looking forward to seeing how things go.
Listen, it will be a huge surprise if the Republicans can hold the House. And so what really is at risk here is the Senate. And, you know, what's crazy is they're doing something so right, right? But they're doing other things that really are grating with the American people the wrong way. You know, ICE being one of them. And so it depends. We'll see. Does he fire Kristi Noem ? Do they pivot away on ICE? Do they calm things down? Like, I think the government's gonna shut down. We're gonna have not a, the government shut down. You're gonna have DHS shut down this week, probably for a week. So what does that mean? It means it's gonna suck if you're flying, right? Because you know, the TSA is part of that. They're gonna...
The people are gonna scream and yell. But, you know, the Democrats were asking for face masks and or no masks and body cams and stuff like that. You know, the Republicans are pushing back, "Don't tell us what to do." That'll come to a head in the next 10 days. But I actually think you'll see the president pivot away from that because he wants to win.
Right. And, you know, as James Carville, who, of course, is here in New Orleans, always talks about the economy going back to Clinton 1992. And one final thing, it'll be interesting to see, I think, what happens to prices of stuff at the store, right? Some things will come down, some things just, you know, have not in general. I don't think there's even any precedent. You know, people never want to lower prices, right, once they're up.
Yeah.
I think the next six months are gonna show a lot, right?
Trump, it's so interesting. So the Biden economy, right, he created more jobs than any president in history. He left with the stock market on the high, right? And inflation went from a high level when he came in to a very low level when he was leaving. So if you're a Biden guy, you're like, "Oh, my God, this guy was a great economic president." Yet half the country, more than half said, "What do you mean? Things suck," right?
Right.
Trump's having the same problem. Stock market at 50,000, down at 50,000, hanging on our chest, right? Inflation falling, GDP growing. I mean, on the sheer macroeconomic numbers, this is one of the best economies we've seen in a long, long time. Yet for over 50% of the people, they say, "What the fuck are you looking at? What are you talking about? It sucks." It's the exact same story Biden had, and it's really hard given AI and globalization. We have a structural problem where the wealthy are getting much wealthier than everyone else at an accelerating rate. Now, you got a guy like Elon Musk, who's almost a trillionaire. That sends such a psychic message to people who are barely making ends meet.
And again, it's not Elon Musk's fault, but it's bringing up, it's bringing up this really hard politics, which pushes us to populism, which gave us Mamdani in New York, which is asking for a wealth tax in California. And, you know, the Trump voter and the, and the far left voter are pretty aligned. Like, at what point, they're gonna bring out the pitchforks and say, "Screw the rich people. The system's not working for us.
Well, I believe and one final point. I think this is interesting because whether you're, you know, for the Democrats or Republicans or whatever, you know, people go with their pocketbook, right? So they can look at stuff, they can comment left and right, when they go to the store and they see a price of something's up, and I think the challenge is, whether Biden was in or Trump was in, if somebody raises the price, right, of whatever it may be, there's not a lot of incentive to lower it, right? Because how many prices in our lives, right, once they go up, they go down? Not often. So I think it's a challenge to get stuff down. I mean, you know what I mean, though? Like, not for everything, but especially for food and stuff.
You're 100%-
Yep.
Yes.
So am I. All right, brother. All right. Talk to you later. Bye.
Thank you. So, all right, we got time for one more question, and then we'll let Mike and Tony, if they wanna share any closing thoughts. But, Bizarre Coin, we tried to go to you earlier. We'll give you one more chance.
Hello?
We can hear you.
Hi, Mr. Bizarre. How you doing?
Hey. Thank you, Mike, very well. I have a few questions on Helios. They are a bit technical. I'm not asking them because I'm interested in the technicals, but I'm actually asking them because I would like to get a better understanding for risks along the path of you guys starting to read cash flow from CoreWeave. First question, for the 133 MW, it appears that everything's on track, and all you guys are missing is what is being referred to as telemetry tests, and that seems to come down to some certain sensors. Can you just somehow explain this in more, probably more simple English? Are you guys ready to get this online in April and have all these sensors being installed?
Let me tell you that I... We are gonna be online. And your question on exactly the nuance of what's gonna get us online, I'm gonna pass on because it's above my pay grade. I call our guys. We've got a great team, and, you know, we keep checking with them and, you know, we're gonna be online the first half of this year, and you're gonna see cash flow start. And so the plan we've laid out on our earnings call, nothing's really changed.
