Galaxy Digital Stock

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 Born. 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 phases following our Q4 earnings. It's a great chance to connect with our retail investors and share more of what we're working on with Galaxy. And today, I'm here joined by our CEO, Mike; and our CFO, Tony. And 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 nonpublic financials or other information that might be inappropriate or [indiscernible] [Operator Instructions]

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. I hope that doesn't say a lot for the Bitcoin price action, which has also been pretty shitty. Listen, I'm going to talk to you a little bit about my macro view to start, at a quick update on Galaxy, and then we're going to open up to Q&A. This is a bear market in crypto right now. We are below every moving average. We had expected better performance last year with gold up.

The Bitcoin narratives were working, and we had a good administration, yet we were met with more sellers than buyers. And 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 what feels like tradable bottom. We put a kind of a spiking low 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 death bed. I think it's going to pass. And I'm fairly certain that the new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh is going to come out of the gates dovish. Now that doesn't happen until he gets approved. That's probably a couple of months from now, but you'll start getting more and more signals that way. And so those are the 2 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 institutions who aren't in like, I thought I missed that, but man is a time now. And so I do think we're going to see a new wave of people come in as soon as things settle. And so that goes for Bitcoin. For the rest of crypto, we are in this transition from a world where we had crypto assets that all crypto people could trade and 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 to equity markets. And so we've got competition for that wallet. But we're also going to 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 trade 5 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.

And prices are 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 commitment to -- or not a commitment, a program to buy up to $200 million of stock over the next 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 fallen from great heights to support and when the crypto markets themselves trade fairly sick. But that's where we're at. 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 -- a little angry because you lose a bunch of money, you get a little angry, but very optimistic on our future.

So with that, let's have some questions.

All right. Thanks for that intro, Mike. So we're going to just start with a few questions that we got in the lead up to the 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?

Yes. I wish I could tell you the exact details. Canada was good to us for a while. It will -- 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 of was just our -- in terms of capital raises and our positioning. And I think we just add a little bit of context as we did report earnings just last week, but we announced that we ended the quarter with $3 billion in equity capital, $2.6 billion in cash and stable coins. We 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 C.

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. And 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. We -- you never know when you raise capital if the market is 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. And so you could have argued, good, 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 18-month basis and want to make sure that we are protected. And so again, there could have been another story where I'm showing up right here and 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 megawatts of power in Texas. And that's like equity almost. That is an unbelievable value asset that has been added to Galaxy since those capital raises. And so if our stock was cheap at 20 when we went public, it's really cheap because we now have that extra 800 megawatts. And so right now, do we have any 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 megawatts, but we got a number of questions on when should we expect an announcement of a new tenant? You haven't announced anything yet, but anything to say there?

Yes. Listen, we literally just got this a couple of weeks ago. And while you have late 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 want to rate a 20-year lease on an 800-megawatt bulk buy of power. You guys all know who they are. And we're going to talk to them, and we're going to get the best deal for Galaxy.

We're going to find strategic partners to work with. And like the timing doesn't concern me as much, though it won't be so long because these things don't take that long. It's not that complicated. It's not 50 people we're going to talk to. It's 3 to 4. And 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 long-time follower, vinyl. So I'm going to unmute you. Feel free to ask Mike your question.

Vinyl?

Vinyl, are you here? All right. Well, we're waiting for him. I mean I did have one other as well...

I'm here. I'm here. 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 megawatts. My question is, if this capacity needs absolutely to be connected to the new pitch fork or some of it can be connected to Cottonwood, which actually has 1.6 gigawatt capacity.

Yes. This is a pitch fork this is going to be 28, 29, 30 power, and it's going to come off of pitch work.

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 going to be more steps needed when the grid is going to be ready?

I'm going to let Jonathan answer that question because it's a little more technical than my P brain can handle.

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 wet, which is the Wind Energy Transmission of Texas, who's building out that Pitchbork station is building that out. So it'll happen concurrently. The oversimplified explanation is we will be able to connect our substation and data center to that Pitchbork 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 gigawatts should more or less be in action in 2029, if everything goes accordingly?

Yes, I would think of the new 830 as late '28, '29, 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 '28. And so think of it as a ramp schedule over the next 5 years.

We're going to have a lot of construction workers in West Texas for 5 years. I mean...

My guess, my guess.

And 100 people living down there right now. We think that's going to 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 is aimed at the newly approved 830 gigawatt -- megawatt capacity or regarding the 1.7 under study?

Yes. 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 gigawatts is fully grid power.

And thanks for the hard work you're doing on this [ street ].

Thanks, I appreciate it. All right. We're going to go to the next person asking questions, [ eat my bags ]. So go ahead. You're on.

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 Wolf, Cipher, Applied Digital, who have fully pivoted into the data centers and are all kind of trading around the all-time highs, whereas Galaxy is down around 60% in the last few months. And every day, it kind of seems like there's a new article about how Meta wants to build 10 gigawatts, Anthropic wants to build 10 gigawatts.

And then Galaxy has had -- still has a 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 megawatts 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?

Yes. We -- it's a good question. It's a fair question. We are completely engaged in looking for good opportunities and have a bunch that are on the hot plates. And hopefully, we'll come back with one in the next 3 to 6 months. Listen, we're commercial guys, and we look at what the cost is, what the risk is and where the tenants are going to be. And it's easy to go buy a bunch of power that might or might not be developable. Like a lot of the stuff in Texas is now going to be stuck in this bureaucracy and 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. In buying approved power, the market is pretty efficient. And so it's pretty damn expensive.

And so we're going to -- 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 as the growth in 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 sh** place to be recently for us for every crypto business. And I do think our stock gets punished because people say, well, it's a crypto business. Like we got a better balance sheet than most of those peers you talked about. We've got equity.

We've got -- and we've got an amazing capital markets team. Chris Ferraro, that's his DNA, his background. So he feels more comfortable looking at data center leases and data center financing than I ever will and then 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 2 approved 1.67 gigawatts that we own.

So while we're waiting for the next question, 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 ERCOT right now.

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 every time -- 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 going to go to Cognitive Capital.

I just wanted to ask you about what your thoughts were on the implications of data centers and 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 -- do you see that as a legitimate opportunity? Or you're not paying too much attention into that?

No, listen, anything Elon Musk talks about, you have to actually sit back and say, the guy, he's been right on a lot of things. And so like I'm not going to discount it. When I talk to people in and around the space, they think it will happen one day. One day, it's not 3 years, it's closer to 10. And so yes, 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 put any capital into. And so we're going to monitor it.

If I thought, oh my God, Elon could do this in 2 years, I'd have a very different opinion. But he's done an amazing job of setting a high bar way high, building to it, pivoting when he needs to. Like again, I think about self-driverless cars, we will all be in self-driverless cars yesterday, given that the time frame we thought. And it's going to -- 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 and space.

A few, Mike, before we go to the next person. But in terms of -- I mean, you talked 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. what's in the space.

I mean, 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 TradeFi to join our space. The bad news is they're going to 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 going to be. And so for us, that's [indiscernible] credit. We think there's a big opportunity there, and we're going to continue to push.

Basically, everything on [ Shaine ], I think bringing on [ Shaine ] 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 that infrastructure business we talked about and supporting that group. But yes, the standard credit business, the derivative business, all of that is going to get more difficult.

Thanks, Mike. All right. We're going to go to Sam 247 [indiscernible].

Thanks, Mike, and thanks all for taking the time for this call and everything. Definitely appreciate it. Just wanted to refer back to what you said, Mike, maybe it might have been last year, definitely, not sure when the exact timing was, but you had the belief that maybe 2 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 2 business under one roof between the data center business and the digital assets?

Yes. Well, 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 3 or 4 months of stock price movement. Right now, I don't think we're getting value for having 2 businesses under one roof, period end the story. And so we're looking at all kinds of ideas on how to create that value. If I had the right answer, I'd give it to you. It's not as easy as snapping your fingers and having 2 separate companies. And so it's something we will work to if we decide that's the way we're going to go. But right now, like the jury loudly is saying you're not getting value for having these 2 businesses together. I'll leave it at that.

All right. We're going to go to Will T2118. Just unmuted and it's going to take a second, but speak up when you're ready.

Yes. Actually, my question is going to be related to, I think, what Mike was talking about related to the -- 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 GKA, kind of what's going on in that business in regards to 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.

I'm going to go in reverse order. So on the GK8 side, 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 made this announcement internally, maybe externally, all our infrastructure businesses under one roof. And taking the strengths of GK8 and the strengths of our team here, tokenization team, the staking team, the team that builds the guts of this place. We put them under one newutenant. He's captaining that ship, and we're already seeing great synergies there.

Things that GK8 is good at, we're going to leverage here, things that we're good at, we're going to leverage with them. And so hopefully, that becomes a really big and important business for us. Early -- we're going to get some early wins, it looks like, and that will, I think, increase my confidence. But we're spending money there. We believe we need to win there. We at least 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.

Yes. It's Tony Paquette. So you had 2 other questions on tax and TSX. I'll just say on tax, we're not going to get more specific in details. But what I will say is, first of all, any consideration we would take around 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 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 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 it is, to your -- I think, the essence of your question, a complicated piece underneath the surface, but we're just not going to be specific on what that means other than to say, rest assured, we're very focused on the after-tax impact for shareholders here.

On TSX, I think Mike addressed this briefly at the outset. We're not -- again, we're not going to say a lot more other than we are considering the nature, the liquidity, the diversification of the shareholder base, who the shareholders are and frankly, their ability to invest in our company in the context of 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. And so those are some of the things we're thinking about in the context, but we'll stay tuned, and we'll share more with you when the time is appropriate.

Yes. And just listen, the little nuanced differences 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 becomes -- if there's not a big advantage for it, 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 if you read the guts of the big beautiful bill, CapEx spend on manufacturing is 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 going to be a deduction against earnings. I just need Bitcoin to go up a little bit. But -- so we're in a very, very good tax position for a long time given that just on the first days, we're going to spend $7 billion of Galaxy money. So if you put the 2 together and you assume it's going to be close, we're probably a $15 billion to $20 billion CapEx spend here in the next 5 years. And so that's a lot of earnings that will, in essence, be protected.

All right. We're going to go to data center, Danny. You're unmuted. Just feel free to start speaking when you're ready.

He's going to ask me about Bitcoin.

Danny, can you hear us? Danny, a few more seconds. How is like Big Dog crypto?

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 here, I think we tried to go to you before and you had a question. Do you want to ask anything else?

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?

Listen, we're going to look at things week-to-week and make what we think is the right decision for shareholders. And I think giving any more information like that is a fool's errand. And so I'm going to leave it at that. But we take our capital and our capital road map very seriously, and we're trying to do the best for shareholders.

Do you have any other questions cognitive? All right. We're going to go to -- 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 going to him and let him go.

I like anyone with the name big dog.

I just have a general question. I think a lot of people want to know, and it's kind of, I'd say, a challenging one. But with the new Fed share coming in and just a generalization, we know that the markets maybe for everybody hasn't been exactly what we expected. But when you look at the liquidity, you look at the rates, do you even want to gander a guess or a time frame of when we could perhaps see more liquidity coming into risk on assets and in particular, Bitcoin, Ethereum I'm going on a bit of a wrong. would just be interested in your thoughts.

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 20-odd feet away from Stan Druckenmiller, who is pretty much the hero of every macro trader. What 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 going to 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 going to crush inflation and that we have inflation heading lower and therefore, rates are too high, he's going to cut rates.

But if the world changes, he will change. And if Donald Trump is arguing with him, I've never seen a better and more eloquent debator, 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 is going to force the Central Bank governor to do anything he wants. And that risk has gone away because the Fed Chair has independence for 6 years after he gets voted. And the President can yell and screen.

But as you saw with Chairman Powell, he said pound sand, even when they threaten the sting. And I think Kevin will take a different approach than Chairman Powell and that my guess is he'll talk to the President all the time and keep them posted and keep 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 yes, when he gets in, he's going to cut rates, and that will help the risk asset.

And of course, coming up in one 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 juice up...

Listen, every single -- this is not me being left or me being right. Every [indiscernible] every President who's looking at an election because how can I buy some boats? How can I juice the system. So yes, I think you're going to see rebates. You're going to see -- we'll back away from tariffs on this person or that person, like the Republicans want to win.

I say if you just look at history, though, right, you look at the midterm, you look at the party empower. I agree with you on that. Just interested in your thoughts. So all good, brother. Enjoying -- listen everything and looking forward to seeing how things go.

It will be a huge surprise that the Republicans can hold the house. And so what really is at risk here is the Senate. And what's the -- what's crazy is they're doing something so right, right? But they're doing other things that really are grading with the American people the wrong way, ICE being one of that. And so it depends -- we'll see to see Fire Christino. Do they pivot away on ice? Do they calm things down? Like I think the government is going to shut down. We're going to have -- not the government shut down, you're going to have DHS shut down this week, probably for a week.

So what does that mean? It means it's going to suck if you're flying, right? Because the TSA is part of that, they're going to -- and the people are going to scream and yell and -- but -- and the Democrats were asking for face masks and no masks and body cams and stuff like that and the Republicans are pushing back and tell us what to do. That will 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.

It's James Carvill, who, of course, is here in New Orleans always talks about the economy going back to 92. And one final thing it will be interesting to see, I think, what happens to prices of stuff at the store, right? Some things have come down, some things just have not in general, I don't think there's even any president. People never want to lower prices, right, once they're up. I think the next 6 months are going to show a lot, right?

Trump it's so interesting. So the Biden economy, right, he created more jobs than a 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?

Trump is having the same problem. Stock market at $50,000, down at $50,000, hanging 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 said, what you looking at? What are you talking about stocks? 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 is almost $1 trillionaire [indiscernible] such a psychic message to people are barely making ends meet. And it's not Elon Musk, but it's bringing up this really hard politics, which pushes us to populism, which gave us Mondami in New York, which is asking for a wealth tax in California. And the Trump voter and the far left voter are pretty aligned. Like at one point, they're going to bring out the pitchborks and say screw the rich people. The system is not working for us.

I believe one final point. I think this is interesting because whether you're -- for the Democrats or Republicans or whatever, people go with their pocketbook, right? So they can look at stuff, they can comment left and right. When they go to the store, they see a price of something is up. And I think the challenge is whether buying was in the Trump was in, if somebody raises the price, right, or 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 don't think it's a challenge to get stuff down. you know what I mean, like not for everything, but especially for food and stuff.

So all right. We got time for one more question, and then we'll let Mike and Tony, if you want to share any closing thoughts. But [indiscernible], we tried to go to you earlier. We'll give you one more chance.

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 megawatts. It appears that everything is 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 probably more simple English. Are you guys ready to get this online in April and have all these sensors been installed?

Let me tell you that we are going to be online. And your question on exactly the nuance of what's going to get us online, I'm going to pass on because it's above my pay grade. I call our guys. We've got a great team, and we keep checking with them. And we're going to be online in the first half of this year, and you're going to see cash flow start. So the plan we've laid out on our earnings call, nothing has really changed.

