AI Compute Deals Transform Bitcoin Mining as Trump Holds Nearly $1 Billion in Bitcoin
A solo commentary episode from the Digital Asset News channel covering AI infrastructure deals with Bitcoin miners, Bitcoin price analysis, Trump's Bitcoin holdings, and a crypto scam warning.
Summary
Rob from Digital Asset News covers several major developments in the crypto space. The headline story is Anthropic — the company behind the Claude AI — striking a $9 billion compute deal with Bitcoin miner Riot, using 191 megawatts of capacity from Riot's Rockdale, Texas campus. Rob frames this as part of a broader trend of Bitcoin miners pivoting to AI infrastructure. He also highlights an SEC filing revealing that Trump's company holds approximately 14,139 Bitcoin — worth roughly $900 million at current prices — while appearing to have offloaded Trump Coin and Melania Coin. Rob covers Bitcoin price action and moving averages, warns viewers about a specific crypto scammer named Tiffany Milanovich who has stolen at least $5 million from victims, and closes with a Q&A session covering altcoin performance (Ethereum, BNB, Solana, and Tron), Bitcoin forks and BIP 110, Michael Saylor's latest Bitcoin sale, and portfolio strategy.
On Ethereum treasury strategies, the summary notes that Bitmine has maintained a 58-week streak of ETH buying, and separately that Tom Lee has added to his Ethereum position. A parallel is drawn between Lee's conviction-driven accumulation approach and Michael Saylor's Bitcoin strategy. The episode also reviews altcoin one-year performance, finding BNB and Tron relatively resilient compared to Bitcoin, while Ethereum and Solana underperformed. BIP 110 and historical Bitcoin forks are discussed with skepticism about fragmentation, deferring to the majority consensus and analysts like Simon Dixon.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Anthropic's $9 Billion Compute Deal with Riot and the Bitcoin Miner AI Pivot
Host: Well, everybody, it looks like AI is taking over Bitcoin mining operations, which I thought they were going to do. We'll take a look at the new Bitcoin miner falling into that trajectory, which should be no surprise. And also, we'll take a look at Donald Trump as he holds next to a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin.
First thing — this was actually revealed last night pretty late. Looks like Anthropic, the one that is responsible for Claude, which is the one that I actually use daily — it's a pretty good program — strikes a $9 billion compute deal with Bitcoin miner Riot. They're going to provide 191 megawatts of capacity from Riot's Rockdale campus right here in good old Texas. And I have to tell you, this is a match made in heaven.
It's not just Riot. We did a video a couple weeks ago about the big Bitcoin mining operations that are going that way to AI. Now, they're not shutting off — or actually I can't really say they're not shutting off, because it looks like the difficulty level has decreased a little bit — but they are using the space to allow for AI compute: the chips, the space, and also the electrical usage, which is a huge electrical draw being used by artificial intelligence.
So we talked about Mara, Core Scientific, Riot, CleanSpark, Hut 8, TeraWolf — and you can just see what they're doing. They are massively taking up AI, and if they're going to pay the bills, why not? So much the better. CleanSpark is developing and commercializing AI high-performance computing campuses. Mara is positioning for non-hosted capacity. Riot, like we're going to talk about today, already has an existing deal in place — an AMD data center lease establishing critical IT capacity at its Rockdale site, which is the same thing that's going on with Anthropic. Terra Wolf signed a 20-year Anthropic lease. So Terra Wolf and Riot are essentially doing the same thing for Anthropic. And Hut 8 has a second 352-megawatt Beacon Point lease, increasing contract capacity of the campus to 74 megawatts.
So again, it's all power. It's all electrical generation. And good for them — I've got no problems with them doing those things. It is a business, and at the end of the day you've got to maximize what you actually have.
Riot Stock Reaction and Miner Performance Comparison
The question I have is: how did this affect the stock? Well, it blew up for about six hours or so and then it's gone. When the news broke, the price yesterday was around $19.37 and it skyrocketed all the way up to $24. This was last night, 8:00 p.m., Monday, August 10th. And as the market opened up, they were like, "We don't really care," and down it went.