Okay. Not April, but first half for sure. I'm taking that away.
Yeah, well, let me clarify. This is Tony. So what we've, what we've said, and nothing has changed on this, is we expect to be delivering first data halls by the, you know, or first data hall by the end of the first quarter, and the remaining data halls by the end of Q2. So that is the sort of timeline that we've been working towards. You know, to your question, without getting overly specific, but a little more color, you know, there's a process for commissioning and testing these data halls for delivery. You asked a very specific and narrow one.
We're not gonna address that level of specificity, but safe to say, all elements of commissioning and testing are going to go through for each individual hall, and those are the very, very important processes, right? And those take some time, and they need to be done correctly and carefully. So it's... That is kind of where we're at in the process and the timeline.
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the clarity. Then from there on, moving to the next 660 MW, in me trying to understand if there are any risks for you to bring this online over the next, say, 24 months. What it seems to come down is AEP Texas seems to be it needs to install these large power transformers, that's what they're being called, to and thus perform the required substation upgrades. Now, in drilling down on this, what I found out is that effectively there are cash deposits that you guys are making, Galaxy is making to AEP Texas, which are treated as what's called contribution in aid of construction. So it's those cash deposits which secure AEP Texas receiving these large power transformers on time. Anything you can share on this?
Can you give us any more light? Is this well on course? Will these large power transformers be there for you in 2026, 2027?
I'm gonna have Jonathan-
They seem to be in heavy demand.
I'm gonna have Jonathan answer that question, but you might want to just send me your resume, 'cause, we might have to bring you on the team.
I'll do that. I'll do that, Mike, no problem.
Yeah. So we have an approved interconnect agreement with AEP. We have six main power transformers already on site, on concrete slabs at the Helios campus, which enables us to deliver the full 800 MW of gross power that we've ultimately leased out to CoreWeave. We've had those on site for well over a year. We were very proactive early on before the AI data center trend on actually securing those large pieces of electrical infrastructure.
Excellent. I like hearing that. Thank you. That's very good news. Well, if I just may finish with one question that's a little more for the crypto business. It's rather simple. I mean, you started the call, Mike, by saying how prices affect so much of your P&L, be that staking, be that revenues from asset management. Are you implementing any hedging strategies, given, let's say, the lessons learned over the last 24 months with regard to asset prices and the way they will then impact your P&L? Is that anything you guys are discussing, and share your thoughts on that?
We look at the balance sheet, and we put on hedges from time to time, sometimes very large ones. You know, the business itself, we can put some hedges around the business. That's harder, but for the balance sheet, we certainly can. And so, when the market goes down, we hope to lose a whole lot less than if we just sat on our balance sheet the entire time. Sometimes we way outperform, and sometimes we just perform. And so... But yeah, that's, you know, that's part of the shop that I run very intensely. And again, it's not easy. Listen, we started this conversation a long time ago. We started this, like, we believe that Bitcoin is gonna be a generational asset.
That doesn't mean that at $130, I wish I didn't sell half of it to buy it back at $60. But it's hard to be a gold company without owning gold and believing in gold. And so almost every employee, I shouldn't say almost, 'cause I don't know about the security guard. All our employees here joined Galaxy because they had a belief that crypto and digital assets will be a much bigger part of the ecosystem, the financial market infrastructure, consumer market infrastructure in the future, and they shouldn't work here if they don't believe that. Part of that has always been, Bitcoin has been our symbolic, you know, symbolic asset that demonstrated confidence in that future. And so it's hard when Bitcoin goes down, you know, for employees to say, "Oh, shit. Oh, shit!" But we haven't had anyone flinch, right?
In a lot of ways, owning crypto assets is endemic to us being in this industry.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarity, and I appreciate your time.
Thanks for the question. And really thanks to everybody for all the questions you gave and for bearing with us through those initial technical difficulties, which we will certainly work out before the next quarterly Spaces. Before we go, though, I do want to give Mike just a few moments to close us out.
Yeah. So in the old days, when I was young, when you got in trouble, your dad would smack the shit out of you. And so Worster is just, Worster is just lucky that this isn't the old days. And we do apologize for being 10 minutes late. I hate being late. It just drives me crazy. And so I do... You know, we wasted your time, I apologize for that. Worster is gonna get punished in some non-physical way. Guys, thanks a lot. We're working hard. Be well.
Thanks, all.