Okay. So not April, but first half for sure, I'm taking that away.

Let me clarify. This is Tony. So what we've said and nothing has changed on this is we expect to be delivering first data halls by the -- 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 time line that we've been working towards. To your question, without getting overly specific, but a little more color, there's a process for commissioning and testing these data halls for delivery.

You asked a very specific and narrow one. We're not going to 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 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 time.

Okay. I appreciate the clarity. Then from there on, moving to the next 660 megawatt. Again, 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 need to install these large power transformers, that's what they've been called to -- and thus perform the required substation upgrades. Now in drilling down on this, what I find 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 the large power transformers on time. Anything you can shed on this? Can you give us any more light? Is this well on course? Will these large power transformers be there for you in '26, '27? I'm going to have Jonathan to be heavy demand.

I'm going to have Jonathan answer that question but you might want to just se me your resume because we might have to bring you on the team.

I'll do that. I'll do it Mike. No problem. Yes. So we have an approved interconnect agreement with AEP. We have 6 main power transformers already on site, on concrete slabs at the Helios campus, which enables us to deliver the full 800 megawatts of gross power that we've ultimately leased out to Core. 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. 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 it 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 share?

We look at the balance sheet, and we put on hedges from time to time, sometimes very large ones. 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 outperform and sometimes we just perform. And so -- but yes, 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 when we started this, like we believe that Bitcoin is going to 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 because I don't know what 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 asset that demonstrated confidence in that future. And so it's hard when Bitcoin goes down for employees to say****. But we haven't had anyone flinch, right? And so in a lot of ways, owning crypto assets is endemic to us being in this industry.

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 this out.

Yes. So in the old days, when I was young, when you got in trouble, your dad would smack the* out of you. And so [ Worstern ] 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 -- we wasted your time. I apologize for that. Wern is going to get punished in some nonphysical way. Guys, thanks a lot. We're working hard. Be well.

Thanks all.

Good morning, and welcome to the Galaxy Digital Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Goldowsky, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to Galaxy's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call.

Before we begin, please note that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these statements as a result of various factors, including those identified in the disclaimers in our earnings release or other filings, which have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and on SEDAR+.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of today and will not be updated. Additionally, we may discuss references to non-GAAP metrics, the reconciliations of which can also be found in our earnings release. Finally, none of the information on this call constitutes a recommendation, solicitation or offer by Galaxy or its affiliates to buy or sell any securities.

With that, I'll turn it over to Michael Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy.

Good morning, everybody. We're at New York City. We've got ice in the Hudson, still chilly out here. Listen, I think about this quarter and our year a lot, and I thought in a perfect Dickinsonian way that this is a tale of 3 cities, not 2 cities. And so I'm going to start with the shiny one. Listen, our Data Center business, I couldn't be more excited for it. We're now over 1.6 gigawatts of approved capacity. If you haven't followed our stock as closely as I think you have, we got 830 megawatts of additional power approved recently. I want to give a shout out to the state of Texas. They've proven to be great to do business with. I literally got an extra set of cowboy boots every month. And so we're excited. Listen, there is not a lot of 830-megawatt new sites of power being granted in the United States. We are engaging with potential tenants and hopefully, in the next period of time, have news on who's going to occupy that site.

At the same time, we've got over 1,000 employees or 1,000 workers, I should say, they're not employees, building out the site for CoreWeave. We hope to have -- or we will have our first data halls delivered by the end of Q1. And so the data center business will start cash flowing quite quickly. On top of that, we're engaged in conversations with other sites, both in Texas and in other states. And so the Data Center business is growing. It is a macro environment still where the demand for power is strong. You see that in everywhere you're reading and looking. It's usually the same 5 or 6 major players. But underneath that, there are a whole lot of other players that are building out data centers themselves. And so couldn't be more bullish on the Data Center business.

The crypto business or the Digital Assets business, that itself is a tale of 2 cities, both internally at Galaxy and broadly macro. So macro-wise, you have the crypto coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, you name them, have been in a bear market. When we cracked $100,000 in Bitcoin, there was a lot of price action above that. Ever since then, I thought it's been in a $75,000 to $100,000 range. We're at the lower end of that range right now. If you had told me a year ago with gold at the highs and NASDAQ at the highs and a very friendly administration that we would be lower, I'd have said no way. And so when that happens, you got to think through what's gone on.

And I think there's a lot that's gone on. I think people got excited over $100,000 and felt like the race was won. All the hard work over 15 years to get there felt like some relief that the community had done something so amazing, and that somehow allowed people to take profit and then that profit taking became a bit of a virus. And so we are distributing a lot of those HODL-ed coins into new buyers.

And I learned early on as a trader, prices are set at the margin. Obviously, there have been more sellers than buyers. And the question just is when does it stop? Do we find sellers exhaustion at one point? And what are the catalysts to turn it around? I do think we're at the lower end of the range. And what I would say is we've been here before. anyone who's been in crypto for more than 5 years realize that part of the ethos of this whole industry is pain and that often when things feel worse, it's time to be very focused and potentially accumulating or at least getting prepared to because when the tide turns, it turns quick.

Potential catalysts are if we finally pass this crypto legislation here in the U.S. We just got a new Fed governor. We can talk about that later. He is not as dovish as people had hoped, right? You were hoping that you were going to get someone who would do the President's bidding. And I think the market reaction, both in precious metals and crypto was telling and was not of recognition to Kevin Warsh as a man of integrity.

That said, the budget deficit is still 6.5%. Our debt is $40 trillion and the broad story that brought people into Bitcoin as a store of value as a digital gold is intact. And so we certainly haven't given up on our bullishness around the long-term prospects of crypto.

So our balance sheet took a hit in the fourth quarter. In some ways, it was unfortunately the mirror of the third quarter where we had a great balance sheet and gave a lot of that back. Our underlying business, however, again, back to my tale of 2 cities within crypto, has had a great year, right? We did over $500 million in operating revenue.

And so I can strip out the balance sheet, Galaxy's Digital Assets business is a big business. It's got a great brand. We've got great relationships with a lot of institutional customers. We had record trading volumes. Our loan book has grown immensely, $12 billion of assets on our platform. And so I feel really good about our overall business, and I would say neutral to getting ready to hopefully feel bullish about the overall crypto market.

The last thing I'd say is there's a very big and exciting bull market in what I call blockchain plumbing or digital asset plumbing, right? Even before the passage of this market structure bill, every trade by institution that we're in touch with is figuring out in a much, much quicker pace how they're going to participate in this transition to a digital world, where wallets replace accounts.

And so if you read about the kind of the stablecoin debates that are going on in D.C. Hopefully, in the next period of time, we're going to have some big announcements about different endeavors we're taking with trade public companies. But Galaxy sees ourselves as a partner for lots of these people. We're going to partner with some. We sit in our office, we're like, are they a collaborator or a competitor or a client, right? They're a little bit of all of them. And so that's a bull market for us, and it feels that way.

And so we could go into a period where the old business doesn't do as well, but you're building into the new business. And what is that new business? That new business is going to be more on-chain stuff, but it's going to be traditional assets that use crypto rails. You already see it. There's a protocol called XYZ, which trades on the Hyperliquid platform. In full disclosure, we are long Hyperliquid that is doing $4 billion of revenue already. It did 4% of the CME volume in silver. And so as we see assets that are traditionally not trading on blockchain rails shift to the blockchain, we think that's ripe opportunity for Galaxy and for the whole space.

So with that, I will say I'm hoping that Chris or Tony has a literally or metaphor for their piece, and I'm going to pass the ball.

Thanks, Mike, and thanks, everyone, for joining us on the call today. It's my pleasure to present the results for Q4 and full year 2025 before turning it over to Chris to provide a little more context on the data centers.

First, starting with our full year 2025, we reported a GAAP net loss of $241 million or $0.61 per share. These results were impacted by approximately $160 million in onetime items that occurred earlier in the year, including write-downs and other expenses related to our legacy Bitcoin mining infrastructure, costs tied to our U.S. listing and corporate reorganization and a negative mark-to-market adjustment on the embedded derivative associated with our exchangeable notes, which no longer impacts results following our Q2 2025 reorganization.

Despite these nonrecurring charges, our business delivered $34 million of adjusted EBITDA in 2025. This performance came against the backdrop of a 10% decline in the total crypto market cap driven by a 24% drop in Q4. This profitable performance also underscores the growing scale of our business and the increasing contribution of recurring fee and transaction-oriented revenue within our earnings mix.

In our Digital Assets operating segment, we generated record adjusted gross profit of $505 million in the year, up from $303 million in 2024, representing a 67% year-over-year growth, an acceleration that reflects both operating leverage and the strength of our diversified business model. Growth was broad-based with strong contributions across trading, investment banking, lending, asset management and staking.

In Treasury & Corporate, we reported an adjusted gross loss of $86 million in 2025, primarily reflecting the unrealized losses in our digital asset and investment portfolio during the year as a result of lower digital asset prices.

In Data Centers, as we've discussed previously, we expect financial results in this segment to remain de minimis until we begin recognizing revenue under Phase 1 of our CoreWeave lease agreement, which we expect to start later in Q1.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the year with $11.3 billion in total assets and over $3 billion in equity capital, with roughly 60% allocated to our operating businesses. That mix will fluctuate quarter-over-quarter with movements in our treasury portfolio. But as stated previously, over time, we expect the percentage of allocated to our operating businesses to increase as we scale across both digital assets and data centers.

Within Treasury & Corporate, we held approximately $1.7 billion of net digital assets and investments at year-end, down 22% quarter-over-quarter. That decline primarily reflects market depreciation, as Mike discussed, which resulted in unrealized losses across our investment portfolio.

We also closed the year with $2.6 billion of cash and stablecoins on balance sheet, up approximately $700 million from Q3. That increase reflects 2 strategic capital raises in Q4, a $1.3 billion exchangeable note issuance and a $325 million equity investment in Galaxy by one of the world's largest asset managers, which together resulted in approximately $1.6 billion of net proceeds to the company.

Cash raised in Q4 went to 2 primary uses: continued investments in data center infrastructure to ensure we stay on track for upcoming data hall deliveries, and paying down short-term borrowings. Going forward, uses will be focused on continued data center build as well as general corporate purposes, including ensuring sufficient liquidity for the potential repayment of the $445 million of exchangeable notes that mature in December 2026. Maintaining disciplined risk and balance sheet management focused on strong capital and liquidity remains a critical priority as we execute our multipronged growth strategy across digital assets and data centers.

Now shifting to our Digital Assets business. As Mike mentioned, Q4 reflected lower digital asset prices, softer sentiment and reduced activity industry-wide. Coming off a record Q3, that shift was more pronounced, but we maintained strong client engagement throughout the quarter. In our Global Markets business, we delivered adjusted gross profit of $30 million in Q4, bringing our full year Global Markets adjusted gross profit to $423 million, up 88% year-over-year. Our average loan book held steady at $1.8 billion despite broader market pressures, which is a strong indication of the business resilience and sustained client demand.

Digital asset trading volumes declined approximately 40% quarter-over-quarter, largely reflecting softer client activity on the back of a record Q3 and lower industry-wide volumes. That said, we're starting to see capital formation migrate onto blockchain rails, and we're deeply engaged with some of the world's largest banks, asset managers and hedge funds across everything from credit and on-chain markets to electronic trading and ETF create, redeem workflows.

For a quick update on GalaxyOne, we're continuing to make progress here as well. While it's still early days, we're encouraged by the momentum we've seen over the first 4 months since our launch. We've seen strong adoption of our high-yield products, which offer market-leading yield and serve as a compelling entry point into GalaxyOne. We've also been listening closely to our user feedback on what they want from their accounts. That's already led to the launch of Daily Buys, more accessible account minimums and in-app staking and custody, which are coming soon.

Now turning to Asset Management & Infrastructure Solutions. We delivered adjusted gross profit of $21 million in Q4 and $82 million in 2025, up roughly 5% year-over-year. Galaxy ended Q4 with $12 billion in assets on platform, down approximately 15% quarter-over-quarter, reflecting the impact of digital asset price depreciation. While overall flows were more muted in Q4, we continued to expand our product suite to meet the needs of our clients.

We partnered with Invesco to launch the Invesco Galaxy Solana ETP. We collaborated with State Street Global Advisors to tokenize a private liquidity fund, which is a step forward toward broader adoption of tokenized investment vehicles. And post quarter end, we announced the initial closing of our debut tokenized CLO, a major step towards building a tokenized credit platform.

And on the Infrastructure Solutions side, in Q4, we completed our fifth integration with a leading custodian and closed the acquisition of Alluvial Finance. This acquisition marks a key milestone, bringing us into liquid staking, which we see as essential for institutional adoption given its capital efficiency and alignment with broader DeFi and yield strategies.

In all, Galaxy's Digital Asset business made significant strides in 2025 with momentum building both strategically and operationally. In Global Markets, we delivered record trading volumes, including executing one of the largest notional Bitcoin transactions in digital asset history and a record average loan book size. Asset Management rolled out several new ETF and alternative investment products and delivered $2 billion of net inflows during the year, representing a 30% (sic) [ 34% ] organic growth. And in Infrastructure Solutions, we grew our assets under stake by $750 million and scaled our platform, deepening access for clients and solidifying Galaxy's position in institutional workflows.

As we head into 2026, we're building with a clear focus, aligning the momentum in digital assets with the long-term needs of our clients. Across our platform, we're seeing deeper engagement, not just access seeking, but demand for infrastructure, product and partnership. As Mike said, the line between traditional and digital finance is disappearing, and we're designing for where institutional demand is going, not where it's been.

We're meeting that moment with a unified strategy, scaling structured products like our tokenized CLO, launching targeted investment strategies such as our newly formed fintech fund and delivering on-chain solutions built for institutional scale. We've also realigned our leadership and operating teams behind this strategy, enhancing coordination across product, infrastructure and go-to-market as we serve increasingly sophisticated institutional clients who are looking for integrated solutions across our platform.

This is where Galaxy stands apart, investing ahead of the curve with technology, foundation and operational strength to be a full stack partner through this transition. Despite the recent pullback in crypto prices, we entered the year with conviction and the platform to lead.

With that, let me turn it over to Chris to discuss the Data Center business.

Thanks, Tony and Mike, I would normally go with, "we are John Galt". But I think today, we're going to go with, "Go west, young man, and grow with the country." I could not be more pleased to share that subsequent to quarter end, we completed a large load interconnect study and received approval from ERCOT for an additional 830 megawatts of power capacity at the Helios campus. This approval more than doubles Helios' footprint of approved power capacity and represents a significant milestone in the long-term expansion of our flagship campus.

With 800 megawatts now contracted under our lease agreement with CoreWeave, this recent approval of incremental capacity expands our leasing optionality, providing additional power that can be allocated to existing or new tenants during a period of intense demand for large-scale AI data center capacity. The time line to energize the next 830 megawatts of capacity will depend on several factors, including the completion of certain approved transmission infrastructure, including a private substation. Based on current procurement and construction schedules, we expect to begin energizing this additional capacity in late 2028 through early 2029.