These are the types of things that you should be aware of, because this is just hype and speculation. They're going in a specific direction — does that mean you should go all in as much as possible? I can't tell you what to do, I'm not a financial adviser, but for me, I don't mind putting in a little bit of my own cash into these types of endeavors. We'll see if it actually plays out, but it looks pretty good.
Five days — what about a month? Down 2%. How about six months? Now we're talking — up 32%. How about one year? 77%. Not too bad.
Let's take a look at Mara. One day, up a point — not too bad. Five days, not too good. One month — down 20%. Six months, up 28%. And over one year, down 37%. So you can see that not all things are equal.
What about Core Scientific? One day, up a point. Five days, not so great. One month, down. Six months, up 8%. And then one year, 35% — which has outperformed a lot of things in the crypto and digital asset market. So that is for you to take a look at.
I will just say that this is a good pivot play. We've been talking about this for quite some time, and I think AI will be — and actually is — the big thing. Let me know what you think about that in the comments.
Bitcoin Price Action and Moving Averages
So we're going to go from that to taking a look at some valuations — maybe overvaluations to undervaluations. This is Quinton, and he's got a good following. You can follow him at Quinton François. He's one of those 30 Under 30 in business and partnerships, doing things with crypto. He had this point where he says every four years Bitcoin reaches historically oversold levels. Every four years, people say it will go lower, and that continues to happen.
It happened in 2022 — when I was actually micro-DCA-ing, like I should have bought like crazy back then when Bitcoin was $15,000, $16,000, $17,000. I regret that every day. 2018, the same thing, as we start to see everything just crater, and of course people talk about how it's never going to bounce back. And Quinton's right — every four years people say it will go lower.
I think people are waiting for it to go lower, or until October/November, which they may be right about. I personally don't prescribe to that. Anything can happen. I continue to buy every single Monday on Cash App.
It is interesting now that we are at massively oversold levels. This is the power law decay channel oscillator. I'm not a big fan of a lot of these different oscillators and different levels, because as a reminder, I think for finding the bottom it's relatively close, but trying to find the top for a Bitcoin cycle — let me ask you this: how many of those indicators fired for us in October 2025? You want to know the answer? Zero. So on some of these indicators, just take it with a grain of salt. It's a good way to look at things. I still think over time you'll be okay.
But I will tell you, as far as oversold goes, we just saw a pretty large outflow yesterday for the Bitcoin ETFs. We had $144 million outflow. BlackRock was leading the charge at $53.6 million, $40 million from Fidelity, Bitwise, and so on and so forth. But as a reminder, July 31st was even more — $265 million. And then weeks before that, we had $49 million, $111 million, $240 million, and $225 million. So $144 million — not too bad.
I will take a look at bottoms and take a look at moving averages. We talked about this many a time, and I feel like we're kind of in that area where we could be bottoming out. Now, could we go lower in October, November, December — Q4 of 2026? Yes, we could. But taking a look at this, we have now crossed below yet again the moving average for the Bitcoin price. We're at $63,460. The 200-week moving average is $64K.
And people say, "But Rob, that doesn't count because we're going to go to the 250-week, which would put us at $58,000. And then we're going to go to the 300-week because that's what happened last time, at $55,000. And maybe we go to the 350-week moving average or just above, which would put us at $49,000." That's what everybody's waiting for — or that's what some people are waiting for.
If we just reset ourselves and take a look at 2022, that absolutely did happen. It was close. November 21st, 2022, we almost hit the 350-week moving average at $15,000. Now I think some people are waiting for the 400-week or 450-week. I don't know.
But if we reset that and go all the way back to the last one — say in 2018, remember those days after 2017 when the big run-up happened? I don't know if you were here. I was here. It was great. We didn't even go below the 200-week moving average. We kissed it just a little bit, right here. Didn't even go below it. Didn't go to the 200-week. Didn't go to the 250. Didn't go to the 300. Didn't go to the 350.
