The Practical Islamic Finance Podcast

RIP Sellers ☠️

Rakaan Kayali

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RIP Sellers ☠️

In this episode, we will cover:

  • Intro & Market Recap
  • Iris Energy’s 30% Surge: Why It Matters
  • Bitcoin Miners’ Advantage in AI Power Demand
  • SEC Changes Crypto Rules: Impact on Banks
  • Tesla Model Y Updates & Pricing
  • AI, Data Centers, and Bitcoin Miners
  • Final Thoughts & Weekend Reflection 

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salam@practicalislamicfinance.com

ABOUT OUR PODCAST
Our podcast is about helping people ethically build wealth. We cover a broad range of topics including stock and crypto investing, product reviews, and general financial well-being.

DISCLAIMER
Anything you hear in this video is an opinion. It is not personalized financial advice. Make sure you do your due diligence before making any investment decisions.

assalamu alaikum everyone I hope you are doing well today is friday january twenty fourth and jamaa mubarak to all my condolences rest in peace to all the sellers who sold iris energy on tuesday uh I told you guys it has been a good strategy that when an atm is announced the stock goes down historically it's been a good strategy to take advantage of those dips for the best quality miners I think ios energy is one of them it's up basically thirty percent since the tuesday lows uh so was that ten dollars actually dip below ten dollars On Tuesday, it's now at thirteen dollars and thirty two cents. So congrats to those who had enough of enough of a understanding of why we invested in this stock in the first place to hold. As it relates to the market in general, we did take a small step back today. Dow Jones was down less than half a percentage point. NASDAQ down half a percentage point. S&P down point three percent. Russell slightly in the red. The dollar index was down. That's good news. The yield on U.S. Treasuries was down as well. So you're not going to you're not going to win all of the days in the market. The market is not going to go. green every single day you will get some pullback but the back we got today was quite muted and to be expected as investors take some profits tesla has pulled back to four or six recall that we are awaiting their their earnings report on Wednesday. And that should hold a lot of information about their plans for the remainder of, uh, and perhaps we can get some more color on the rumor regarding the optimist robots and the run rate of production being something close to six hundred robots per week by the end of this year. That would be very, very exciting. Bitdeer was up five percent, another Bitcoin miner that has a lot of access to power. We're going to listen to a clip here in a second which talks about why that is so important and explains what I've been saying on this channel for a while now. Gold continues to be a beast of an asset, if you will, as it defies all odds. It's now at two thousand seven hundred and seventy. It started this it started the year at twenty six hundred. So it's up a good chunk on a percentage basis. It is up close to five percent. since the year started. So that's nothing to scoff at in the gold world. As it relates to Bitcoin, we're at one oh five. And Dogecoin is at thirty five cents. Solana is at two hundred and fifty six. It continues to be supported by meme coin trading, which You know, the Trump coin really got into, kicked into high gear. And then you had a lot of other tokens trying to follow suit. So the short video I wanted to share with you guys was as follows. Oh no, that's not it. Sorry. I'll talk about that in a second. Here it is. And this is commentary on the Stargate project and how it ties into the Bitcoin miners and how it could be supportive of these companies. So let's listen in. amount of power, computing power and electric power. Actually, it could be good, he says, for the Bitcoin mining industry. Brett Noblock is head of digital asset research at Cantor Fitzgerald. Hope I got that name right, Brett. So just before I dive into the Bitcoin angle here, what is the power need that you foresee? Because we're hearing reports that to power something that could have a million GPUs, do you have to get nuclear involved? Does Texas have the capability for that? The issue with nuclear over the short term, it takes a while. There's a couple of companies out there that I don't cover that are maybe ten years out. That's what I've been saying. Nuclear takes a while. These nuclear companies working on modular reactors, there's going to be a lot of pullbacks in between now and when they become profitable. So I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry, I don't think, to pick up shares in these new nuclear companies. Microsoft is doing with Three Mile Island, even that's five years out. This project is going to spend five hundred billion dollars over the next five years. You're not going to get nuclear before that. So the question is, where do you get the power that you're going to spend five hundred billion dollars on? If you kind of run the math on AI data centers, it's twelve million dollars a megawatt of just capex to build it. And that does include the GPUs, which is, you know, looking at Blackwell, say somewhere around thirty million dollars a megawatt. So, five hundred thousand dollars, you're going to need anywhere from twelve to fourteen gigawatts. That's the crux of the issue. You can spend all this money on GPUs, but if you look at the data center industry in the US, it's only twenty-one gigawatts, and that's what's been built over twenty-five years. Of those twenty-one gigawatts of data center capacity, the power density on those racks is maybe less than twenty kilowatts. And that's the crux of the issue is black wells need sixty kilowatts, if not more. So you can't use legacy data centers. So all that power you can't use. So you need twelve to fourteen gigawatts of new power. So and that's where the miners come