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Activist Investor Starboard Has Built Stake in Bitcoin Miner Riot: WSJ

Starboard is reportedly pushing the miner to convert some of its mining sites into data centers.

Activist investor Starboard Value has made a large investment in bitcoin miner Riot Platforms (RIOT) and is pushing for changes in the company’s business model, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Starboard has been pushing Riot to convert some of its bitcoin mining sites into data centers that can host machines to enable high-performance computing (HPC) for big tech companies, according to the story. Riot is currently a “pure-play” bitcoin miner that gets its revenue only from mining bitcoin, as opposed to some other peers, such as Core Scientific (CORZ), which has dedicated a significant amount of its facilities to HPC and artificial intelligence computing.

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“Riot regularly speaks with our shareholders and values their feedback,” a spokesperson for the firm told CoinDesk in an emailed statement. “We have engaged with Starboard on multiple occasions and welcome their input on the company. We are committed to creating value for all shareholders, and we look forward to constructive dialogue with Starboard on ways to achieve this shared goal.”

For many years, publicly traded mining companies were considered one of the main ways for institutional investors to get exposure to bitcoin. This was good for their stock prices, which soared during the 2020-21 bull market. The 2022 crypto winter, though, decimated the sector and most of the names haven’t come anywhere close to recovering the previous bull market highs even though bitcoin has soared past $100,000.

The industry has faced an intense profit squeeze following the bitcoin halving earlier this year (which slashed mining profitability), leading some miners to look for ways to diversify their revenue sources. Still, nothing was a game change until Core Scientific signed a multi-billion dollar deal with a hyperscaler— a firm operating large-scale data centers for cloud computing and AI. This changed the sentiment and brought large investors back into the sector.

However, some firms, including Riot, remained pure-play miners, largely ignoring the trend of turning some of their sites into HPC computing. This, in turn, led to their underperformance relative to others in the industry. Starboard’s move would mark the first time a traditional activist investor is taking a position in a publicly traded miner to push them to diversify their revenue into data centers.

Riot hasn’t been completely opposed to this trend, as its CEO Jason Les has said that the company has been considering deals with these large tech companies. However, it hasn’t announced anything so far that would suggest a potential deal is in the works, while other miners forge ahead with AI and HPC deals.

Most recently, Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital said it signed a non-binding deal with a U.S.-based hyperscaler firm to turn all its 800 megawatts of mining capacity into hosting high-performance computers. Meanwhile, bitcoin miner IREN (IREN) saw its shares surge after saying it had received interest from a trillion-dollar hyperscaler firm and Hut 8 (HUT) was speculated to have been building a data center with Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META).

Riot’s stock rose as much as 11% in early Thursday trading and were higher by 6% at press time. The shares have fallen nearly 30% this year, while CoinShares Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI) rose 40%.

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Optimism Foundation Agreed to Give Kraken $42.5M of OP Tokens in Layer-2 Deal

Crypto exchange Kraken announced last week that it will build a layer-2 network atop Optimism’s OP Stack blockchain framework. CoinDesk is first to report that the deal was reached early this year, involving a grant of 25 million OP tokens, at the time worth roughly $100 million.

Kraken, a major U.S. crypto exchange, shared last week that it would launch a layer-2 called Ink, relying upon the Optimism’s blockchain ecosystem’s OP Stack framework – and become part of the fast-growing “Superchain” that also includes layer-2 networks from the crypto exchange Coinbase along with the electronics giant Sony and decentralized exchange Uniswap.

But there was a price: Both projects have confirmed to CoinDesk that the Optimism Foundation agreed to provide grants to Kraken in the amount of 25 million OP tokens – worth roughly $100 million earlier this year, when the deal was struck, and now valued at about $42.5 million.

The deal, which was finalized around January or February, paved the way for Kraken to use Optimism’s OP Stack, a customizable toolkit that lets users create their own layer-2 rollups based on Optimism’s technology.

Kraken clarified with CoinDesk that under the deal, the token allocation would be paid to Kraken in grants over a time period. On Jan. 1 , the OP token was worth $3.99, according to CoinGecko, reaching a high of $4.06 on Feb. 20 during that time period. It now trades around $1.70.

The Optimism Foundation confirmed the number of tokens involved in the deal and declined to comment further.”

According to Andrew Koller, founder of Ink, the number is similar to various other deals that are part of the Superchain ecosystem.

“And it was actually Optimism that proposed that number first, and it was very in line with what other Superchain participants have gotten,” Koller told CoinDesk in an interview.

Optimism’s growth

Layer-2 networks have been popping up all over the Ethereum ecosystem over the past year. Crypto exchange Coinbase famously launched their Base layer-2 network in August of 2023 with OP Stack. Since then, decentralized exchange Uniswap shared that it would launch a layer-2 on OP Stack called Unichain, and electronics giant Sony shared it was also coming out with a layer-2 called Soneium based on Optimism’s technology.

AI pioneer Sam Altman’s blockchain project, World, known for its controversial iris-scanning orbs, went live with its layer-2 Worldchain in August, also built on OP Stack.