So remember that next time you're saying, "I'm waiting for this level." I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying it didn't happen in 2018. And when did it actually happen in the last cycle beforehand? It took a global pandemic for us to hit the 300-week moving average, and we didn't even get to the 350. Let me say one more time — it took a global pandemic for us to go that low. And for us to go even lower in 2022, it took a collapse of not one, not two, but three exchanges and a whole host of projects: Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, FTX, Luna — you name it, we crushed it. And that's how much it took just to get below the 300-week moving average. Again, didn't happen in 2018.
I'm waiting to see what actually happens. We'll see if it's on the bingo card. Let me know what you're doing. We'll talk about this in the Q&A a little bit.
Geopolitics, Trump's Bitcoin Holdings, and the SEC/CFTC Update
Moving a little bit from the price action — let's do a little geopolitical stuff. I'm going to stop talking about US and Iran deals because it's dumb. We get a deal every day and it gets broken every night. But it was interesting that we have yet another one — even though US forces three hours ago opened fire on a Panama-flagged ship. So good luck with that.
The reason I want to talk about this was just to segue into DJT. On this channel, we've been very vocal about how the president and his companies have done a nice accumulation of Trump Coin and Melania Coin. Some people will say it's a rug pull — I'll call it a rug pull. They dumped a lot of it. A lot of insiders got rich. And guess what? It wasn't you. I'll tell you that right now.
However, I did not have this on my bingo card. And maybe things happened for a reason. This is from the SEC filing in July 2026 — MAGA First ETF, Truth Social Funds, Trump's company. As of July 31st, 2026, they held approximately 14,139 Bitcoin. Let's do some quick math. 14,000 times — I don't know what the price is today — $64,000? That's like $900 million dollars that they're holding in Bitcoin. And that was as of July 31st, 2026. I don't even know how much they have in Trump Coin or Melania Coin — I think they dumped all that stuff.
So we talk about how Trump is the crypto president. Maybe he is. He just dumped the worthless stuff on you and held the gold. It is what it is. Let me know what you think about that in the comments.
Regulatory Update: Clarity Act Delayed, SEC and CFTC Moving Forward
Finishing up things I didn't have in my bingo card — kudos to the SEC and the CFTC for picking up the slack where Congress can't do a darn thing. The Clarity Act vote has been pushed to September 15th. I don't think it's going to pass still, but the SEC isn't waiting. This isn't a replacement for the bill. The SEC can shape securities rules while Congress needs to settle who's going to be the main jurisdiction — is it going to be the SEC or the CFTC? I don't care which one it actually is, but as long as it gets done. I think the SEC and CFTC — this isn't the Gensler days — I think both of them are pro-crypto. So if they can get things done that the Senate couldn't do, I'm so much the better.
Tom Lee's Ethereum Accumulation Strategy
And then also, shout out to Tom Lee for doing the things he said he was going to do. I'm not a huge fan of Ethereum, but Tom is. He said, "We're going to keep buying," and he did it. His firm has bought ETH every single week since pivoting to an Ethereum treasury strategy on June 30th, 2025 — 58 straight weeks of ETH buying. Maybe Tom Lee is the new Michael Saylor of Ethereum. I remember when Michael stood up and said, "Hey, don't sell your Bitcoin." And then of course he said, "I was talking about you — I wasn't talking about Strategy." Maybe now we should take a look at what Tom Lee is doing. He's doing the things he's supposed to do. Shout out to Tom Lee — with that fantastic head of hair — doing the right things.
Scam Warning: Tiffany Milanovich and Hardware Wallet Impersonation Fraud
And lastly — I swear this is the last one before we get into Q&A — don't let this happen to you. This is from ZachXBT, and it was a post that caught my attention. Someone sent it to me, and this is the boldest thing I've seen in a long time.
