‘[W]e have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.’ -April Glaspie ambassador of the United States of America to Iraq.

The Gulf War has always stood out to me as one of the most transparent cause and effect cases in geopolitics. Reagan supported Iraq's aggressive actions against Iran, forced Iraq into an inconclusive peace, did nothing to stop Kuwait or the Saudis from overproducing Oil which had fallen 2/3s from 1980 levels and was 60% of the Iraqi economy, gave Saddam Hussein the same signals they had given prior to the invasion of Iran, and were then outraged when the country that had admitted to overproducing oil by 700,000 barrels and conducted economic warfare against Iraq had military action taken against it.
But the point of the Gulf war was never about fairness or "international law" as its defenders whined, it was always political between 1989 and 1990, unemployment increased by 3 million, inflation continued to increase, and the recession continually worsened. Bush and his corrupt cronies who had bypassed congress to sell weapons to our enemies to fund terrorists in Nicaragua, were increasingly aware that they had nothing to offer anyone with even the slightest hint of intellect or decency.
So what if they had to destroy hospitals, schools, and bomb shelters and slaughter babies in their cribs? Bush was more than willing to make Iraq a fourth world country if it meant getting abstract "leverage" over Saddam Hussein. There was of course, classic disinformation around this, the air force denied it at first, before quietly admitting that, yeah they had intentionally targeted civilians, so what? Senior air force officers blamed civilians for having the audacity to be born in their country saying, "They do live there, and ultimately the people have some control over what goes on in their country."
Indeed, the women and children huddling in bomb shelters blown into unrecognizable pieces and fused with the bodies of their countrymen should have simply chosen to overthrow Saddam; its not like there was a massive security apparatus and he was paranoid of such a thing.
Of course, Bush had no regard for just about anyone besides himself, he was fine with selling Americans electricity to sketchy Enron executives who deprived people in the greatest nation of the world of a basic necessity many of them needed to survive so they could fill their oversized pockets.
Bush was a war criminal who as they often do, masqueraded as the savior of a people in order to prop his political position up. If he any regard for justice, he would have done something about the persecution of Palestinians in the aftermath of the war, which was so severe that a majority of the population was forced to flee. Instead there was nothing but a deafening silence.
Bush's distaste for the truth was so profound that he wheeled out the Kuwaiti ambassadors 15 year old daughter to tell horrific lies without the slightest basis in reality before the UN security council.
This story has a good ending, well as good as could be expected, Bush was unable to hide his obvious distaste for anyone but himself for long enough to win re-election and as all of you probably know, was resoundly defeated. It wasn't quite the Kuwait City Trials we should have gotten, but Bush died a humiliated, embarrassed man. Evil can triumph for a time, but the pendulum of history always swings back at those wrong-doers who circumvent laws and morals to strengthen their own power and feed their narcissism.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/06/23/allied-air-war-struck-broadly-in-iraq/e469877b-b1c1-44a9-bfe7-084da4e38e41/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiriyah_shelter_bombing
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2005/feb/05/enron.usnews
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/14/world/after-the-war-kuwait-palestinians-in-kuwait-face-suspicion-and-probable-exile.html

