A Slight Tangent: Newly-Merged Bitcoin Miner Called Riot (Added Whinstone) Becoming... The New "Enron Lite"?

I won't go on at any great length about it here -- as this company has literally nothing to do with life sciences. If you'd like to read about the now unfolding back-story. . . look here, and for the hinky accounting aspects of the story -- look here. All of this was disclosed for the first time last night, after NASDAQ close (in a buried SEC / EDGAR filing).

I will say that this is sort of the opposite of life sciences: charging 20 to 30 times the prior price for each MWH of electricity, in January and February of this year -- while elderly and otherwise vulnerable Texans literally froze to death in their homes and apartments. . . is just so "on brand" for the crypto- sector. . . right?

The company has essentially always been GAAP unprofitable. Unprofitable, that is -- until it booked this one-time $125 million windfall (over ten years' worth of its normal annual revenue, in just a few weeks!) -- by shutting down its mining, and selling its right to electricity -- for insanely high prices, off the privatized Texas grid. . . during January / February 2021.

That folks is exactly what Enron was doing, two decades ago, in Texas -- but it was only causing brown-outs that made people uncomfortable, on hot August days there -- by shuttering air conditioners. . . to my knowledge, no deaths were attributed to those market-manipulations.

So, that is an added "Badge of Ignominity" for tiny Riot, that now controls the Whinstone US (Texas) operations.

Out.

नमस्ते