“I think for some of the big partners that really sign in and do this, this massive commitment that, again, we are spending our money and resources to be able to contribute to the Superchain, of which is not something that, you know, we built, and we’re technically making money on, you know, like the actual open source repos,” Kroller added.

According to Koller, the grant with OP Labs is based on transactions per month, “each time you achieve one, then there’s different tranches that get unlocked, and there’s an initial unlock, and then the rest gets unlocked at each month.”

Base has a slightly different setup, being one of the first in the space under this program. Base disclosed in a blog post in August 2023 that it would receive up to 2.75% of the OP token supply over a six-year period. The total supply of OP tokens is currently close to 4.3 billion, which makes Base eligible to receive up to 118 million OP tokens.

For newer layer-2s in the Superchain, “it’s just like a time-lock thing. And after them [Base], I think all Superchain participants are really driving that around activity,” Koller said.

Paid deals

Deals between layer-2 projects and big firms are not unheard of in the blockchain industry. In 2022, Polygon paid Starbucks $4 million in grants to build an NFT-powered loyalty program. The program was shuttered 18 months later.

At the time of the Starbucks deal, Polygon was led by Ryan Wyatt, who was ousted in 2023, according to a CoinDesk report. Wyatt joined the Optimism Foundation in November 2023, where he is the chief growth officer, in charge of onboarding more developers to build across the Optimism ecosystem.

“There’s no blueprints of this stuff, so you’re gonna make good decisions and bad decisions in this space. There’s not a lot you can lend at,” Wyatt told CoinDesk in an interview this week, conducted before CoinDesk learned about the Kraken deal.

Read more: Kraken Picks Optimism for New Layer-2 Network, Joining Coinbase’s Base on ‘Superchain’

Taylor Swift Approved Sponsorship Deal With FTX, Despite Previous Reports: NYT

Swift signed the sponsorship agreement worth as much as $100 million following more than six months of discussions.

Music megastar Taylor Swift approved a sponsorship deal with the now bankrupt crypto exchange FTX last year, despite previous reports that she had walked away after conducting her own due diligence on the firm, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

In the spring of 2022, the pop star discussed a deal with FTX worth as much as $100 million that potentially included sponsorship of a tour.

Swift signed the sponsorship agreement with FTX following more than six months of discussions but in the end, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried pulled out of the deal, according to the New York Times, citing three people with knowledge of the matter. The decision left Swift’s team frustrated and disappointed, according to two of the people.

A lawyer suing celebrities who had endorsed FTX had previously said on a podcast that Swift had done due diligence the crypto exchange, asking it to prove that its cryptocurrencies were not unregistered securities, which led her to reject the deal. This led to multiple stories praising Swift’s business intelligence.

Taylor Swift’s management did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

News that FTX had pulled out of the deal was also reported by CNBC, quoting a source familiar with the matter.

Voyager Lawyers ‘Surprised’ Binance.US Canceled $1B Deal #prizmabet

Creditors can expect to receive between 40% and 65% recoveries, ideally in crypto, attorneys for the bankrupt crypto lender said in court Wednesday.

Voyager Digital was taken by surprise when Binance.US canceled a $1 billion deal to buy its assets on Tuesday. The exchange was still showing interest as recently as last week, Voyager’s attorneys said in a New York courtroom on Wednesday.

Binance.US had made an offer for the bankrupt crypto lender in December but pulled out on Tuesday, citing an “uncertain regulatory climate” in the U.S.

“The debtors have been in constant contact and communication with Binance.US and as lately as this past Friday, Binance.US had expressed the desire to close the transaction as soon as possible,” Christine Okike of law firm Kirkland & Ellis, representing Voyager, told a bankruptcy court in the Southern District Court of New York, adding that “the debtors reserve all rights against Binance.US for breach” of the deal.

Given the collapse of the Binance.US deal, likely recoveries for Voyager creditors are in the range of 40% to 65%, Okike said, depending on whether Voyager wins a parallel lawsuit involving bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, and how much recovery FTX offers its creditors.

Okike also said Voyager would attempt to give creditors back their holdings in original cryptocurrency, dismissing speculation it would instead seek to pay the cash equivalent.

“The debtors have every intention of making ‘in kind’ distributions subject to regulatory restrictions and our platform functionality,” Okike said, but warned that a shifting legal position from U.S. regulators could complicate Voyager’s ability to do so.

“We’re faced with a situation where the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] may not have taken a position or issued a formal order with respect to [Voyager’s token] VGX,” Okike said, “But they’ve made certain allegations that could make it untenable in certain situations for the debtors, for instance, to sell VGX into the market.”

The regulatory uncertainty that would require payments to be made in cash applied to tokens with a likely total value of $1.6 million within an overall estate of around $1 billion, Okike said.

Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July, and a deal by FTX to buy its assets fell through after FTX also collapsed in November. The Binance.US deal was held up in part by protestations from the SEC that the fine print of the deal offered exoneration for breaches of tax or securities law.

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Edited by Nikhilesh De.