With more than 1.6 gigawatts of approved power capacity, Helios is among the largest AI data center campuses currently under development and is projected to be the largest known 100% front-of-the-meter data center campus. We continue to pursue ambitious expansion plans. Beyond the capacity already approved, we have 2 applications totaling approximately 1.8 gigawatts of incremental requests progressing through various stages of the load study process. We are actively engaged with ERCOT and closely following guidance on the time lines and requirements under the new batch process, and we're encouraged by the continued evolution and increased clarity of those procedures.

Turning to construction. We're prepared to deliver the first data hall to CoreWeave later in Q1 as part of our Phase 1 project and remain on track to deliver the remaining data halls, representing the full 133 megawatts of critical IT for Phase 1 within the first half of the year. In order to make this possible, the team has been incredibly busy.

In the fourth quarter, the building was completely dried in, meaning the structure was fully enclosed and protected from the elements, allowing us to proceed efficiently with interior work regardless of weather conditions. All generators and e-houses to support the first data hall are fully set in place. And importantly, every major component required to energize that first data hall is on site and installed. With materials in position, we transition into commissioning. As a reminder, commissioning is a multilevel process that validates the electrical and mechanical infrastructure is installed, configured and operating correctly. We began commissioning activities in the fourth quarter and have continued moving through the process.

Recently, severe winter weather swept across much of the country, including Texas, as winter storm burn and heavy snow and ice moved through the region. During that period, construction was temporarily paused as several inches of snow and ice accumulated across the campus. Even so, the team responded quickly and decisively, protecting critical mechanical equipment and preparing the site for rapid restart. Within 5 days of the storm, more than 1,000 subcontractors were back on site and construction resumed. We remain on track to turn over the first data hall in the first quarter with the remaining data halls coming online by the end of the second quarter.

Looking ahead, we've kicked off earth, concrete and steel work associated with our Phase 2 development of the Helios campus. We've issued purchase orders to secure critical long lead equipment to support the additional building development that will house the 260 megawatts of incremental critical IT capacity for Phase 2. Overall, execution remains strong, construction is tracking well, and Helios continues to transition from a large-scale construction project into an operational AI data center campus, positioning us to be recognized as one of the few companies that has proven its ability to execute on a hyperscale AI data center development.

Turning briefly to Phase 2 financing. We're continuing to evaluate various debt financing structures and are having productive conversations with a select number of potential partners. Our focus is on maintaining a disciplined capital structure that supports long-term scalability at Helios. Scaling Helios is just the first step in our vision of building Galaxy's Data Center business into a multi-gigawatt, multi-tenant, multi-campus platform.

Beyond Helios, we continue to evaluate a robust pipeline of expansion opportunities across a range of possible developments. We've evaluated more than 100 campuses across the U.S., including many in Texas, given our deep familiarity with ERCOT and existing development footprint. At the same time, we are actively exploring additional markets where power availability, permitting time lines and grid dynamics may offer more attractive paths to accelerate time to power. We're seeing tremendous opportunities to scale the business, and we'll be focused on that growth in a measured and disciplined manner.

We're entering 2026 now from a position of strength. We've laid the foundation, physically, operationally and organizationally to transition Helios from construction into an operating campus. The work over the past year has been about preparation and precision. The work ahead is about execution and scale.

In starting off 2026 by doubling the approved capacity -- power capacity at Helios campus and preparing to power on our first data center development, we expect this year will be a pivotal one as we continue to relentlessly execute on our plans. We are confident in the team, the strategy and the progress we've made, and we're excited about what 2026 will bring for Helios and for Galaxy.

Now back to the operator for questions. Thank you all.

[Operator Instructions] And today's first question comes from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler.

Mike, maybe to start things off, I would love to get your thoughts on everything that's been going on in Washington around the crypto market structure bill. What are you hearing about the chances that bill passes? Is this a bill that you think is necessary to kind of advance that transformation of the digital asset plumbing this year? And then as you look at the bill as it sits today, what aspects are you most excited for as it relates to Galaxy's business?

Yes. Great question. First, I would say we have spent a lot of time on this. We've got a great team in D.C. I have been down myself a bunch and have literally spent more time with senators, both on the left and the right in the last 8 weeks than I have in my life combined.

I guess the top line is I think a deal gets done. If you had to put a percentage on it, I would say it's 75%, 80% right now. And that's for a bunch of reasons. Both parties feel the necessity to get it done, right? The Republicans kind of took all this crypto money and ran that they were going to be the party of crypto and get stuff done. And so they have a tremendous amount of pressure on their side. And quite frankly, Democrats realized last election cycle that being anti-crypto was a really dumb political strategy. And the whole party didn't have enough knowledge about crypto. It was really being driven by a small faction led by Elizabeth Warren and Gary Gensler. You've heard that story.

But broadly, the moderates in the party now say, Hey, this should be a bipartisan issue, and we want it off the table politically. And so the politics lines up. I would say we're on the putting green between the Republican version and the Democratic version. There have been a couple of really controversial pieces to it. I think there's agreement now on most of those, the last one being interest on stablecoins. And there was a meeting in D.C. yesterday. Both sides laid out their cases again. The White House is putting pressure and say, guys, you're going to come up with a solution yourselves.

And I do think the crypto industry when you think about it, the revolutionary transformative technology would be an interest-bearing stablecoin. That's not going to happen. Some version of that and no interest is going to be the compromise. And so I do think we'll get to a compromise in the next 2 to 6 weeks and you'll get a bill passed.

It's important for a lot of reasons. I said earlier, all the trade public companies are already working on their transition, right, to where. I mean, listen, Paul Atkins says I want every market on chain. And you're seeing a bunch of on-chain activity, both in sandboxes and actually on public chains. That's going to wildly accelerate post the clarity that comes with the Clarity bill.

And so DeFi is a space to watch, right, how DeFi impacts the traditional exchanges. I already talked about both Hyperliquid and XYZ and just the explosive growth those things have. A, there's a regulatory arm in that, right? They have less overhead if they have a different regulatory environment, very similar, quite frankly, to what we're seeing with prediction markets and traditional gambling and sports betting. And so I do think that's like the flag, the checkered flag going down. I think there's a lot of trade public companies that probably feel short. And so you'll see a pickup in M&A post that bill passing.

And our next question today comes from Brett Knoblauch with Cantor Fitzgerald.

This is Gareth on for Brett. I was just wondering if you could go into kind of the future potential build-out at Helios. So I know you guys recently talked about the incremental 830 megawatts with ERCOT. We were wondering if throughout that study, you can provide kind of how it went and if there were any glaring constraints. And also, I know you talked about kind of 2 applications totaling 1.8 gigawatts in process, maybe if you could kind of touch on if you think that process to go similarly with this incremental 830 you just received.

Sure. I will -- yes, I'll take the first crack at that. So we have had between the prior interconnect requests put in from the Helios campus that we purchased from Argo back in 2022, plus some incremental interconnect requests that we've accumulated through land acquisitions adjacent to Helios. We've had north of 3.5 gigawatts in total our 800 approved plus the remaining amount with ERCOT at various stages of either internal study on our side or study with ERCOT and we have to get done.

The 830 that we received firm approval for ERCOT was part of actually a larger request that ultimately ERCOT in looking at where we were in the queue and the current grid capacity at the time, concluded through various stages of study that the grid could accept an additional 830 megawatts today, which is what we got firm approval for.

We -- as I said in my comments, we currently have various different studies and request into ERCOT for an incremental 1.8 gigawatts on top of now our 1.6 that is already -- over 1.6 that's already approved. That 1.8 gigawatts of incremental load is now very clearly -- which is different than our 830 that we just received is now very clearly going to be part of a new set of frameworks that ERCOT has worked out and is still sort of working through, which is this batch processing where they're going to look at various batches of requests given the -- how large the queue has grown in ERCOT for request and sort of look at groups of requests together and in each group, look at what the grid can absorb today, where those requests are coming, what infrastructure upgrades need to be made and then sort of pro rata part out new approvals in a step-by-step process.

And so it's a little -- the timing on the next incremental load approvals for us or anyone else in the queue is still a little unknown, and we think is going to take a lot of time for ERCOT to really sort out the process on. And so from our seat, getting the 830 in one large chunk fully approved from us before the new batch process is in place was sort of worth its weight for us. And so we're very excited about that. I think on a go-forward basis, us and everyone else in the queue are going to have a number of new processes to go through. And so we're very focused on now working through and understanding what is important to ERCOT and where those stand in the queue.

Let me just add, given those dynamics, first, a shout out to our whole mining team, data center team, both here in New York and in Texas because in lots of ways, we got in under the line, and that was because we were prepared way ahead, and we were very diligent in the whole process. And so couldn't be more thrilled. It makes that power more valuable. There are not a lot of 830-megawatt chunks of power available in Texas or the United States. There's a lot of people building for the future behind the meter. And so I think we'll see how the negotiations go with our next group of tenants, but it leaves me pretty bullish.

And our next question today comes from James Yaro at Goldman Sachs.

Mike, I really appreciate your comments on the crypto backdrop. I just wanted to expand on one element of what you touched on in your prepared remarks. You've been through a lot of cycles here, are we heading into another crypto winter or not? How long until the cycle could begin to recover? And then you're a trader, you look for these signals. So what should we be paying attention to, to Mark the cycle, either continuing to deteriorate or potentially inflecting?

Yes, it's a great question. I mean, listen, it feels pretty chilly right now given that we were at -- what was the high $130,000 and we're currently -- I haven't seen the market in the last 2 minutes, $70,000, $80,000 or something. when you look on the charts, it feels to me we're kind of a $70,000 to $100,000 range until we take out $100,000. There is -- like the idea that Bitcoin is now a macro asset, I think, is solidified, right? There are too many people that have owned it, that have bought into it, that believe in it, that have institutions built around it. And so this is not going away. You're having a supply-demand imbalance.

And when I think about potential catalysts, you think about this market structure bill and really turning on Wall Street. And I said this before, Wall Street is a selling machine. That's what Wall Street is built to do. If it's mortgages or equities or government bonds, the structure is set up to sell. And as you start putting crypto through the traditional Wall Street selling machine, you're just going to see demand pick up from pockets that we haven't seen yet.

And again, that is what has kept crypto, the 2-way price action you've seen, because it has been a one directional move has been more broader distribution coming in against big chunky positions, big whales getting out of their long-held positions. And so again, my instinct is we're closer to the bottom of the range than the beginning of a bear market. I think we've had a bear market.

Could things go lower? Of course, they could. But what I learned about painfully in 3 cycles now is, you don't necessarily have to pick the bottom, but you've got a sense of when it turns. And like pornography, you know it when you see it, right? There will be a catalytic event. And so that's Judge Learned Hand for you guys who think I made that quote up. And so again, like I said, I think we're closer to the bottom. I'm not sure we've reached it yet, but we'll tell you what we think we have.

And our next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank.

Question just on kind of market structure clarity. You talked about that, Mike. I mean as we try to map this out and we're getting questions from investors, trying to understand kind of where Galaxy meets blur between crypto and kind of TradFi over time. And obviously, the large banks are going to need to participate in this world of tokenizing markets, and that will probably bring them closer to trading the tokens themselves.

On the flip side, it's a very technical space. So it's not going to be easy for many of them to just enter. And so curious kind of how you think about Galaxy's position in that, the moats and then kind of what role you want to see Galaxy play as we move to a market where more assets are tokenized and you probably have more of the large banks involved in the same space as you.

Yes, it's a great question. We think about it a ton. I think a couple of areas where we think we need to win and have a right to be significant players. One is credit. right? We've got a great credit business, and you're going to see an on-chain credit world explode, right? There already is an on-trade credit world, and we're participating. But I think in the next 3 years, it could be one of the big growth areas for both the market and for Galaxy.

One of the complaints in D.C. was, well, if we allow interest-bearing stablecoins and you get deposits slight, what does it do for credit creation? And I'm like credit creation is already starting on chain, and it's going to explode on chain. And so I could see a future, not in the next few years, but in the next 10 years, where on your cell phone, you've got your bank account, i.e., a stablecoin that pays some kind of interest and you've got your lending account, right, where you're picking your -- from a menu of potential places to lend money. And that's already in existence in what I'll call like a beta stage in the market, but that's going to be a big part of it.

And the second piece is really infrastructure, right? All of these financial market players, banks, FinCos, neobanks need staking, they need wallet infrastructure. And our infra team is growing. We're adding to it, and we're engaged in conversation around how do we help. And like I said, hopefully, we get some announcements publicly in the next period of time. But that has to be a big business for us, and we're really focused on it because they're coming.

Listen, at one point, JPMorgan will trade Bitcoin derivatives and Bitcoin, and that's going to make our Bitcoin derivative and Bitcoin business, it's going to be competition for it and it's going to be more difficult. And so we're hoping the pie expands, but that we're skating to the edges where those guys aren't. We use our domain expertise to help those players into the market.

And our next question today comes from James Faucette with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to follow up on kind of what's happening beyond just the allocation and approvals of power. I really appreciate the color there. And certainly, you guys have done good work. Wondering if you can give more color on how we should be thinking about the engagements with potential tenants and kind of how they're looking at it. I get the sense that they want to do bigger pieces if they can, particularly the hyperscalers, but just love to hear any more details you can provide around that and how you're thinking about potential partners, et cetera, and timing?

Sure. Thanks for joining, James as well. The -- I think you're right that, a, for us, the major tenant category we are focused on, I'll call them hyperscalers, but I think that, that term is actually broadening out a little further as it relates to traditional hyperscalers, now neoclouds who are getting larger and larger, maybe the direct model builders themselves, et cetera. Like that's the universe of tenants and perhaps even some equipment manufacturers.

That's the universe of tenant that is out there who we are talking to and looking at who are looking for large chunks of power capacity that they can put to work in the billions and billions and billions of dollars and gigawatts of size, because this truly is a -- the new modern space race for control of who's going to have the most frontier model and the smartest brain offering to power the sort of the future of automated everything. And so the ambitions have not shrunk at all. In fact, they've grown on the tenant client side. And we've seen reiterated and elevated CapEx expectations from a lot of companies already sort of supporting that data.

For us, we've talked over and over again about our decision-making on the first 800 megawatts to partner with CoreWeave, who themselves, I think, have emerged sort of without debate as a one-on-one partner for most of the large model builders and hyperscalers themselves as an expert in arranging and automating and running ever more complex large GPU clusters for those end clients.

For the next 830 megawatts, I think all potential tenants are on the table. We do recognize with extreme clarity that availability of capital and credit on economically attractive terms is paramount to being able to develop a multibillion-dollar data center campus on time, on budget, et cetera.

