A $19 Billion AI Deal, ETF Inflows Return, and Binance.US Plots a Comeback

**Jennifer Sanasie** (0:00)
On today's Public Keys, at the New York Stock Exchange, we dig into TeraWulf's $19 billion lease with Anthropic, hear why passive holding is no longer enough, and Binance US makes its pitch as the exchange of choice for retail and institutional traders alike, plus ETF flows snap an eight week losing streak, and fear is loosening its grip on the market. I'm Jen Sanasie, let's get into it.
Happy Monday, everyone. Bitcoin, trading around $63,000 through a weekend of strikes in Iran, a sell-off this morning in every war-sensitive asset, and a hawkish Fed repricing. The world's largest cryptocurrency fell about 1%.
The exit from riskier assets was felt across equity markets too. South Korea's Cosby lost 9.2% as SK Hynix, the memory chip maker that went public in the US on Friday, slumped 15%, a reversal that unwound chip trade which had lifted Bitcoin on Friday. And that same chip cycle is reshaping the business models of Bitcoin miners. Case in point, our top story today, Bitcoin miner TeraWulf just signed a 20 year, $19 billion lease with AI firm Anthropic to host the AI company at a Kentucky data center. A deal worth more than the entire company itself. Here with more is TeraWulf co-founder, chairman and CEO, Paul Prager. Hey, Paul.

**Paul Prager** (1:25)
Morning.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (1:26)
Let's talk about that deal I just mentioned, $19 billion over its term.
I just mentioned it in my intro, the company's market value sits at around $12 billion. Just help put those numbers in context here. What does it say about where market growth is?

**Paul Prager** (1:44)
There's tremendous demand for high-power computing AI.
We've been doing this a little bit here. We have Thropic Google up at our Lake Marinus site in Ontario. We had a great competitive site here. Grid power, long-term contract. It was a very competitive process. We're delighted to end up with Anthropic here.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (2:06)
Along with this news, we got other news. The sale of your interest in Abernathy. Just talk to us about how these two things go hand in hand.

**Paul Prager** (2:17)
Listen, we have sites where we're a vertically integrated company. We've been developing power plants for 35 years. Data center is now for three or four.
We like where we could control the site, control the power, operate the facilities. Abernathy was simply not core. We were half interest in it. With FluidStack, we didn't really interact with the customers much more than the operators of it. So we were there to comfort the original partners on that transaction, to pull it together. We did that. We got a great return. And it's all about opportunity cost and a very disciplined approach to how we use our capital. We can get so much more of a return on our capital now in a site like Kentucky or a next site that we've got here, Eastern Kentucky.
So, we're excited to recycle that cash, get a great return, hand it off to our partners in that, and move forward where we are fully in control of the site, the power and operations.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (3:24)
Talk to me a little bit about the timeline here. The site's expected, this is expected to get up and running in 2027
Actually 2028, and it seems like a long runway. Talk to me about the biggest execution risks you're expecting between now and when the site's fully running.

**Paul Prager** (3:43)
Sure. These data centers take a little bit of time to build. We're like building Ferraris here. These are all relatively new. A lot of the hyperscalers have their own designs. We have a good relationship with Anthropic, a good reference design. We've hired Floor to help us build out this facility.
I think as you look at the marketplace, you've got to get sites that have good quality power that you can get from the grid, good regulatory framework. Some of the issues are going to be around labor, not so much procurement, but labor, locking in these contracts, contractors and subs on site. And you want to be at locations where there is available manpower.
I think our build time has been pretty much record setting up at Lake Merino, Ontario. We will continue to build in the most efficient way and get these customers online because proximity to power, proximity to be able to get that compute is critical to them.

**Jennifer Sanasie** (4:48)
TeraWulf started as a Bitcoin miner. Talk to me about the future of Bitcoin mining for the business. Is it part of your future plans?

**Paul Prager** (4:58)
No, it hasn't been for quite some time. Listen, we got into Bitcoin mining because we have electricity. We have plants and it was a very flexible load.