in, right? Exactly. And I'm curious if you can kind of rattle off a bunch of publicly traded names, whether they're the miners or elsewhere in your coverage space, you see moving today or potentially being direct beneficiaries. I think if you look at this project, they want power at scale. That's what the miners have done very well, is connect to the grid. One is Riot. Riot has a gigawatt site in Corsicana. It's about an hour from Dallas. Starboard recently took a stake, wanting them to push into AI. They came out yesterday, said, we're going to stop our Bitcoin mining development and evaluate this opportunity. That's one that we really like off the back of it is because we don't think any AI optionality is priced into the shares. Then if you look at Iron, another Texas-based miner, they have a one point four gigawatt site going to be energized in April of next year, that is arguably going to be the biggest site, single site from a pure power perspective. And when you're looking at this project, where they can get the power, those are two areas where they can get the power. And from the mining perspective, it's very advantageous for them to go in this market because institutional investors, what they're going to pay for a Bitcoin mining business on a profit multiple basis versus a data center type of multiple is night and day different. Yeah, guys. So the thesis here is pretty clear. And that is, You know, the five hundred billion is going to be spent in the next five years on this Stargate AI project. This needs a bunch of power. The data centers right now, even if you consider the power that they have, the setup that they have to be, even if for argument's sake, you're going to use them for AI. are not sufficient requires massive capex in order to expand them to get to the levels of power that are needed for the AI projects that are planned. So that's not the only problem, though. Even I said, for argument's sake, let's say if we were going to use the existing data center infrastructure, and that existing data center infrastructure being insufficient. But actually, you can't use the existing infrastructure because the power density is not what it needs to be in order to run GPUs, which AI requires. So who are the only players that really have the type of access to power right now with the required data or power density that GPUs require? Who are the players that have that? And the answer is Bitcoin miners are one of the few players. one of the few publicly traded equities that have access to this opportunity. And of the publicly traded Bitcoin miners, iris energy and bitdeer have the most gigawatts in their pipeline and currently online of all the of all the bitcoin miners so that in a nutshell is the thesis it's a simple one and the best types of theses are the most simple. And therefore, you know, when you hear about, you know, Iris Energy raising one billion dollars at the market, instead of panicking, I think it's a better course of action to recall what the thesis was in to begin with. And, you know, perhaps that one billion dollars is required for the capex that is needed for an arrangement with a hyperscaler or a very big AI company that needs access to Iris Energy's power. And this map is exciting if you're a Iris Energy investor. So Iris Energy is a one point four gigawatt Sweetwater, Texas site. that was just mentioned in the video, looks like a natural fit for Stargate, especially since it's just down the road from Stargate's first campus in Abilene. So I mentioned on Tuesday, hey, they're looking in Texas first, you know, which company has a really good presence in Texas? Well, it's Iris Energy. So this may, you know, really um, push Iris energies stock to new highs. That being said, I am not oblivious to the threat of the company hitting the market. Uh, you know, whenever we get any type of run and, you know, putting selling pressure that depresses the stock's price. So that's something, so I don't want you to get, you know, too excited because in the short term, there's going to be a lot of volatility related to the company, you know, selling shares to raise money at the market. So just keep that in mind as we go up here in price. I do think it's always a good idea to be taking some profits every now and then in order to take advantage of pullbacks that will inevitably happen. Not financial advice, do your own due diligence. Now, moving on to another winner of ours, the Model Y Juniper has been announced and it's open for Tesla started sales of this revamped Model Y in the US. It starts at sixty thousand dollars. That doesn't include the seventy five hundred dollar incentive that has yet to be revoked. And Tesla will start deliveries on a revamped version of its Model Y SUV in the US in March. And the changes that it made are, you know, not too, you know, not too fundamental in the car, but they're, you know. They're iPhone upgrades from year to year. They're sort of nice to have a little refresh. So it features a redesigned fascia, front and rear light bars, and an upgraded interior with ventilated seats, reclining second row seats, and faster Wi-Fi. So that should help sales. I'm obviously looking forward to their unveiling of their hatchback, which should be an entirely new model that should happen in the first half of twenty twenty five. And obviously the big. The big announcement would be finalization of their models for their Optimus robot and starting up production, which, as I mentioned earlier, could come as early as this year. right now moving on to crypto the sec did something extremely important now this is the new sec for the new administration featuring you know a new a new set of staff they revoked the unpopular banking rule that blocked wall street banks from adopting crypto and that was a rule that required banks to list crypto on their balance sheets as liabilities. So basically banks would have to pay for them twice. They would have to pay to acquire the assets and then pay for assets to