And the credit markets have had a little bit of a tough go in 2025, absorbing the sheer amount of this first wave of capital that's come into the markets. And you've seen a real divergence first in non-IG credit with CoreWeave, although there's been some let up recently, and I think their continued partnership with NVIDIA and the large investment NVIDIA made helps a lot on that front.

But you've also seen it creep into IG concerns initially in 2025 with Oracle. And yet, I think just last night, overnight, after the close, Oracle successfully punched out close to $30 billion of new bonds and preferred equity at pretty attractive rates. And so for us, already having such a large exposure to CoreWeave means a natural focus on higher credit quality tenants on the go forward.

And I think that's not a comment at all about CoreWeave and their position. I think they would be happy with us working directly with IG tenant counterparties, which also offers them an opportunity to be an orchestration agent and a GPU cluster management partner as well, which we value a lot going forward. So that's how we're thinking about the landscape.

And our next question comes from Martin Toner with ATB Capital Markets.

So -- and we -- the last deal we saw, I believe it was from Cipher was on the best terms we've seen yet. And we haven't yet got into a stage where each successive HPC deal is on improved terms. The terms have really varied depending on partners and customers. But if data centers in space makes sense, then data centers in Texas must make a lot of sense. And so should CoreWeave -- sorry, should Galaxy be driving a harder bargain on new HPC deals?

I'll answer this one because I'm a markets guy first and foremost. Listen, the market is going to dictate. We want strong partners that we have a long-term partnership with people that feel comfortable working with us and that we feel comfortable working with, and we're going to balance that versus the best price. We watch the market like hawks. And certainly, it's not all apples-to-apples. And so Chris has this very elaborate spreadsheet with his team where he tries to make it apples-to-apples.

And we -- listen, on CoreWeave, we took a risk, the first train, I think it's going to be a great risk that we got paid extra because we took credit risk with CoreWeave, right? They were at a time of their development and we were that we thought it was the right bet to make, and I think we're going to be proven out to be a winner on that bet. And so we'll look at rate plus counterparty and get the best price. There are enough players around the table that there's attention. If there was one, it's a very different story, but -- and you don't need 10.

And the only thing I'll add is I think you did rightly point out a dynamic which probably has surprised us a little to the upside, which we're happy about, which is initial instinct way back when -- was the dollar per kilowatt rental per month rental price would start out high and then over time, sort of go down and normalize to a market clearing level as bigger and bigger potential clients come in.

But as you pointed out, there isn't actually a very good downward trend. And in fact, given that there's a real choke point in available future capacity for electricity at scale, we've actually seen base rental prices go up in a lot of cases and with Cipher as well. And so that's a dynamic that I think actually plays very favorably to what we were initially underwritten way back when we started this journey.

And our next question then comes from Ed Engel at Compass Point.

Just another follow-up on Helios. I guess, if you were to secure a new tenant there, could construction be done concurrently with CoreWeave's existing build-outs? Or do you think you kind of need to complete Phases 1, 2 and 3 before really starting any new developments?

Yes. So there's a couple of different dimensions to the answer to that question. So one, the new 830-plus megawatts that were approved require infrastructure build, not just on the Galaxy side, but also on the grid side as well. And so the availability of that power regardless of if we could snap our fingers and move mountains ourselves, still cannot -- won't come online until late 2028 on the earliest. And so we're -- we will be doing everything we can along the way to parallelize the site work and the concrete and the ground clearing and development for all of the adjacent land that we've acquired over the last few years that allows us to actually execute on this.

But the practical reality is we will be fully developed and delivered on the CoreWeave Helios 1 site, largely in advance of the practical ability to come online for the next 830 megawatts. So we will parallelize, but it will come at like, I'll call it, sort of the back end of the CoreWeave Phase 1 project anyway.

So yes, we can have multiple tenants.

And our next question today comes from Greg Lewis of BTIG.

I did want you to kind of talk about, if you could, the step-up in the loan book. I guess kind of curious, maybe if you could provide any color around maybe what was driving that, how that might have looked in a recovery in the market? Is it largely with incremental customers? Are we adding any new customers? Any kind of color you're comfortable sharing around the loan book would be helpful.

Yes, Greg, it's Tony. I'll take that one. I mean as we mentioned, the loan book grew pretty healthily throughout the course of 2025. We ended the year at $1.8 billion, a little over $1.8 billion in average total for Q4. That was up slightly from Q3. And I guess the way to contextualize that is in a market where the underlying asset class was down 24%, 25% on average, it tells you that the loan originations and loan quantums were up to offset that value because these are obviously backed by crypto.

There wasn't a ton of change underneath the surface. I would say the net interest margins, as we mentioned, I think, last quarter, did compress a little bit earlier in the year. They have roughly held steady over the last kind of period of time. We have continued to grow our client base. The loan originations were up. And overall, we see it as a healthy business. We've talked about the collateralization on the book being somewhere 130% or north of that. That has all been fairly consistent.

So it can be a fluctuating business as a function of the underlying market cap for crypto. But I would say our demand in that space has remained pretty healthy, which lends to the point Mike made around our confidence in on-chain credit continuing to become a more stable and more visible path forward for the industry.

Yes. The only other thing I'll add to what Tony said, being a lender at my core by background is growing the loan book as a KPI is a real double-edged sword for most companies. Like giving money away to grow your loan book is actually a pretty easy thing to do, growing your loan book while maintaining the right over-collateralization and risk weighting so that you don't lose the money you give away is the most important thing. And so like that's at the core of our DNA from when we started this business.

We are very focused on growing the loan book. We're very focused on growing the loan book without taking any incremental net risk along the way because it's just -- it's not worth it at the end of the day. So that has never -- we've never wavered from that, and that hasn't changed.

Yes. If you guys -- if this was on video, you would look at both Tony and Chris' outfits and you'd realize that this is a pretty conservative firm.

The next question today comes from Joseph Vafi with Canaccord.

Congrats on the new Helios announcement. Just maybe we go back to price action here in Bitcoin and some of the other coins real quick. I know, Mike, that you had the big OG profit taking. We've heard things about maybe a little over leverage in the system. Is Bitcoin a risk asset? Is the store value? Is it trying to be both? Just it was a little surprising to see, and I think it was surprising to everyone to see that price action. Maybe just some more color on where maybe you were seeing selling? Was it broad-based across all these groups? Or was it over leveraged? Are OGs really kind of maybe profit taking a little more than we thought? Just whatever you might want to add.

I think the OG profit taking more than we thought is a real thing. And I think the psychology is -- if you've ever been like a speculator, once you start selling it becomes like an idea, a reaction function, then you sell a little more, you sell a little more. And it is so hard to HODL to literally hold a position and ride it for a long, long trend. And there were a tremendous amount of kind of religious believers in this concept of HODLing, of holding and not letting go of your Bitcoin. And somehow that virus or that fever broke and you started seeing some selling.

Quantum has been the big excuse for people. Now you're seeing some reaction function from the industry. I think the industry has been slow to kind of like fund the quant of institutes to say, "Hey, this is the real story, right?" The story in layman's terms, which has always been told to me by the "smart guys," who in and around the Bitcoin core developers is, as we get closer to quantum, we're going to get closer to quantum resistant and you will have the Bitcoin code changed in time.

So the risk, of course, to the Bitcoin ecosystem is the developers all get ops in it and they fight amongst each other and they don't and they nihilistically blow themselves up. I just don't see that happening. And so I think in the long run, quantum will not be a huge issue for crypto. It will be a big issue for the world, but Bitcoin especially will be able to handle it. But that's been the excuse. And I think that selling has to end -- listen, we had one customer alone who sold $9 billion worth. And to put that in context, that was 1/4 or 1/3 of all of IBIT's inflows last year, right, the biggest player in this market.

And so these big chunky positions take a while to work their way through. Someone wrote an article that's like distributing an IPO, price usually goes down, then the distribution ends and it goes back up. And I think that's the part of the cycle we're in right now. And I said earlier, I don't know when the seller's exhaustion happens. There is not a lot of leverage in the system anymore.

And so Bitcoin specifically and crypto in general, always need a new story, a new catalyst, something that happens. And it's always hard to predict what it's going to be and it shows up. And then all of a sudden, like a wildfire, everyone kind of gets excited again. And I'm blowing smoke on the embers, hoping the wildfire picks up. It's not here yet, obviously, by the price action.

And our final question today comes from Chris Brendler of Rosenblatt Securities.

I'm actually going to ask two quick ones, if that's okay. The first one is on the new 830 megawatts of power, -- does the time line of late '28, early '29 sort of slow the pace of current negotiations? Like is this something that could take place over the course of a year? Or do you expect it to be shorter than that just given the voracious demand out there for power?

And the second question I wanted to ask was on GalaxyOne, the 8% yield that, that product is offering, is that in any way at risk from the Clarity Act and the compromise on stablecoins rewards?

Sure. I'll take the first one at least on the 830 megawatts. If the negotiations with the tenant goes a year, I'll be somewhere between fired and/or tied up in a closet by Mike, I think. The -- we do have a lot of time, and we want to be prudent and thoughtful about who our next partner or partners will be and the economics associated with that. That being said, it is clear that all the market participants have the capital available today and are in a race to secure future capacity. And the time lines that we were originally looking at when we started with Helios and people looking at very focused on, well, '26 and '27 power have very quickly moved to '28, '29, '30 power in terms of all the major players looking to lock that up for themselves.

And so we're going to balance that very strong voracious demand that we see with a little bit of prudence and making sure we make the right decision. But I think we're in no ways looking to watch the market for the next year or a couple of years to see how it develops in terms of partnering, in particular, because the reality is '28, '29 power, given the lead times for the large electrical infrastructure that need to get built, those lead times today sort of push you up into early '28 at a minimum anyway. And so you got to pick your partner quick. You got to make your decisions on what you're going to do and you got to start locking up supply chain so that you can actually deliver that far out. And so that's how we're thinking about prosecuting that opportunity.

On the GalaxyOne side, I'll pitch it to Tony, and I'll kick in if I can be helpful.

Yes, Chris. So the short answer is you're talking about the premium yield, 8% that we're offering on the GalaxyOne platform right now. Short answer is no, that is not at risk from the Clarity Act, at least it is our understanding the way anything in the Clarity Act is proposed. That is a -- it's an offering that is available to accredited investors only.

We have certain customer limits and a total portfolio limit on how much we're offering there. But it is really in the interest of growing our overall client base as that business gets off the ground. That rate is obviously subject to change with a period of notice. And that will be driven by sort of broad supply and demand. But we also think about it more generally as diversifying our funding sources for the markets business more broadly, obviously, within a box of disciplined asset liability management. But it's not -- it's a rate that we control, and it's not subject to the Clarity Act at all. Hopefully, that answers your question.

Thank you. And that concludes your question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thanks a lot. We appreciate all the insightful questions and your support. I just want you all to know that we're working our tails off here and our eye is certainly on the prize. And so hopefully, come back next quarter with better numbers and a better story. Have a great day.

Thank you, sir. This concludes today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.

Hey, guys, it's Mike Novogratz. Are we on?

Mike, we are on, and good morning, everyone. We're very excited to be hosting our Third X Spaces following our Q3 earnings print this morning. It's great to have the chance to connect directly with all of you and share a little bit more about what we're working on here at Galaxy.

I'm joined by Mike Novogratz, Galaxy's Founder and CEO; Tony Paquette, Galaxy's CFO; and Zac Prince, Head of GalaxyOne. We're going to try and answer as many questions as we can today. There are some that we will not be able to answer. As per usual, we won't be addressing nonpublic financials or other information. Anything that is inappropriate or irrelevant and questions on specific crypto assets or new products, among others, if you'd like to submit a question, feel free to tweet it us or raise your hand to speak on the spaces.

Lastly, I need to remind you to please refer to the link to the disclaimer provided in the spaces post and note that none of the information in the spaces constitutes investment advice or an offer, recommendation or solicitation by Galaxy or any of its affiliates to buy or sell any securities.

With that, let's get started. Mike, I'll pass it over to you for some quick remarks before we open this one up.

Yes, guys. First of all, apologies for the late start. We -- punctuality is important to my life, and I hate being late, and so sorry about that. We'll try not to happen again. And I'll try to be a little less dry than Jonathan, but that's his role. He's our dry man with all the disclaimers and facts.

Listen, if you heard our earnings call this morning, we had a great quarter. We just had a management committee meeting here, and everyone's eyes are spinning because we're so busy. There is a tremendous amount happening in the digital asset space right now. Opportunities, our clients are looking to do things. TradeFi are looking to do things. And so we are at the hunt for talent. We're looking at lots of opportunities. And so I couldn't be more excited. Excited to answer your questions today. Glad we have Zac on to talk a little bit about GalaxyOne, if you have questions there. And if you don't, I'll ask them some questions. And so let's get to it.

I will throw to Jonathan to pick the first question, anyone has the courage to raise their hand or their virtual hand.

All right. Let's kick it off with Vinyle. Vinyle your line should be unmuted, over to you to ask a question. [Audio Gap] Vinyle are you hearing me? Are you hearing me right now?

Loud and clear. First of all, congrats on the results. It's pretty amazing to see that the past 8 years have brought us here. I've got a few questions. My first one will be regarding VC holdings. We've been wondering for a while in our small group of DD club, whether or not the company was going to reevaluate the current holdings to market conditions. We've been waiting for this for a few years. I remember Alex Ioffe back in the day saying that his interpretation of the market was that the holdings in the VC sphere were going to be higher. And in the same way, I was wondering if a lower discount would be applicable to the L3 assets we've got on the sheet. We've heard on the call that bullish was upgraded to L1 type and so I guess my question regarding the other assets is pretty much the same.

Yes, listen, so we have a pricing committee that meets monthly. And certainly quarterly before we put them out, they go through each asset on our balance sheet and they market -- I'd like to think conservatively, but they market what they think is a fair mark. Those marks are just for liquidity or illiquidity. Something like bullish was held on the balance sheet at a certain mark and then it goes public. And now it's liquid security. And so it trades at a -- it gets marked where the stock price goes.

When you look at the entire thing, I like turning illiquid into liquid over time. And so we're constantly looking to do that where we have illiquidity, create more liquidity. Usually, that's after the life cycle of an asset. Crypto is interesting. Some of these things have been on our balance sheet for 10, 12 years, right? We've got a lot of Ripple equity. We were day 1 investors in Ripple even before Galaxy. It was just a family office. That has actually slowly moved up. They do -- they do tender offers every 6 months.

We tender in, we get some liquidity, and then we mark to some discount to that tender because we're not allowed to sell our entire thing. And so every quarter, you can see in our financials that illiquid thing moves around. Sometimes things get moved up, sometimes things get moved down. And I think it does a pretty good approximation of figuring out when you put in the illiquidity that sometimes works against you and sometimes works for you, right?

There are a lot of venture stuff that you know are going to be worth more than they're marked at one day or even now, but that's where the mark is because there's no activity in that specific name. And so I know it's an imperfect science, but it's taken very seriously. Tony Paquette runs that process. And that's -- it's quite frankly, the best we can do and it's best any company like ours does do.

