$NODE analysts continue to scour the earth for the best risk-reward opportunities in companies in all sectors poised to power the onchain economy, including the real-world infrastructure critical for Bitcoin mining. In that spirit, as of last week we are now shareholders in TEPCO (9501 JP), Japan’s largest electric utility. Thesis: 🇫🇷 In France, nuclear monopoly EDF is piloting Bitcoin mining using stranded power. Lawmakers are recently pushing to scale the program through Parliament. 🇯🇵 Japan may follow. TEPCO is reportedly already mining Bitcoin through its subsidiary Agile Energy X, using surplus renewable energy in regions like Gunma and Tochigi. At the same time, it’s accelerating its nuclear restart plans, steps that could ease Japan’s energy deficit and support sovereign data infrastructure. TEPCO stock trades at ~5× forward earnings, its market cap is still down ~87% from its multiyear peak, and there is virtually no analyst coverage. Risks remain: no dividend, potential dilution, and political restart delays. Still, we see TEPCO as deep-value infrastructure with asymmetric upside and a possible way to participate in sovereign adoption. (Recommend an ADR and talking more about your Bitcoin strategy, as it would help your PE multiple @OfficialTEPCO 👍 )

$HIVE (+10%) showing some meaningful outperformance this week following investor day Thursday. The market may be starting to reward HIVE's approach to AI/HPC, which targets $100M ARR by 2026, 5x current level. Team just 2.5x'd their HPC capacity w/ data center deal in Toronto.

Please note: The fee waiver for the VanEck Ethereum ETF ($ETHV) will expire as scheduled today after the market close. Beginning tomorrow 7/22/05, ETHV will begin accruing its sponsor fee of 0.20%, as outlined in the fund's prospectus.

We took a lot of heat on CT a few weeks ago when I said MetaPlanet was overvalued and the fact that it became the most liquid stock in Japan is a red flag. Those shares are now down 43% from the peak. This pod was recorded a couple weeks ago, so some things have changed. Enjoy!

Appreciate the $100M buyback, @Bitfarms_io, to offset $RIOT's planned sale of your shares (~10% of float). But isn't there still $300M+ remaining on your ATM? How should we think about that?

OKLO 🤝VRT $NODE shareholders hold both.

Same energy. Underestimating the pull and about to pay the price.

Hi, @Stripe. Are we still doing this de-banking thing? Was it something I said? If we say that men can’t be women, if we donate to pro-life charities, if we oppose two men buying eggs, renting wombs, and commoditizing babies… Does that come at the cost of de-banking?

*ELLIOTT IS SAID TO BOOST STAKE IN DATA CENTER REIT EQUINIX "The firm has been building its position since the analyst day" on June 26 +4% to $805 pre-market

JPMorgan Is Charging for Access to User Data. This Is a Pivotal Moment for Financial Infrastructure JPMorgan is moving to charge fintech companies for access to customer data. This data includes transaction histories, balances, and behavioral signals generated by end users interacting with the banking system. Until now, this information has been accessible through data aggregators or direct APIs, enabling fintech innovation across payments, budgeting, lending, and more. By introducing a pricing model on top of this access, JPMorgan is making a calculated move. It is asserting ownership over data that is generated by users but stored inside infrastructure the bank controls. This is not a one time policy update. It is a structural shift that tells us something fundamental about where the legacy system is headed. The pattern When a platform gains enough market power and dependency, the default next step is to extract from it. This is not new. Operating systems, app stores, payment networks, and telecom infrastructure have all followed the same curve. In the beginning, the focus is on distribution. Then it shifts to control. Finally, it becomes about rent. The moment a core financial entity begins charging others simply to read user authorized data, you are watching that final step in real time. The technical concern Financial APIs are not like public protocols. They are controlled endpoints with rate limits, usage restrictions, compliance gates, and contractual dependencies. By charging for access to these APIs, banks can determine who is allowed to build and what those builders can afford to offer. The more critical the API becomes to the product experience, the higher the leverage. This is not a technical innovation. It is a toll. And once data becomes a revenue stream for the infrastructure provider, the incentive is to fragment it, lock it in, and sell it at margin. This fundamentally limits what can be built on top. Why crypto matters here Public blockchains invert the architecture. Data is written to globally accessible networks with permissionless read and write access. State is maintained by consensus, not by counterparties. Identity is tied to cryptographic credentials, not private account systems. Code is open and composable, rather than licensed or restricted. In this model, access is not a business development negotiation. It is a property of the system itself. Smart contracts execute logic predictably across all users. Data lives on a ledger that is equally available to every participant. Protocols can be composed together without friction or arbitration. Builders do not need to ask for access, and users do not need to trust an intermediary to store or release their own information. This creates a fundamentally different environment for innovation. It also creates an escape path from platforms that want to monetize every layer of user activity while preventing competition from emerging. The global context This issue is not specific to the United States. In Europe, PSD2 created mandatory data sharing between banks and third party providers, but many institutions have resisted compliance or introduced friction through authentication flows. In China and India, national financial infrastructure is increasingly centralized, combining state linked identity with payment systems that reduce user level portability. In Latin America, superapps are racing to consolidate finance, identity, and commerce into vertically integrated platforms. The common theme is the same. Centralization leads to restriction. Restriction creates dependency. Dependency turns into control. We are watching the same structure repeat, just with new actors. The decision in front of us There is a version of the future where every financial interaction is intermediated by systems that monitor, price, and gate access to your own data. Where portability is limited, composability is artificial, and new products are taxed by the incumbents who control infrastructure. That is the natural trajectory of closed systems. We have seen it before, across industries and geographies. It is happening again now. Crypto presents an alternative. But that alternative is not guaranteed. The question we need to ask is whether we are actually building toward something more open, or simply recreating the same constraints under new names. Regulatory engagement and institutional maturity are not bad. In many cases, they are necessary to scale. But if those efforts result in recreating the same forms of control that define the legacy system, then the project has already lost its edge. We should not be optimizing for defensibility through restriction. We should be leveraging our position and profitability to build better access, more open architecture, and more composable systems. That means investing in protocols, not just platforms. It means participating in shared infrastructure, not just extracting value from it. At @krakenfx , we are attempting to do both. To support and secure the protocols that define this industry, and to build on top of their rails. Not just ours. Not just one chain or one stack. A multi chain, multi environment, multi purpose world. The goal is not just uptime or product coverage. It is staying true to what this system was designed to enable in the first place. Global permissionless always on access to financial infrastructure that anyone can build on and anyone can benefit from. If we are serious about that, then we need to avoid the trap that every generation of infrastructure builders has fallen into. Closed gardens are easy to justify. They offer control, reliability, and short term leverage. But they are also the reason we are here in the first place. We should not spend a decade building open systems only to end up recreating the same constraints with better branding.