Meet Tiffany Milanovich, a US-based threat actor tied to at least $5 million in thefts from hardware wallets and centralized exchange support impersonation scams. It's not so much that she scams them — she scams the people, records it, and then mocks the people she steals the crypto from. She records herself taunting victims. Tiffany openly flaunts luxury purchases, stolen funds, and concealed gambling on social media. Tiffany operates as a caller — the person who phones victims posing as exchange or wallet support — and talks them into handing over access to their funds.
Rule number two: everything's a scam until proven otherwise. Everything's a scam. The only things on exchanges — don't use leverage, take profits along the way. Very simple.
In June 2026, a victim lost $1.2 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Tiffany and her group drained the victim's Trezor wallet after spoofing Bitcoin IRA support under the alias Patricia Massie. And then after the theft, she was bragging about it in Telegram groups. Unbelievable. I don't know how this person is not in jail yet.
I don't want this to happen to you. Just make sure you know that everything's a scam. Even if it's like, "Hey, this is Rob from Digital Asset News — send me one Bitcoin and I'll send you two." Or, "Hey, this is a nice email from Coinbase and we understand there might be an issue with you opening up another account, someone changed your password." Or, "Hey, we need to call you." It's all a scam. Every single thing. Be cautious. Be aware. Try to move things around.
I use Tandem. I use Ledger. And I just signed up with Fidelity for an ETF — the reason being I moved my Ionic Digital shares, which I got from that Celsius blowout bankruptcy, and I'm moving them over there.
Q&A Session
Host: All right. Peter says, "There's dozens of us left here in the cryptoverse." And Mary is correct — Tom Lee's hair is life. I'm just jealous. That guy's got a great head of hair. Legend has it Saylor resides in Lee's hair. Very thick, difficult to get through.
Someone says it was five exchanges. Yeah, I think that's right. And Sam Bankman-Fried went to prison. I wonder how he's doing. I saw him — I was in some hallway going from one hotel to the next at Consensus in Austin for Ethereum. I come through and there's this little guy coming at me in almost pitch darkness, big thick shaded glasses on and a hoodie. I'm like, "Who wears glasses at 11 p.m. at night in a dark hallway?" Then he walked by and I could see his face. I shook his hand and said, "Hey, we're rooting for you." I know he was having problems at that point. Very sad. Hopefully it works out for the kids and the family. It's awful.
Trump is a billionaire — yes, he is. And he made like $1.4 billion on some different things in crypto. There was a new filing where he is down — I want to say $382 million — but it's like, well, I'm down $382 million but I made $1.4 billion over here, so we'll call it a wash.
It's a great day to DCA — I have to agree.
A lot of comments about Bit Boy. People do not like that guy. Bad shape, addiction, psych issues — this is what stress will do to you. It's important that you realize what's actually important. Is it important that you're 90% down on some coin? No. Is it important that Bitcoin is at a certain price and you're not a quadrillionaire? No. What's important is that you're healthy, you can get out, and you have family and friends around you. There was this one comment — someone said, "Hey, if I gave you $10 million, would you take it?" He said, "Yeah, of course." "Okay, but the only stipulation is the next day you can't wake up." He said, "Well, I wouldn't take that." And the response was, "Exactly. So it doesn't matter how much money you have as long as you can wake up the next day and enjoy life."
Rob, what do you think of Uniswap? I think people use it and it has utility. I personally haven't used Uniswap in quite some time. I'm not really big into the altcoins that much anymore.
Jimmy says, "I got a scam email yesterday sent from a friend as an invitation to an event — the link was to a scam website." Threats are everywhere. And you know what's sad is they're only going to get more in-depth and more complex as scammers start to use AI against us. They're going to come up with some really slick stuff. This is why I use Claude all the time for links and emails. Instead of me clicking onto a link and getting drained, I say, "Claude, here's a link that was sent to me." Because I get offers all the time and some look legitimate. I'll take that link, stick it into Claude, and say, "Go evaluate this. Tell me if this is going to be a scam." And 99% of the time it's like, "That's a scam." And then also for things people want me to download — I'll copy the link and say, "Claude, go into this and see what's actually in the file." And it will go through and say, "No, this one's safe. This one's good. This one's bad."