Yes, I appreciate the answer. I would have another question regarding VC, if it's authorized. I was wondering if you could walk us through the ownership structure regarding the funds we own. I'm talking about Galaxy Interactive, but more recently about the new fund. We heard you on some podcast saying that we were owning as a company, 30% of that kind of business. I just want to make sure we understand well where we sit in every fund as per ownership.

Yes. So in each fund, Galaxy puts our own firm capital into the fund to help seed the fund. Depending on how much they raise, our percentage goes up or down. And then, of course, there's a 20% carry in most of those funds on top of any profits. And so -- and that carry -- some of that gets paid out to the team and some stays with the house, with the investors.

We -- I don't want to jump the shark here to understand if we published exactly by fund. But I think roughly 20% to 30% is where we've been in most of these funds. We were less than that in the very first interactive fund, which was the EOS fund originally, we were like 10%. But in most of the funds since then, we've been 20% to 30%.

If I may have a last question regarding tokenization?

Yes.

I was wondering because we heard that BlackRock was looking to build its own technology, and we see -- we can understand that most big banks might see a threat with tokenization. I was wondering where you see GK8 sitting at in this market? And where do you see custody as a service, but mostly as a fee clipping like when you got smart contract settlement and maybe also AllUnity. So I'd like to see if there's a moat regarding GT8 and if at any moment you see GT8 having its own fierce moment, if I may.

Yes. Listen, the tokenization process itself is not so complicated, right? I think where you're going to see the value over time is connecting the entire infrastructure process, which is like capital raising in some ways, right, figuring out what assets should be tokenized or can be tokenized, and how to distribute those and then where those distributed assets sit in custody. It's kind of a complex web.

GK is an important part of our infrastructure plan as well as our staking business, right? GK8 has built our tokenization engine, and they've been a key part of the AllUnity plan. But we're all still relatively early in this. We're hoping to announce some partnerships very soon with traditional TradeFi players, where we're partnering in those infrastructure pieces. And so we're both going to do our own infrastructure and then a lot of partnerships around that.

Nobody is really tokenizing at scale right now. And some of that, I think, will change in the next 18 months. I think once you get clarity from the bill that hopefully gets passed in Washington in the next few months, the market structure bill. Once you also get understanding of where these tokenized security assets will trade, right now, they need to trade on ATSs and there are not a lot of big liquid pools around ATSs. And so all the pieces aren't in place yet for the tokenization world to really explode, but we're really close. And I think we're going to be making a lot of pivots and investments along the next few months to make sure that we're part of that future.

We're going to go with Bizar [indiscernible] next.

You got to love a guy named Bizar.

Thank you for having me again. I feel I owe you an apology actually because you just mentioned it. My name is Victor. My name is Victor [indiscernible], and I've been here for the third time in a row. And it seems like I won't be able to get back my official X account, so I've had somewhat of a spat with Elon and X over some of the algorithm shortcomings. And I just want to make sure you know that I'm a real human being. This is just my fun account, the only one I can use. I'm an institutional asset manager, actually oversee a 40 billion operation, and I'm a personal investor in Galaxy coming on my own behalf, and I thank you for having me.

What I want to say just before I dive into the questions, I want to say a thank you to you and your teams. I think a lot of people on this call have made a good amount of money of the hard work you guys have been putting in. The layers of the business are many, and I know how much grind you've put in, so just to thank you for the hard work you guys put in for your investors.

Appreciate it.

Now my question -- first one is with regards to something you said on the Empire podcast. You alluded to how the data center business, even though it's so prominently stated, I think the quote you used is, “It's merely 10% of your time of your brain power.†I was wondering if you could perhaps talk us through from an investor standpoint, what are sort of the other 90% of what's on your brain and really, in doing so, also stress the risks that are most pertinent to you when you manage this business together with Tony, what is it you allocate your brain power to? What are the risks you're most actively managing?

Sure. It's a fair question. Let me state by the first premise is that I couldn't only spend 10% of my brain power on the data center if Chris Ferraro wasn't spending 40% to 50% of his, right? Chris is a beast. And he was perfectly suited for a business like this because he's got a structured finance background. He understands how to get financing as does Tony. And this stuff is you better be reading the contracts. And I'm not a real contract reader, and Chris goes through with a fine-tooth comb these 400-page leases. And so we got the right guy at Galaxy of managing that process.

Listen, the crypto business is a lot more complicated in terms of the decisions one needs to make about where this industry is going. Like we all say tokenization is going to happen, but how and when and where is the liquidity going to be? What exchanges are they going to trade on. And so part of this is looking at the chessboard and trying to make the right decisions. I spent a lot of my time thinking about what talent we need and how to recruit that talent, right?

Our best assets go up and down the elevator every day, right? This is a human capital business. And not only recruiting talent, but getting them to work together to a common goal is a big part of a lot of my brainpower. I spent a decent amount of my time telling the Galaxy story. A lot of you guys on Twitter gave me a wrath of shit for years for not talking about Galaxy enough.

And we heard you loud and clear. Some of that was because we were a Canadian company that was stuck in a 5-year listing process in the U.S. And when you're in that process, you're not allowed to speak about your company because that's called pumping the well or priming the well. And so I had kind of a gag order, but now we don't. And we want to make sure people understand the value of our company and the story of our company to bring in liquidity, right?

What you realize is stock price is pretty correlated with volume and liquidity. And so great that we had over 4,000 people on our Twitter earnings call -- on our YouTube earnings call today. That's way up from when we were nine months ago. And so that's part of the job. And then I oversee the liquid risk here. I'm 30-year macro veteran. Crypto at its core is macro, right?

What's driving the big moves in Bitcoin and the other coins and the other ecosystems is a story about dollar debasement. And so I spent a decent amount of my time in my old networks, talking to the macro traders, understanding like the geopolitics of the world and the market environment of the world so we can make the right decisions around our balance sheet. And so when you put it all together, it's a full-time job, I promise.

I have no doubt about that. I mean, last time we spoke about, for instance, CoreWeave credit risk and you alluded to how you're managing this. Is there any other really prominent other risk you're currently focusing on something you can share with us?

Yes. Listen, the whole world -- the whole world is complicated right now, right? We've got a really polarized country. And so the politics of our country have never been worse. and that creates nervousness and uncertainty. We have what feels to most people like we're in some stage of a bubble around data centers and AI. And what I've said over and over is bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live. If it was the railroad bubble or the Internet bubble, right, like the railroads really did change the way we live, just like the Internet did.

AI will do so as well, which means prices will get way higher than probably the reality will be over a long period of time. Nobody knows if we're in the middle third quarter or fourth quarter of this frenzy. But so we're trying to manage -- how do you manage that risk as best you can, knowing that at one point in the next few years, you'll have a pretty sizable washout, right?

All this CapEx that's being spent isn't all going to make money. Some of it will make a ton of money and some of it won't. And so how do you hedge and how do you prepare for that inevitable. And again, I don't know if the inevitable is in 3 months or 3 years. And I don't think anyone else does either, but there will be an inevitable pullback because there's just too much capital being spent and not all of it is going to be productive.

I mean we also [indiscernible] putting the money into OpenAI, and that kind of rings the alarm bells to some extent. I think you alluded to it?

There is a story that you can create a vendor financing of all this stuff, right? I mean OpenAI is -- has got obligations that far, far, far exceed its revenue right now. Well, if it can prove itself that it's growing revenue, it's going to be an amazing -- have an amazing ability and flip to profitability, an amazing ability to borrow money to meet those obligations. And if it can, it won't.

Like right now, it seems like it can raise equity at ever higher valuations and almost as much as it can, but that doesn't last forever. And so in lots of ways, OpenAI is the linchpin. And in some ways, it's too big to fail because our government really fundamentally believes, and I think this is not just the Trump administration. I think this is probably bipartisan that winning AI is existential for the long-term success of the United States, that rightfully or wrongfully, they see this as a cold war against China. And this is an arms race.

I personally don't, but who cares what I think. I know the government does. And so I don't think either government, if the Democrats were in charge or the Republicans are going to let the U.S. lose the AI arms race. And so that -- you put all together, it's a complicated equation. And that has to be -- I spent a ton of time thinking about that risk, talking to smart people about that risk. And if you start seeing cracks, what does that mean for. What are the moves Galaxy needs to make?

It very much resonates with my thinking on the framework -- on the risks in this framework. Now if I may ask you on hiring because you alluded to it yourself, I've been in for securitization in the mid-2000s, and I know how tough hiring can get when you really are growing when you're in that phase, when you need that human capital. Could you share with us how you're structurally going about that? And actually, for what it's worth, I would love to know how one best applies to Galaxy, too.

Yes. Listen, we have a website. We post tons of job offerings. You can see some of the guys on Twitter or an X are really, really savvy. They're always looking at those job offerings to try to understand what we're doing in our data center business. I get a kick out of that. The easiest way to hire people in a growing business is through reference. right?

Guys on the desk that have friends and colleagues at other places that know they're A players. But we post everything. We have multiple headhunters that work for us. We have a big HR department. Now they're called the people department, but our people department is active. And then each business leader is actually the one who's finally responsible for building out their teams. And so you can go to the website, galaxy-com-careers, and it lists all our job offerings.

Just to give you some sense, our summer internship program last year that had 25 summer interns. And nowadays, the summer intern is kind of an addition to get a full-time job. right? We will probably hire 75% of those interns. We had 15,000 applicants, 25 spots. People like our company. They like our industry. And it's really freaking tough for young people to get jobs right now, right? With the advent of AI, with the economy the way it is, it's never been harder for 22-year-old college grads to get jobs. And so we have -- and the hardest thing for us is how do you sort through all these qualified candidates to get someone who's awesome, who fits your culture. And we work really hard at that.

That's awesome for you, but also awesome for us as investors.

We're going to move on to Tyler Michetti of Tyler Investing.

My name is Tyler, a retail investor here. I've been following Galaxy for the past year now. Excited to see where you guys go with this. I actually have a question about Helios. Given the energy dynamics in Texas and how the rest of the build-out is going, can you guys talk a little bit about how Helios is being optimized for power grid and what kind of benefits you expect that to provide once Helios is fully operational?

Yes. So the interesting thing about being part of the ERCOT grid is you get to draw power from the grid, right? We're not building behind the meter. We're grid users. And what's the grid job is to say, all these new applications to draw power from us, what are we going to look like in 5 years and 10 years' time? And will the grid be able to sustain this kind of power demand. And so in lots of ways, that responsibility is ERCOT’s with their partners, right? WETT and AEP, which is the power provider that we use.

And so for us, it's making sure that our applications have the best chance of being approved by them. And that is working with each of those bureaucracies to make sure they get the test results and the studies that they need to realize that we'll be able to pull the next 800 to 2.7 megawatts of power and the grid will be able to withstand that.

When the power goes into the box, and Chris Ferraro talked to this, this morning, right, that's where we're handing off the baton to CoreWeave, who has really developed a world-class, best-in-class ability to get the most out of the chips, the way they stack them, the way they connect them. And so we decided that was not going to be one of the domain expertise is at this point we focused on. It's why we partnered with CoreWeave. And so we really have the role here of land, power connectivity and then finding the right tenants.

And I actually have a follow-up. If you can provide any new update on the remaining build-out of Helios and whether you're incorporating any new technology that maybe you haven't explained yet? And potentially, are you -- maybe going to do more in-house expansion or joint ventures, potentially hosting other companies?

Yes. Right now, we've got the 800 megawatts is spoken for from CoreWeave, and that's the plan. And so we're a one-tenant single purpose-built campus. When we get the next approval of more power, we're going to look really carefully, do we diversify away from CoreWeave to other tenants or not. And that will be a real, I think, healthy discussion. The reason you diversify is because having multiple tenants is always a good risk mitigant.

And listen, we've been paid a whole lot to work with CoreWeave, and they've been great partners. And so we're certainly going to -- that can be the first conversation we have. And as time passes, the technology is shifting quickly. And so we can already see that the first 200-megawatt Phase 1 that we're doing for CoreWeave, Phase 2 is going to look different. They're going to pack things tighter. They're going to get more usage out of the same amount of megawatts and same amount of space.

And so I think each iteration will be a little different than the last one. And we're more of a in the -- we're not driving that process. We're helping, but we're really -- we're riding along that process, working with our GC, our in-house people, but mostly with our tenants.

Zac Prince, we just had a question come in over Twitter for you. The question is from [Nguyen Dinh Bao], who wants to know if we have any plans to expand GalaxyOne to Canada and generally beyond the United States?

Yes, sure thing. So first, this is my first time talking on one of these spaces. I just wanted to say I'm thrilled to be here. I've been at Galaxy for just over 6 months now, and the team at Galaxy is truly remarkable and world-class. And there's just so much energy and excitement around so many different parts of the business right now that it's a thrill to be a part of.

I'm also kind of addicted to Twitter and have been for a while, so being able to speak directly to a lot of the folks here who I see your post regularly is also an honor. So thanks. In terms of expanding GalaxyOne outside of the U.S., we will absolutely be doing that. It's not something that is on our super short-term part of the road map. And the reason for that is a lot of the products that we're offering are kind of highly regulated financial services products. And our focus, at least to start is on the U.S. market, but we will absolutely be expanding into Canada.

Still a little bit TBD in terms of what exactly that product mix will look like when we do expand, but we will get there. And I've heard a number of folks from Canada, parts of Europe and other places request access to some of the things that we're doing at GalaxyOne, and we hear you, and it is on the road map, but don't expect something there like in the next 6 months.

Thanks, Zac. Mike, we've got a couple more that came through via X, which I'm going to kick over to you. The first one is from Laser [indiscernible], who said that Tom Lee is saying that DAT is in a bubble, and we recorded $40 million of fees from our DAT activity over the past several quarters. Do you think that DAT fee revenue will be a significant revenue source in the future? And how is the competitive landscape given some of the fees that Galaxy is charging for these services?

Yes. Listen, I think we were smart and moved fast to get a lot of long-term contracts to manage DAT money. And so that will keep our asset management business busy and profitable for a while. I pray those DAT grow because if those DATs grow, our assets under management grow. And some are growing. Tom Lee is doing a brilliant job at Bit-miner of raising new equity and building his asset base every week, right?

Michael Saylor did the best job and MicroStrategy has slowed down in its growth. And you're going to probably see feast or famine in these DATs. Some are going to be great businesses. Others are going to be what I will call closed-end funds with decent assets.

I think the acceleration of DATs is going to slow, right? I think we're at the tail end of using DATs to raise capital for the crypto business. And I say that because the 3 biggest ecosystems, quite frankly, the 4 biggest ecosystems all have raised significant DATs. And so you don't need 15 Solana DATs or 15 Bitcoin DATs. And so now there's a place where public equity markers -- public equity investors can go to play with DATs space. They also have the ETF space. And so -- and crypto people still have normal crypto space. And you're going to see all these things converge over time. And so I think Tom is right that we had -- we probably hit peak DAT, but I don't think that means the revenue from those DATs goes away.