balance out the crypto assets that they bought because they are considered liabilities. So banks just didn't deal with crypto. And so this rule makes it a lot more possible for banks in the United States to actually hold crypto on their books. And so this should be very good for crypto generally, for Bitcoin specifically, because I think that banks would look at Bitcoin first as a potential holding option. now the other uh crypto that I'm very bullish about is dogecoin and just for fun I thought it interesting to look at what the price change was for dogecoin post the last inauguration and so we do see um you know basically nothing happening in january twenty first twenty twenty one it was down ten percent then it was up five percent it was up you know less than one percent two percent down four down one down nine and then january twenty eighth so mark your calendars folks up three hundred and eighty seven percent obviously I'm uh you know I'm saying this tongue in cheek but uh you know last time around we did get a huge spike in the price of bitcoin and the price of dogecoin rather and so who knows perhaps history repeats or you know at least it rhymes you know maybe we don't get plus four hundred percent I'll be okay with a plus you know fifty percent that's okay All right, guys, let's go to questions very quickly. Do I think Tesla could reach a thousand by end of twenty twenty six? Yeah, I think that's possible. What do you think of the bear case? Uh, ASML has a very unique proprietary technology that not many people can, you know, compete with. And so it does have, you know, one of the strongest moats I've seen for any company. I think bricks are losers to be honest, bricks countries are losers. I don't think there are the future. I don't think that, um, Certainly not. Europe is the future. I think the future belongs to these up and coming countries like Syria, like Afghanistan, believe it or not. I think that's where the future is. Bricks sucks. We're experiencing a potential AI bubble right now. No, I don't think that AI is a bubble in any sense of the word. I think it's one of the most consequential inventions in human history. And we really don't appreciate how much it's going to change in our lives. Like intelligence is going to become a commodity for the first time in human history. it's not going to become a prized possession anymore. And so, you know, I don't know what, obviously it's very hard to predict the future, but I think then if intelligence becomes a commodity, then what will set people apart is their character. And that will be a very, very interesting world. Thank you. Thank you for, thank you. Appreciate it. Shout out to my barber. Salam, which of your video stream would be the best to watch for someone who is just starting to get into investing and learn about it from pretty much zero? That's an interesting question. I did do last year, I believe. Actually, in twenty twenty three, I did do like an intro to investing. Take a look at that. I'm hoping that Piedmont has been a dog for us. Hovering around the same lows for a while, but I'm hoping we get a break out here soon. you think that meme coins are dangerous I think that meme coins are mostly pump and dump schemes that you should avoid and yeah if you are not part of my email list you're not part of you know pif membership um consider becoming api of member or joining our email list at least um I did send out my sort of detailed thoughts on trump's and the trump coin so take a look at that tom lee thinks that solano will be the backbone of the new financial system do you agree or disagree I disagree because I don't think blockchains are really going to be used by, you know, going to be relied upon by institutions for very vital functions because blockchains are decentralized and can't be controlled. And so there are certain vital functions that you can't really outsource to to a third party that you have no control over. And so if you're a bank and you've built things on Solana and Solana goes down, you have no control over the situation or something happens to the blockchain. So I don't think that it's even possible for companies to use blockchains in the way that some people are suggesting. they will be used so it's something to think about thanks muhammad I'm glad you liked the live do leave a like guys thank you so much for all the likes you left on yesterday's live I really appreciate it guys you are awesome I'm not gonna answer that question uh Music is how, what do I think about that? I'm not going to answer that question. Can you make a review video on FIDA investment? Maybe. Thanks, Ahsan. I'm glad you liked it. I hope you guys enjoy your weekend. Make sure to take time and unplug, spend time with your family. You know, the khutbah today was about al-tawakkul and it was about, you know, and of the things that were said, it was pointed out that, you know, health concerns, concerns about your family, about your children, about your parents, They really, you know, when you compare like money concerns to them, they're extremely small in comparison. Unless, of course, you're impoverished, then that's, you know, something. Then that's, you know, obviously money is top of mind in that case. But I'm assuming most of you aren't. I mean, you at least have access to internet. You have access to... that computer. Um, and so, you know, don't let, you know, the smaller sort of money ambitions distract you from the much larger blessings that inshallah you, you already have like health and your family and your Iman. And yeah, just take the weekend to enjoy these blessings and Take time off from thinking about money. And until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamu alaikum. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you all for your likes and your interest. And for those of you who are members, thank you as well for supporting us. Until next time, make sure to take care of yourself. Assalamu alaikum and peace be upon you all.