And someone says, "Stop clicking links." You can do that too. That's also pretty easy.
Altcoin Performance Review
What about Ethereum, Binance, and Solana? Let's see. Ethereum — let's take a look over a year. August 22nd it was $4,817. Today, $1,860. That's awful.
How about Binance? In one year it is down 24%. Hey, I've got to tell you — Binance is down 24% in one year and Bitcoin is down 46%. You're telling me Binance outperformed Bitcoin? That's exactly what I'm saying. And of course people say, "Zoom out, Rob." Fine. If you're going back to 2025, you're actually up 1.9%. And going back further — $214 to $600 — that's actually a 3x. So BNB is doing good.
How about Solana? In one year it's essentially flat — wait, actually Solana outperformed Bitcoin in one year? Let me see. Bitcoin is down 46% and Solana is down 57%. Okay, I take that back — it did not outperform. Bitcoin is down 46%, Solana is down 57%.
What about Tron? In one year, Tron is down 3%. That's pretty good. In three months, down 4.5%. In one month, up a percentage point. There's your answer — BNB, Solana, and Tron did pretty good, but Ethereum not so much.
Michael Saylor's Latest Bitcoin Sale
Someone says Michael Saylor sold again. Let's take a look. He sold yesterday — 1,690 Bitcoin at an average price of $64,000. And I don't blame him. That's what he has to do for the company.
I do like this — and I know it's going to be very unpopular — but I do like the fact that he had to sell and he sold Bitcoin, because now everybody was talking about a Ponzi scheme. Everybody outside in traditional finance would say, "How are you going to keep paying these dividends by holding Bitcoin and never selling it? Essentially it's a Ponzi scheme — you're bringing in more people to pay for the dividends." And he's like, "No, we have these different things, we can do this." And they'd say, "No, no, no — you've got to sell Bitcoin." So he's selling Bitcoin and everybody can go, "Oh, well, that makes sense. Keep going."
And as a reminder, their average Bitcoin purchase price — they've been doing this for some time. They bought at $11,000, $10,000, $19,000, $30,000, and a lot more. So not too bad. I'll take it.
BIP 110, Polygon, and Closing Q&A
Joey says, "Still a fan of Uniswap and Chainlink, but I sold most of mine." Yeah, they're probably doing great, but that doesn't mean we have to prop them up. You want to sell, you sell.
What are your thoughts on Polygon? I was writing it off, but now as we see people using it — the price action isn't really that great, but I do see a lot of tokenization of real-world assets and also stable coin usage, which could do pretty well. You have to have a lot of demand for that. And remember — even though we're using it on certain rails for stable coins and real-world assets, most of what we see for price appreciation is just straight-up speculation. People going, "I think it's going to go up," and they buy it. That's it. So Polygon could do well as long as more speculators come in.
Solana is still 9x above its four-year cycle low. I've got to take a look at that.
Rob, would you buy an alternative Bitcoin that supports the BIP 110 rules? Do you believe in a BIP 110 fork? Well, it doesn't matter what I believe in — it's what 97% of people believe in, and they believe that BIP 110 isn't going to cut it. So that's where we're at. I'm just a realist.
Would I like to see less spam and junk — runes and things like that on Bitcoin? Yes. I think they're worthless. However, if at some point we start to use those for digital IDs and real-world acquisition, then yeah, great. But as it stands now, I don't believe we should have this kind of bloat. On the same flip side, I was here when we did those stupid forks — Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin SV. Stupid. And where did that get us? Just a big fragmentation and people going, "What is really Bitcoin?" So if you've got 97% of people moving forward in this direction and 3% going the other way, they voted and it's the democracy, and that's where we go from here. If you don't like that — I know people who are into BIP 110 — take a look at somebody way smarter than me: Simon Dixon, as he explained it, and I'll just go down that route.
What about TAO? TAO sounds great. Hopefully does well. No idea.