Thanks, Mike. We got one more on the Twitter comments from [indiscernible], who wants to know what the plan is for next year, what targets do we have in place after such a huge jump in net income and also importantly, wanted to let you know that we are all Nakamigos.

I love the Nakamigos. So shout out to you guys. Listen, I think the most exciting thing that will happen next year for Galaxy is that by the middle of the year, Helios starts cash flowing. And that will just be cool because we know it's like you turn your hose on, it starts off coming slowly and then as you turn and turn, the water comes out faster and faster. That's the way to think of Helios.

We start cash flowing probably end of the first quarter and -- by the end of the year, it's really cash flowing. And 18 months after that, it's hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. And that changes the dynamic of this place immensely. And so in some ways, we've got a year to keep grinding before the Helios cash flow machine turns on.

Each year, we approach the crypto business relatively similarly. We approach it scared and optimistic, like scared that we know it's a very volatile space and that we've lived through a bunch of cycles and they can be painful, optimistic in that we're seeing so many new opportunities show up. We wouldn't be hiring people if we didn't think we're now at the precipice of really becoming part of the financial landscape of the world, right?

Crypto was kind of a science project. For the first few years, we were running Galaxy, and now it's integrating with traditional finance at an accelerating pace. One of the metrics we look at is assets on platform, right? The more assets we have on platform, that's staking assets, asset management assets, assets in our lending book, those are recurring revenue things, and they give the company more and more ballast and so we don't have enough of that yet for me to sleep like a baby, maybe we never will because I don't sleep that much. But that's our goal as a firm is to continue to build those assets that are recurring revenue, knowing that this is going to stay a volatile space for a while. I hope that helps.

Thanks, Mike. Maybe I'll kick it back over to you. It doesn't look like we have any more questions in the queue for some final remarks to wrap this one up.

Yes. Guys, I really appreciate this community. We were frustrated for years with the stock that felt undervalued and didn't trade a lot. And in no small part from a lot of you guys on this, this chat, people have started to hear our story and getting engaged in our stock. That's my job as CEO, but you guys are amazing helpers in understanding our stock.

The questions we get on Twitter spaces or X spaces are often as insightful as the ones we get from the paid professionals at the big investment banks. And so I think we are seeing the democratization of finance happen before our eyes and all you guys are a big part of that. So I want to say thanks, and we'll see you next quarter.

Good morning, and welcome to the Galaxy Digital Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jonathan Goldowsky, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good morning, and welcome to Galaxy's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Before we begin, please note that our remarks, including answers to your questions, may include forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these statements as a result of various factors, including those identified in the disclaimers in our earnings release or other filings which have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and on SEDAR+. Forward-looking statements speak only as of today and will not be updated.

Additionally, we may discuss references to non-GAAP metrics the reconciliations of which can also be found in our earnings release.

Finally, none of the information on this call constitutes a recommendation, solicitation or offer by Galaxy or its affiliates to buy or sell any securities.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy.

Well, good morning, everyone. Chris Ferraro would get upset with me if I didn't give you a New York weather report. It is a gorgeous day here in the Big Apple, a great fall day. I couldn't be more excited to be with you. I want to welcome our new friends who are logging in on YouTube. Last time in our conference call, we didn't have enough slots, which was a bit embarrassing. And so we wanted to make sure our story gets out there and anyone who wants to hear can hear. And so thanks for following us.

Listen, quarter 3 was the best quarter in Galaxy's history. And so I show up today with a grin. Probably about running the company is that grin lasts probably for the length of this call, and then my face gets stern and we start grinding.

What happened? Listen, we have for 8 years, been trying to build a brand of confidence and trust. And Q3, it felt like that all kind of came together, right? We did a gigantic spot crypto trade, which came to us because they're guys in the community that trusted us to move $9 billion of their Bitcoin into cash. That didn't come overnight. That comes from a long time of relationship building and liquidity building, quite frankly.

We also help launch the largest Solana DApp again, raising $1.7 billion, $1.65 billion to invest in the Solana ecosystem and doing it quickly comes from having built up trust with lots of people. And so that's kind of the story that we've been working hard for 8 years. We didn't do a great job telling our story originally, and we're really focused on that. Part of that was not being here. We're 6 months now in the U.S. NASDAQ company gives us a lot more ability to tell our story. And so part of my job is out there making sure people understand what Galaxy is what we're doing, what we're thinking about.

I'll just hit you with a few quick highlights, and I'm going to pass this to Tony and Chris. But one, we generated $500 million plus of net income. That's just a lot. Our assets on platform reached $17 billion. That's by far a record for us. That strong organic growth in asset management is staking. Asset management, we did a great job of understanding when all these treasury companies were starting that we could play a role in helping them manage those assets and stake. And so that was $4 billion plus of new assets added to the platform, and those are high fee-paying assets that will be with us for a long time.

Trading side, outside of that 80,000 Bitcoin order, we saw record volumes. And that hopefully continues to grow each quarter. Those are the businesses that we keep investing in, thinking that, that will in the long run, give Galaxy great ballast. Our lending book, which had spent years roughly in that $900 million to $1.2 billion is on the move. We were $1.8 billion and growing. And so I talked a lot about credit needed to be a key part of the Galaxy growth story, and we are focused on making it so.

Excitingly, we launched Galaxy One. It's our opening for to get individual investors into the Galaxy universe. We're going to take the knowledge and institutional profile that we've built at Galaxy and opened the window to more and more people. It's a new business. We're going to give you updates, but it's going to take us a little while to get that really up and running. And so let's think of that as a Q2 '26 big update.

Data centers, which is I always think of we're half a data center company and half a digital assets company. We are grinding in the data center business. There are 2 sides to this. There's the 800 megawatts that we have in building that out for CoreWeave, that's building on time. It's building on cost, that's getting it financed. All of those things, Chris is going to talk on, I'm feeling great about. And then it's we're in queue with a bunch of people for more power in Texas. And we'll know a lot more about that in the foreseeable future, but we feel pretty good that 800 is not going to be our total footprint.

And finally, listen, last week, we did a pipe deal, $460 million from a large institutional investor. I couldn't be more excited about having them as a partner and investor in us. That money is going to be used to help build out a world-class company and a world-class data center.

And with that, guys, like I said, couldn't be more excited. I'm going to pass it to Tony.

Great. Thanks, Mike, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. As with last quarter, I'll provide a summary of Galaxy's overall performance in Q3, then I'll dive into some more of the details on the digital asset business and then turn it over to Chris to provide a more detailed update on data centers.

As Mike mentioned, Q3 was a standout quarter for Galaxy with record performance across the Digital Asset segment and continued operational progress as we scale our core businesses. GAAP net income for the quarter came in at $505 million, on record adjusted gross profit of $728 million, underscoring the strength of our diversified model and ability to execute in a dynamic market environment. This performance was driven by outsized contributions from both our Digital Asset segment and our Treasury and Corporate investment portfolio.

In Digital Assets, we delivered a record adjusted gross profit of $318 million, reflecting strong momentum across trading, investment banking, asset management and staking. Our platform continues to benefit from increased institutional engagement, broader client activity and rising demand for sophisticated investment and advisory solutions.

In Treasury and Corporate, we delivered adjusted gross profit of $408 million primarily driven by gains across our digital asset and investment portfolios. Within our private investments book, we saw sizable unrealized gains from our investments in Ripple Labs and from Bullish, which went public during Q3. As a reminder, we've transitioned the majority of our venture investing activity from our balance sheet into our venture franchise within the asset management business, which allows our institutional LPs to invest alongside Galaxy while enabling us to generate long-term management fees for overseeing these investments.

In data centers, as mentioned previously, we expect financial results in this segment to be de minimis until the first half of 2026 when we plan to begin recognizing revenue under Phase 1 of our CoreWeave lease agreement. Until then, all major capital expenditures associated with our data center build-out are being capitalized including the interest associated with the $1.4 billion project level loan we secured during the quarter.

Firm-wide adjusted EBITDA came in at $629 million, up from $211 million in Q2, a clear reflection of the increased scale and profitability across the enterprise. Total operating expenses, excluding grossed-up transaction costs were $184 million in Q3. The increase from Q2 was driven by a $38 million onetime impairment related to our legacy mining infrastructure and an increase in compensation expense. Looking forward, we do not expect any material -- further material impairments to our remaining mining equipment, which is now held on our balance sheet at an aggregate value of less than $50 million.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended Q3 with $1.9 billion of cash and stablecoins, up roughly $700 million from Q2, primarily reflecting the net sale of certain digital assets and investments during the quarter as well as deposits received from CoreWeave following the exercise of their Phase 2 and 3 options.

Within our Treasury and Corporate segment, we held approximately $2.1 billion in net digital assets and investments at quarter end, reflecting the continued strategic allocation of capital towards high conviction investment opportunities. We ended Q3 with $3.2 billion in equity capital, up more than 20% quarter-over-quarter with roughly 65% allocated to our operating businesses. Over time, we expect the amount of capital allocated to our operating businesses to continue to increase as we scale across both digital assets and data centers.

As Mike mentioned, earlier this month, one of the world's largest and most respected names in Global Asset Management made a $460 million investment in Galaxy. The $325 million in net proceeds to the company will help drive the build-out of our Helios data center campus, which Chris will speak to shortly. We feel good about our overall capital position and we'll look to optimize our sources of funding as we continue building across 2 major growth businesses. As mentioned last quarter, we will continue to manage our balance sheet with fortress principles demonstrating disciplined risk management and maintaining sufficient capital and liquidity to support sustained growth over the long-term.

Now turning to our operating results, starting with Digital Assets. On last quarter's earnings call, we highlighted that July marked the strongest monthly performance for our Digital Assets business, and that momentum carried through the remainder of Q3. We had record results in global markets generating approximately $295 million of adjusted gross profit, driven by healthy trading activity and continued growth across our client base. Industry-wide crypto trading volumes improved meaningfully during the quarter, reflecting higher prices, strong market sentiment and increased engagement and Galaxy outperformed that backdrop delivering record crypto trading volumes that were up 140% from Q2. As Mike mentioned, this included the sale of over $9 billion of Bitcoin on behalf of a single client and one of the largest notional Bitcoin transactions ever completed, underscoring our ability to deliver complex transactions at scale with limited market impact.

In our lending business, as Mike mentioned, our average loan book grew to over $1.8 billion in Q3, driven by new clients and market appreciation. A shift in mix caused some net interest margin compression during the quarter. And as the crypto lending market evolves, we will continue to maintain prudent risk standards and explore strategies to efficiently fund this business with a focus on supporting long-term scalability.

On the advisory front, Galaxy closed 2 deals during the quarter, including serving as a co-placement agent and financial adviser to Forward Industries on the $1.65 billion private placement. And this deal highlights the strength of our advisory franchise and our growing role as a trusted partner for institutional clients navigating this market. It also marks the first step in a broader partnership with Forward Industries that extends across our platform, which I'll speak to in a moment.

Shifting to Asset Management and Infrastructure Solutions. We ended the quarter with more than $15 billion in total assets under management and assets under stake, nearly doubling from last quarter and generated $23 million in adjusted gross profit, reflecting strong growth across both businesses. Assets under management grew to approximately $9 billion this quarter, reflecting strong net inflows of roughly $2 billion across both ETF and alternative strategies. This momentum was driven by continued adoption of our digital asset treasury solutions which with Galaxy being selected as the manager of choice by several companies in this space.

Winning these mandates reflects our deep experience managing across market cycles and navigating volatility to deliver strong risk-adjusted returns reinforcing our position as a trusted partner. These mandates also represent a meaningful shift in the profile of our asset management business to more strategic long-term capital that generates recurring durable revenue streams. The asset management business is now firmly run rate profitable, giving us a solid foundation to continue investing in order to expand the platform and broaden our reach.

Turning to Infrastructure Solutions. Our assets under stake more than doubled quarter-over-quarter to approximately $7 billion, with growth being driven largely by digital asset treasuries and our custodian integration strategy. Through these integrations with leaders across the custody space, including the custodian for the majority of U.S. crypto ETFs, we positioned ourselves to serve institutional clients at scale and enable our staking services to reach a much broader audience.

Stepping back, Q3 served as a sort of activation of the flywheel across our multiple digital asset businesses. This is an exciting development and notable marker of the continued maturation in Galaxy's business model. A clear example of this flywheel is our work with digital asset treasury companies. What began as an emerging opportunity earlier in the year has evolved into a multichannel business line with mandates across some of the largest publicly traded holders of digital assets.

This includes supporting clients with initial capital raise through our advisory business, then leveraging our network to provide operational support and connectivity to key service providers to ensure a successful launch. It also includes working closely with treasury teams to implement institutional grade yield strategies aligned with their objectives, spanning staking, lending, trade execution, asset management and other on chain opportunities all within a disciplined risk-managed framework.

Our partnership with Forward Industries is a case in point. In Q3, we announced a strategic investment alongside Multi-Coin Capital and Jump Crypto in forward Solana based treasury initiative, the largest of its time to date. We supported Forward's private placement through our advisory business, assisted them with execution and deployment of the proceeds, became the sole asset manager of all their treasury assets and helped launch their validator on the Solana blockchain.

Collectively, our digital asset treasury mandates have added more than $4.5 billion in AUM and AUS to Galaxy. And at current market prices, we expect the annual recurring fee revenue associated with these mandates to be more than $40 million. This is exactly the kind of institutional-grade solution Galaxy is uniquely positioned to deliver, leveraging our expertise to build long-term partnerships and generate durable recurring revenue for the franchise.

Shifting to innovation, a couple of things to highlight. As part of our broader mission to connect traditional finance with blockchain infrastructure, last quarter, we partnered with Superstate, one of our venture portfolio companies, to tokenize Galaxy's Class A common stock on the Solana blockchain. As noted in our press release from September, these on-change shares are not a synthetic representation of ownership. They're fully SEC-registered securities with the same legal and economic rights as our traditional shares.

We believe this event marks a meaningful step towards modernizing capital markets, serves as a proof point for how traditional markets and on chain infrastructure can connect and positions Galaxy at the forefront of that evolution. We will continue to work with regulatory agencies and leading financial institutions to explore new opportunities to broaden and expand tokenization in the coming quarters.

On artificial intelligence, we're not just building one of the newest, largest and most advanced data centers in the world, we have bought into the promise of AI and the impact it can have on our overall company. Over the past year, we've integrated AI across nearly every function at Galaxy from engineering and technology to finance and operations to trading and risk. Our employees are now using AI tools on a regular basis and productivity gains are materializing. In particular, areas like agentic coding are seeing step change improvements, giving us the confidence that continued investment in these tools will have compounding productivity benefits down the road. Looking forward, AI won't just streamline how we operate, it will redefine how we serve clients, innovate faster and compete at scale.

Last but not least, as Mike mentioned, 2 weeks ago, we launched GalaxyOne, our first direct-to-consumer product offering with an exciting growth opportunity for the franchise. GalaxyOne gives U.S.-based individual investors access to high-yield cash, crypto and equities trading, all through one single unified platform. Unlike many mass market retail platforms, GalaxyOne offers clients a seamless way to manage assets across both traditional and digital finance, supported by Galaxy's institutional expertise, operational rigor and disciplined risk management.

GalaxyOne also opens up new opportunities for cross-platform collaboration and integration across our trading, asset management and staking businesses. The premium yield product is a good example. Over time, we expect this product to broaden and diversify our sources of funding, which will help drive efficiency and profitability in our digital assets business overall. And while it's still early, we are encouraged by GalaxyOne's initial traction, we are already seeing adoption from clients who closely align with our target market, mass affluent investors who have historically been underserved by traditional platforms and this early engagement reinforces our conviction in the opportunity ahead. As Mike mentioned, we have an ambitious road map for this -- for GalaxyOne, and we look forward to updating you on progress in the coming quarters.

Wrapping up, Q3 was a breakout quarter for Galaxy and our businesses are building momentum. We're heading into year-end with a strong foundation, clear priorities and a long-term vision.

With that, I'll turn it over to Chris.

Thanks, Tony. Turning to our data center business. It was just one year ago on our third quarter earnings call that we announced the signing of a term sheet to support AI and HPC infrastructure at our Helios campus. In the 12 short months since the progress has been extraordinary. CoreWeave has now committed to the full 800 megawatts of approved capacity, we've secured project financing for Phase 1, and construction is advancing at an impressive pace. After laying the groundwork in the first half of the year, we carried significant momentum into the third quarter. We executed relentlessly and successfully, rapidly developing the Phase 1 portion of the Helios campus on budget and on schedule.

Some updates on our construction progress. Approximately 70% of our civil and concrete work is now complete and equipment deliveries and installations are well underway. We are now placing chillers and putting together the piping system that will form the backbone of our advanced liquid cooling design, an essential component to support next-gen GPUs at industry-leading cabinet densities. Our e-houses, which contain the critical electrical infrastructure have started to ship from the integrators and medium-voltage switchgear and transformers are already being set on their pads.

The building for Phase 1 is on track to be fully dried in or sealed from weather within the next few weeks, an important step that protects the mechanical and electrical equipment from inclement weather and allows interior trade work to proceed regardless of outdoor conditions. We've already logged more than 500,000 hours worked with over 700 construction team members on site daily, an extraordinary effort that underscores the efficiency, precision and discipline of the design and construction team supporting the project.

The next major construction milestone for us is the powering on of the first data hall, which is scheduled in early December. Following that milestone, we'll begin commissioning activities with our third-party commissioning agent, vendors and contractors in preparation for making the first data hall ready for service. Importantly, we remain on schedule with construction, a testament to our growing data center team, the contractors and subcontractors working on the project and the thousands of hours of coordination required for complex projects like this one to be successful. At the same time, we're scaling the supporting infrastructure at Helios campus for both the first and second phase of construction.

Our on-site workforce development hub constructed on 90 acres we own adjacent to the main Helios campus, has been open for nearly a month now in support of construction and operation activities. As we look ahead to our Phase 2 and 3 projects at the Helios campus, we're applying lessons learned from Phase 1 to optimize the design for scalability and constructability while also enhancing the efficiency of our power and cooling systems. We are proactively securing long lead time items like backup diesel generators and medium-voltage switchgear early, locking in cost certainty and delivery timelines. We've transitioned from planning and preparation to full-scale execution as the Helios campus rapidly evolves from a construction project into what we expect will become one of the largest AI and high-performance computing campuses in the world.

On financing, we achieved a major milestone in August with the closing of a $1.4 billion project financing facility with Deutsche Bank for Phase 1 of Helios, covering 200 megawatts of utility power. This deal underscores our ability to execute on efficient capital structures and provides a signal of the market's confidence in our execution capabilities, the value of Helios and the long-term economics of our lease. The facility is structured at 80% loan to cost and Galaxy has already funded the equity for the Phase 1 development. It's a 3-year loan secured by all Helios Phase 1 assets priced at SOFR plus 475 basis points plus ancillary fees, bringing the all-in cost to approximately 10% to 11%, if held to maturity.

As a reminder, once Phase 1 is stabilized and generating revenue, our plan is to refinance the construction loan at a lower cost of capital. Doing so will likely unlock equity, enabling us to recycle capital into future phases and additional developments, keeping our balance sheet flexible, our capital structure efficient and our growth momentum strong. The success of this financing validates our capital strategy, disciplined leverage, flexible terms, partnership with top-tier institutions and an unwavering focus on execution.

Shifting to Power. As we spoke about last quarter, ERCOT's interim process and the level of scrutiny applied to large loads requesting to interconnect to the system has led to delays in additional capacity approvals across the state of Texas. Despite the longer-than-expected timeline, we remain convicted in our ability to work through the existing process and contract additional interconnection capacity at the Helios campus. Based on recent feedback, we believe that we are well positioned to receive approval for a portion of the requested capacity that we've studied and submitted for review. We view this additional capacity as a transformational long-term growth opportunity for the Helios campus as we prepare for the next phase of AI and high-performance compute demand.

As we shared last quarter, during Q3, we acquired 160 acres of additional land along with an additional 1 gigawatt load interconnect study adjacent to the Helios campus. With this addition, the Helios campus spans over 1,500 contiguous acres under Galaxy's direct control. Our Helios campus is strategically positioned to become among the largest AI data center campuses in the world. In a power market with exponential generation and battery storage growth, Helios stands as a flagship development for both Galaxy and the AI data center industry writ large.

We were also encouraged to see wet break ground on the new Pitchfork 345-kilovolt substation, which is expected to deliver an additional 3 gigawatts of power capacity with 2 synchronous condensers adjacent to the Helios campus starting in 2028. It's great to see both wet and ERCOT investing in critical infrastructure in the region, reinforcing their commitment to reliability and the long-term growth potential of Helios and the broader data center ecosystem.

Across our data center business, we're continuing to thoughtfully and strategically add world-class talent with proven expertise in engineering, construction and operations to our data center business. In the last few months, we've made key hires from some of the largest hyperscalers in the world across the engineering, construction and operations verticals of the business. The caliber of this team gives me tremendous confidence in our ability to execute with precision across all 3 phases at Helios and to deliver on the ambitious long-term vision we have for the business.

The Helios campus represents more than just a single project. It's the cornerstone of Galaxy's next-generation infrastructure strategy and the blueprint for a multicampus, multi-tenant, multi-gigawatt platform built to power the future of AI and high-performance computing. We continue to evaluate additional power and land opportunities across the region and nationally, leveraging the blueprint and expertise developed here to replicate the Helios model, efficient, scalable and AI-ready infrastructure built for the next generation of compute demand.

It's been a transformative year for the business, and I couldn't be more proud of how our data center business continues to build momentum and strengthen its position with each passing quarter.

Thank you all. Now back to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from James Yaro with Goldman Sachs.

Congrats on a good quarter. I wanted to just touch first on the impacts of the forced liquidations we've seen across the crypto ecosystem. Has that had ramifications on market structure and your client franchise, maybe on which customers and maybe you could summarize what the overall ramifications could be?

Yes. So first of all, Galaxy did spectacularly well during that liquidation. And so I wanted to shout out our trading desk, we were quick to move. We didn't have any credit losses. We're all over our customer base. And it didn't hit us where it hits everybody else, right? So who got hurt in that? First and foremost, market makers. Market makers that were market making on DeFi platforms like hyper liquid or cross market makers that were market making on Binance plus others. And so some estimates as high as 25% of those guys got put out of business, which is significant. And so what does that mean? It means you have a little less liquidity, you have a little wider bid-out spreads, probably means there's lots of talent available to hire, but certainly not great for the ecosystem in the short run.

Who else got hurt was retail. Lots of retail, especially overseas retail trades crypto very leveraged. And I always scratched my head. I was like, we got to the 40 to 80 vol asset. I'm not sure you really need 2x to 3x the leverage on it, let alone 30x of leverage. But part of the ethos of crypto is people want to make a lot of money on a little bit of money. And so there was a lot of leveraged accounts that got wiped out. Not just in crypto, but ever since I've been a trader, I've always said, when humpty dumpty breaks, he doesn't get fixed overnight. It takes days, weeks, months for markets to kind of regain that vitality. And they always do, right? People get wiped out, find new money and they participate again. But it's a short-term negative, no doubt.

There's been lots written and we wrote a pretty interesting research piece on why this happened. There are lawsuits being filed. But when you have a significant deleveraging like that, there's both opportunity and they're short-term pain. And I think that's what we're going through. And you see the crypto price roughly trading sideways. Gold has outperformed Bitcoin significantly in the last 5 months. Bitcoin had outperformed gold for a long time. And so some of that's just rotation. But I think some of this recent the last 10 days of us going sideways is still the market digesting that deleveraging.

That's really helpful color, Mike. So maybe just turning to one other one here. You announced GalaxyOne earlier this month. Maybe you could just expand on your aspirations in the business and maybe what the right client base is? Is it existing customers? Or is this TAM expanding? And if so, what's the new customer TAM?

Sure. I'll take the first part, I'm going to pitch it to Chris. Listen, we are proud of what we launched. It's hard to get a product out, and we started with a pretty simple MDP that's got, we think, 2 unique pieces. One is -- it's the FDIC-insured checking account that pays a darn good, the highest interest that we can find in the market and then the 8% Galaxy offering. And so that's attracting clients. We're pretty excited to see the uptake. We also have stock trading and crypto trading.

We have a really ambitious road map over the next 6 to 18 months to roll out and really turn that wallet into a one-stop serves all wallet. It's certainly not there yet, but it will get there. Our target audience is consumers. It's really the high-end consumers the people that want that same touch that Galaxy gives to our institutional clients the same knowledge. But we don't want to just limit it to that. And so we built it with the high-end consumer in mind but the crypto ethos is everyone should get the same access to investing.

And so I would -- I'd kick myself if I didn't hope that at one point, we're serving a whole lot more customers than just the high-end consumer.

A couple of quick things I'll add. I mean the ethos behind launching GalaxyOne on the consumer side is meant to capture the entirety of a consumer's wallet from an investment portfolio perspective. And so what we're going to aim to do -- what we started to do, we're going to aim to do is add products that help broaden out where a high net worth consumer can invest their wealth hold it and store it, see it every day and as friction as possible, reallocate and move it around across traditional investments, equities, bonds, newer investments, digital assets and cash management.

By the way, that's a long-term road map for us on the institutional side as well. And so when we think about where Galaxy's business writ large on the digital asset side is going to go, the plan is to little by little. So start with digital assets, but little by little encroach upon all attritional financial services, where we can, all in one place, give clients access to all the assets they own.

The -- as Mike said, the target user base on GalaxyOne is definitely different than what we've served historically. So it's a TAM expanding opportunity for us. Early traction for us seems to be hitting the mark with the kind of customer that we want, some quick stats. The average net worth of Galaxy users onboarded today is a little over $2 million. Average annual income is about $340,000. And so we're not today targeting, what I'd say, low dollar balances, high leverage short duration option trading, short-term day trading. We're really trying to target a customer base that has historically been underserved, but has traditionally been the highest profitable customer segment of most consumer platforms, consumers that earn money, have wealth and want to store and allocate it.

The next question comes from Patrick Moley with Piper Sandler.

So shifting to the data center business, and the 2.7 gigawatts that's currently awaiting approval, you said that you expect to get approval for that somewhat soon, I think. Any update on the timing there? And how large any tranche that were to get approved would be? And then just generally curious what sort of inbound you've been getting on the potential for that incremental power? How has demand been there? What have those conversations been like?

I'm looking at Chris, and he's looking at me. These are tricky questions. We're not going to know until we get approval is the honest answer. We see lots of good signs that point to an optimistic outcome. And -- but predicting the date is probably a fool's game because if we're wrong, we're going to look foolish, and if you're right, you're going to -- like someone already told us that. Texas got a little overwhelmed in the last 12 months with how many people have put in for approval. There were stats out today that are kind of shocking at how many applications went in. Now a lot of those applications didn't have studies and didn't have -- they weren't really threats to short-term approval. But again, I'd say the -- in the near future, you can define that however you want. But again, I wish I could give you a better answer, but that's where we're at.

Yes. A couple of things I'd add. The -- what gives us higher confidence these days is all the major constituents and stakeholders who we are partnered with down there in terms of getting approval, but implementing interconnect. And so it's not just ERCOT, it's wet, it's also AEP, our utility partner there. All 3 are extremely active with us specifically today, finalize -- approving, finalizing the studies that have been in place for us for over 18 months now and things are progressing at a faster pace today than they had been earlier in the year. So those are the data points that give us some pretty good comfort.

But as Mike said, ERCOT and Texas are going to take the requisite time to make sure that they're not taking on loads that are going to destabilize the grid. And frankly, there's a really, really large number of ill-thought-out not planned, not studied loads that have tried to get into the queue that the good thing is they're very focused on weeding that out and working with the folks who have demonstrated that they actually are going to deliver capacity when they say they're going to deliver that's operating and at a load that they say they're going to.

To hit your other question really quickly, what do we see on the demand side? I would say positive traction on that front. There are increasing proactive reach outs to us from very large customers in addition to our current partner, CoreWeave, who all want to know when are we getting approval for how much and over what time period. And that is a very helpful thing to see when thinking about very long-term big project decisions on potential incremental capacity that would be coming on in late -- in 2028, 2029 and forward. So I think the demand profile for our power has continued to remain there and grow, which is really a good sign as we're getting towards the point where we feel like something is really going to happen.

Okay. That's great color. And then just a follow-up. Chris, you mentioned the plans to eventually refinance and that would unlock some capital. Any idea how much capital, the refinance could unlock that could potentially go to future build-outs? Just wondering how to think about that in our model?

Yes. So we do have a pretty strong expectation that there will be opportunities once we hit stabilization. Stabilization, meaning we've delivered 100% of the data hall is ready for service, and they're up and running and CoreWeave just paying rent. We do believe there's going to be opportunities to relook at the financing structure at that subsidiary for Phase 1 and do something kind of cool. The way to think about it today. And look, the specifics on what that's going to look like on the forward here, so think about that Q3, Q4 of 2026. Is -- it's a little unknown because the market is pretty dynamic and changing, right?

The views of the AI boom and its sustainability are changing every day. The views of CoreWeave's credit profile, which lenders are very focused on, in addition to Galaxy's credit profile are changing and getting better by the day on both fronts. And so the ultimate outcome is really going to be a function of where we and CoreWeave and the markets are then. But the framework to think about is on a stabilized basis, there are a bunch of different examples of stabilized cap rates that one could look at and apply to come up with what sort of Phase 1 the value would be on a stabilized basis. We think about that today in the high single digits. I don't want to be too specific because I think there's -- if we and CoreWeave continue to be successful, my guess is that number is going to trend lower, not higher, depending on where long-term interest rates are.

But if you think about a high single-digit cap rate as value, which is different than cost significantly in our case, given the economics associated with the lease, then we think about applying like a loan to value as opposed to a loan to cost in that refinancing situation, and that will imply a pretty significant opportunity to refinance at bigger numbers, which should unlock multi-hundreds of millions of dollars of equity.

The next question comes from Jon Petersen with Jefferies.

Maybe to stick with some data center questions. So the $1.4 billion construction financing, can you give us some guidance on the kind of the cadence of when you'll pull that down? Because I don't think you pulled it all down at once, right?

Yes. No, we have not -- we're not pulling it down all at once. We actually prefunded the equity on our end because as we are bringing the financing together, the project needed to continue, which is how we think about capitalizing Galaxy, just to step back real quick, is ensuring that we have adequate capitalization to not only support the projects at their stabilization, but adequate capitalization early so that we can lean in, build on time, on budget and use that to get the best kind of financing. So we prefunded equity. At closing, we had a relatively small draw to reset our equity back to the intended 20% equity versus 80% debt on a cost basis.

And then the cadence of draw it really follows the project budget, but I would think about it as like relatively straight line on a twice monthly basis through the construction project. And so as you can imagine, since we closed in August, now sitting here in October, we've had a number of semi monthly draws. And so we're drawing pretty regularly, and we're drawing a pretty straight line basis.

Jon, I'll just add. At the end of the quarter, Jon, we've drawn about $430 million from the $1.4 billion loan facility. So you'll see in total notes payable on the balance sheet about $1.15 billion. That comprises both the draw on that construction finance as well as our outstanding convertibles.

Okay. Great. That's helpful. And I was curious if you had just some thoughts on your competitive positioning in the market from a data center perspective. You probably saw the IPO of Fermi recently that's building in Amarillo, which isn't too far away from the Helios campus and they're also talking about building many gigawatts. Just how do you think about the competitive nature of that region? And just I guess, more thoughts on that overall.

It's a great question. Listen, there's multiple facets to it, right? There's the market that is -- I think probably 2 earnings calls ago, we talked about a pipeline of things we were looking at to potentially buy or develop that's all gotten far more expensive than it was, right? Markets for some of these companies without contracts, without customers, the market is pricing in a tremendous amount of optimism. And so that feeds through to the price of projects. And so in the short run, I don't think you're going to see us reaching out and buying a whole lot more power at these prices.

What's unique about the Helios site is like it's an application process. We already own the land and all the infrastructure is built close. We'll see. There's a lot of speculative -- like I said, a lot of speculative money in this stuff. I'm sure some of those projects will get built, but many won't. And so we're really just laser-focused on getting our project built, financed and getting the new land and new power approved so we can do that same process again. We're in the market every day looking at things, talking to people, trying to understand the landscape. But there's a gold rush going on. And so you got to be very careful during gold rushes that you build in smart places at the right price.

Yes. And the other thing I'll add is I think the thing that we think the thing that's underrated heavily in the market today are undervalued is actual execution, right? And so it's relatively easy to sign and pass pieces of paper with big numbers on them and sign deals with big numbers on them. I think the most important thing for us and for long-term actual customer demand is -- not only can you acquire access to power and acquire land, but can you actually build on time and on budget. And I think that, that's pretty underrated and pretty underappreciated today in the market.

And as we think about the future as companies like CoreWeave and also Microsoft and Meta and Google, and you name them, like their emphasis on can you actually do what you say you're going to do because we need the power when we think we're going to have it leads us to -- like to focus squarely on do we have an excellent team, do we have excellent partners in the construction site? And are we delivering on time and on budget so that we prove the right to win the next contract. And I think that we're pretty far ahead of the pack when it comes to that relative to the competitors.

The next question comes from Ed Engel with Compass Point.

Two questions. The first was on Helios, other ones on more kind of operating the crypto business. On Helios, you talked about that being potentially a multi-tenant site. Just kind of curious how you're thinking about the puts and takes for financing when it comes to partnering with the new cloud like CoreWeave or maybe even a hyperscaler?

Yes. So we're not sure long-term what the composition of tenant base is going to be as we build the Helios campus. The -- we've been -- as we said before, over and over again, we mean it, like the partnership with CoreWeave has been excellent. They are a great partner up and down, not just on signing a commercial agreement, but in design, in understanding the difficulties that come along with procuring equipment, timelines, teams, et cetera. The -- they're going through a transition period, and everyone should be -- should talk to them on their earnings call. They're going through a period where the market is trying to understand what CoreWeave's credit quality is today and what it should be on the forward. And that's going to be a big, big determinant of their ability to get better lease rates, their ability to get financing ability for us as the landlord to finance our projects.

And so where that goes, how the market evolves is thinking on CoreWeave is something we're very focused on and something that's a little unknown today. As we think about the trade-offs for capacity, not yet at least for us, there's a real decision to be made as to whether on a net economic basis, whether a lower-yielding lease from a higher credit quality tenant, net balances out to a better economic equation for us as we think about broadening the portfolio. Like we're -- as we are as investors, we're big believers generally in diversity and risk management.

And so economics aside, as we build the data center business over time, diversifying the customer base is just something that's like is a core sensibility for us as capital allocators and investors. So I think we were biased to want to do that over time anyway, economics aside. Whether the economics pan out, obviously better or not, it's really going to be a function of like where the markets are at a point in time and where CoreWeave's credit risk -- perceived credit risk is relative to some of the investment-grade tenants.

Great. And then just kind of a bit more of a bigger picture question. But in the past few months, we've seen Galaxy get more involved in the equity space, whether it's the DApps, Investment Banking advisory or even now the GalaxyOne for retail. How do you think about the opportunities within institutional equities now that blockchain and Wall Street are converging more?

Yes. Listen, if you ask me my like 5-year view, and Chris alluded to this early or you're going to see so much tokenization of real-world assets of equities or fixed income of commodities that wallets and companies that are engaging, you're going to see this blending of what we call digital assets or crypto right now, and we call real-world traditional finance. And so as that blending happens, I think you're going to see crypto customers who traditionally have all wanted to shoot the moon as they mature, slowly look for more conservative product. But the big buyers of conservative product of if it's tokenized credit will most likely be people that were buyers of credit just in traditional finance side.

And so like what does that mean? It means if you're a traditional finance company, bank or finance company. You know this is coming. And so you're trying to figure out, a, how to develop your own domain expertise, how to partner with people how to buy it to get ahead of some of that. And so I think both from our advisory business, but our core business is partnering. We've got a real good 3-year highway of working with the big financial institutions, as partners, as adviser, and I just don't see that slowing down.

And we see that every day. Steve Kurz literally has a meeting a day, it seems with somebody who's looking at a way to partner with us. And so hopefully, we're going to announce some of those soon. But -- and so I'm really kind of bullish. What does that mean for equity prices in some of these companies? Listen, like in anything, I mean it's hard to determine is our equity market overvalued, fairly valued or undervalued. Multiples are relatively high. In general, there's lots of liquidity that's driving this thing up. There is the beginnings of some AI bubble, how long it goes is everyone's guess, and everything gets pulled up with that.

I think you're going to see more and more crypto companies that are public. And so there's going to be more differentiation between companies that actually make money and companies that are just a story or companies that are a story that are going to make money versus companies that are a story that aren't going to make money. You're going to see a consolidation. There are a lot of subscale crypto companies that have okay businesses that might do $75 million, $100 million in revenue and $20 million of EBITDA that don't have the capacity to go public but might be takeout candidates.

Right now, everyone seems to think they're worth too much because we have this euphoria and so you probably don't really see the shares reshuffle until there's a setback, but this is going to be an ongoing story for the next 3 years, this merging of the crypto infrastructure with traditional finance.

Was there a follow-up, Mr. Engel?

No, yes.

The next question comes from Devin Ryan with Citizens.

Appreciate you taking the questions here. I just want to touch on the digital asset treasury opportunity. Galaxy just is uniquely positioned here with both combination of your expertise, but also just the breadth of services across capital raising and asset management and trading. So I'd love to just get a little more sense of the demand you're seeing right now from groups that want to launch a strategy. How much do you want to be a part of that? I suspect you're being still very selective here. And then I also appreciate it's going to be lumpy, but just want to get a sense of how sustainable you think this trajectory is? And just as you think about kind of the bigger picture for Galaxy, how much larger could it be just as some of these DApps probably raise tens of billions of dollars of capital potentially in the coming years?

Listen, I think we're on the tail end of issuance. There's a few more coming down the pipeline, but most of the bigger ecosystems have established themselves, right? You've got a few big Solana DApps. You've got a few big Ethereum DApps. You've got a bunch of Bitcoin DApps. There doesn't seem to be a lot more room in those -- at least in those 3 tokens which are the 3 biggest tokens in the ecosystem for more, there's a hyper liquid DApp that hasn't officially started trading yet, but has been raised. And so I think we're on the tail end -- the large question is how big can some of these things grow, right?

We saw MicroStrategy and hats off to Michael Saylor, grow far, far bigger than everyone ever expected. A Bit miner right now, the Ethereum DApp, that Tom Lee spearheads is having that same kind of excitement and growth and I think I looked at it this morning, it was still 145% premium, raising equity every day, buying Ethereum. And so we'll see -- some of these are going to trade at discounts and there'll be some consolidation. Net-net, they're very good for the ecosystem.

In general, they brought a whole lot of new investors into crypto and I think they will evolve to be big investors if it's staking assets or even investing in venture platform companies around their major their major token. And so in some ways, they're a supplement or even a replacement of the traditional foundation, which got set up over in Switzerland because of regulatory reasons. And we'll -- it's a little too early to see exactly what they become, but I think that's the optimistic view.

Got it. Just a quick follow-up here on the lending book. As you mentioned, it's on the move of $1.8 billion now. And I know it's important for a number of your clients. Can you talk about where the demand is coming from right now? And then just how you think about capacity for growing that from here?

Yes. So the demand, I would say, is pretty broad-based and pretty similar to what it's been historically. Like for us, we sit in the middle of the institutional market -- we have both end customers who are borrowing cash and crypto largely to make their positions more capital efficient. So putting on reasonable leverage into their positions. We also sit -- face we'll call market makers. And so participants who borrow coin in cash for working capital effectively to make markets. And then finally, there's an interdealer market where the dealers borrow from one another to fill their customer demand. That one is a steady-state piece of business, but like less interesting to us.

So what we have always been focused on and what we just have started nailing with lower cost of capital and therefore, ability to provide better structures for clients is really delivering lend borrow and locate assets for our institutional trading clients of the firm who want to augment their trading on what has historically been really a fully funded basis in crypto historically. So that's the primary focus of the business. That's where I think it goes. The -- we have been focused on and the market is still lacking a more automated margin-based financing sort of prime brokerage system that allows institutions to -- in a more automated fashion, access capital as they trade with leverage constraints, et cetera.

We are -- we have been building that. We have actually rolled it out on a preliminary basis to a small number of clients. And we're going to do that very slowly because inherent in that is a ton of risk on the system side, on the price action side that we're just not going to take in size until we're comfortable with, until the market is ready to have it. And so that's what I think longer-term we're building at. That's a big -- will be a big driver of a very fast growth of the loan book, assuming the financing is there for it. But that's how we think about the lending business today.

The one area that I didn't hit on and you don't really see in the numbers at all today that we think is very interesting, though, is our business historically has really been off chain with clients. And there are nascent pools being built on chain for financing, secured financing, and in some cases, under secured or unsecured financing on chain. We take that -- that market is very nascent. We take that opportunity very seriously, though. And so I could see a future where our financing and lending presence doesn't manifest itself purely in our loan book growth, but also manifest itself in our infrastructure and technology building, where we provide access to a much broader base of on chain financing that will be a pretty serious player. So we're very focused on that as an opportunity.

The final question will come from Martin Toner with ATB Capital Markets.

So if I take your performance in digital assets this quarter, I annualize it, I put a multiple on it, it implies it's worth a lot. How sustainable are these results in your view?

Listen, crypto is a really volatile asset class. And I think you're going to continue to see at least part of our results, trade with that volatility, right? Our balance sheet, we try to maneuver our balance sheet, have less of it when we think the market is going down and more of it when the market is going up, that's a difficult game. We do it better than most, but we're certainly not perfect at it. So I think you'll see a correlation of our treasury or our balance sheet assets with the market itself.

And the digital assets business side, right, the enterprise business, still has some correlation because if the price of crypto goes down, the fees we make in lots of our asset management projects go down, often volumes go down. And so crypto is not mature enough yet that you'll have a -- if the S&P up or down, it doesn't really stop Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs from having good quarters or bad quarters. We're still going to be a little bit correlated to crypto.

Our goal, of course, is to break that correlation. And with each quarter, we're doing better at it. And so looking at things like assets on platform, much -- the more assets on platform, the more stable our business is going to be. And so that is a north star for Chris, Tony, Aaron, all of us here, Jason, Steve. Our senior management constantly looks at that, okay, how do we get more assets on platform? How do we stack more assets on platform? And we're getting there. We're not there yet. And so, unfortunately, I don't think you should annualize unless you really think you're going to continue to have this kind of great inflow into the crypto markets quarter after quarter.

We still are bullish over the medium term. I still think given the sad state of fiscal affairs in the world that Bitcoin at $1 million is going to make sense one day. I've always said this publicly. I hope it doesn't happen next year because some real s*** have then happened in the U.S. economy. That wouldn't be good for any of us. But I think we're going to see a slow debasement of fiat currencies, which is going to benefit the space that we're in. And so I guess that's the real -- just straight up honest answer. We try every quarter to make this business better, and we're going to keep grinding away at that.

That's great, Mike. Can I -- if I can give you one more. Do you think you can do GPU as a service at Helios with some of the capacity? And are you thinking about it?

Sure. So I think technically, the answer is yes, we could do that. Are we thinking about it? The answer is no. And the 2 reasons why are, one, I think there are really good companies, like our partner, CoreWeave, who have built layers and layers of technology and NVIDIA themselves who built layers and layers of technology on top of just owning raw chips that are really value-add and really get the most out of what are increasingly complex GPU clusters that expertise we have not invested in yet we don't have in-house. And I think it's -- it would be nice to think we would just start doing that by buying GPUs.

The other thing, given that the other just math lesson for us is, we're not confident in what useful life of GPUs are ultimately going to be. And the cycles of GPU efficiency are pretty nascent still. And so we like very much investing in long-lived infrastructure that we understand useful life of, and we don't quite yet understand what the useful life of GPUs are. And so the business model around return on capital on GPUs, particularly if you're not -- you haven't added real expertise in real value add, I think is a really challenging thing to decide to do. So we're not thinking about it.

That concludes our -- thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy Digital for any closing remarks.

Guys, thanks for spending an hour with us this morning. I hope you hear from the tone we're excited about the opportunity ahead of us. We're charged up about our third quarter, but we're already a month into the fourth. And so we understand our job here, and we're going to work hard for you guys. So stay tuned.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.