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Let’s dive straight into what’s shaking the foundations of financial and political spheres as we speak. It centers around Trump Media, the company owned by former President Donald Trump, which finds itself at the heart of a significant transition and turmoil. This involves switching its auditor in a scenario marked by allegations of “massive fraud” from its previous auditor, as flagged by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Now, for those who may not be familiar with the financial logistics here, an auditor’s role is immensely critical. These are the people or firms hired by companies to assess and verify the accuracy of their financial statements. Essentially, they make sure that everything adds up and that the financial activities reported are free of deception or error. This compliance is not only ethical but also a legal requirement to protect investors and maintain trust in the financial markets.
The situation took a sharp turn when the former auditor of Trump Media, BF Borgers, was accused by the SEC of failing to conduct real audits before signing off on regulatory filings for public companies. That’s a severe charge, implying that hundreds of corporate assessments by BF Borgers might be unreliable or outright fabricated. Trump Media, taking swift action, appointed Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP as their new auditor over this last weekend.
This brings us to why this is so crucial. The involvement of a former president's company in such allegations adds layers of complexity and gravity. An ex-president's business operations under scrutiny influence public opinion, potentially casting shadows or shedding light on the broader political landscape and commercial practices.
Reflect on how this resonates beyond just news; it affects investor's confidence, the intertwined relationship of high-level business and politics, and the integrity of regulatory frameworks meant to protect the economic structure of our country. In the broader economic environment, these shifts and changes paint a picture of our economy’s robustness and the steadfastness of entities that should be bulwarks of trust and reliability in business.
What’s also significant here is the portrayal of this news. Understanding the underlying bias against conservative enterprises and leaders is crucial. Often, the media jumps on anything that could presumably denigrate figures like President Trump, despite the due process and notwithstanding the real outcomes of such allegations. Therefore, while consuming such news, weighing the facts against the interpreting bias is key in grasping the whole picture.
Lastly, let us reflect on the impact of such a narrative. Think of the trust millions place in figures like Trump and the entities they lead. When news strikes—accusations such as these—it reverberates, affecting not just the stock prices but the very fabric of political loyalty and public sentiment across the nation.
Now, let's consider the historical context that is similar to the current challenges faced by Trump Media. Reflecting on past events can give us a clearer vision of the robust and often unfairly targeted moves in the corporate world. Take, for example, the case with Enron in the early 2000s. Enron's collapse was due to what can only be described as mass systemic and accounting fraud, leading to significant financial distress for countless individuals and entities. The company misreported its financial situation, leading to inflated stock prices, which eventually led to its demise and catastrophic loss for shareholders and employees alike. This scenario played a crucial role in the implementation of stricter regulations under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to prevent such events from recurring.
Another historical incident that echoes the theme of alleged infractions is the Lehman Brothers scandal during the 2008 financial crisis. Lehman, one of the largest investment banks, used a small accounting firm to validate their fragile financial standing through repo transactions, masking overleveraging and contributing to their bankruptcy, which exacerbated the global financial turmoil. This scenario showcases a significant trust breakdown between financial institutions and their auditing firms.
These historical accounts contrast markedly with the current Trump Media situation. In Trump Media's case, we see an organization that upon discovering the alleged deficiencies of their auditor, BF Borgers—a firm accused of massive fraud—acted decisively by appointing a new auditor, Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP. It's crucial to note that unlike Enron or Lehman Brothers, there were no modifications, disclaimers, or adverse opinions in the financial audits released by BF Borgers for Trump Media, as the situations involved different severities and reactions. This action underlines Trump Media’s commitment to transparency and proper conduct despite the relentless witch hunt perpetuated by biased media and political adversaries.
Let’s delve, not into criticisms, but into projections. Given these corrective actions and the proactive stance against possible auditing discrepancies, one pathway we see for Trump Media involves a rebound in investor confidence. Increased scrutiny combined with transparency can pave a path similar to companies that have successfully navigated post-crisis recoveries, bolstering both stakeholder trust and financial health.
A second possible future entails continuous challenges from regulatory bodies, driven by the current political climate heavily influenced by leftist ideologies intent on undermining conservative enterprises. This path would likely involve stringent audits and potentially unwarranted scrutiny compared to other corporations not under such highly charged political spotlights.
Each of these paths carries implications not just for Trump Media but for the broader landscape of corporate governance and political influence on business practices. The unfolding of these paths will provide a telling glimpse into how modern businesses can navigate the complexities of legal and political environments influenced by ideological battles far removed from factual and fair business practices.
This look at history coupled with the anticipation of what might unfold for Trump Media enriches our understanding of not just the immediate news but of broader, more complex corporate governance issues in a politically charged era. The detailed approach offered here provides clarity and insight into how past lessons and future challenges converge in the unfolding narrative of Trump Media.
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s clear the air regarding some accusations you might have heard lobbed against Trump Media. As you know, Truth Social, a beacon of free speech, was under scrutiny when our former auditor was hit with allegations from the SEC – all sounding rather dire. But, let's weigh some varied perspectives here and ensure our stance is informed and unwavering.
Firstly, a bold move was made by Trump Media in swift response to the controversy. We didn’t just sit back; the board, reflecting diligent governance, promptly appointed Semple, Marchal & Cooper LLP, renowned for their integrity. This move showcases proactive responsibility, a trait seldom echoed across the aisles of our opponents. From financial experts to market analysts, the consensus rings clear: this was a judicious choice, enhancing transparent operations, distancing from any semblance of prior misjudgments by BF Borgers.
Addressing more reactions from the community, many shareholders and supporters renewed their trust in Trump Media's resilience and ethical standards. Emails and messages poured in applauding the decisive action; indeed, it restores faith in the leadership that aligns with American values of justice and rectitude.
Considering the potential implications of these accusations, it's imperative that we, as a community of vigilant citizens, question the narratives being spun by mainstream media. From all indications, the accounts managed by BF Borgers for Trump Media were in order, sans any discrepancies or adverse opinions, as clearly stated in our filings. This transparency dispels much of the cloud thrown our way by naysayers.
Immediate action? It’s necessary for us all. Supporters must rally, ensuring that misleading headlines do not dwarf the truth. Engage on forums, write to editors, and let your voices endorse the truth amidst rampant misinformation. Your active participation ensures the scales of public opinion aren't tipped by falsehood.
The primary takeaway here is clarity: Trump Media has acted with swift integrity, and previous financial statements remain unblemished as per regulatory standards. It’s crucial to digest that before casting stones, we examine the veracity of claims laid against entities that dare to challenge the status quo.
In conclusion, as we look towards fostering a media landscape dominated by genuine discourse rather than calculated deceit, let's remain steadfast and critical of the information fed to us. The news today isn't just an update; it's a testament to resilience against unwarranted onslaughts.

"Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon" by William D. Cohan is a painstakingly researched and riveting account of the collapse of Enron, one of the largest and most infamous corporate scandals in American history. Cohan, a seasoned financial writer and novelist, digs into the inner workings of Enron, chronicling its rapid rise from a minor energy business to a Wall Street darling and its spectacular fall from grace.
The book investigates the corporate culture at Enron, characterized by hubris, greed, and a merciless pursuit of profit at any cost. Cohan investigates the involvement of important individuals like as CEO Jeff Skilling, Chairman Ken Lay, and CFO Andy Fastow, detailing their questionable business methods, financial manipulation, and contempt for ethical standards.
Through extensive interviews, archival research, and analysis of court documents and financial records, Cohan reconstructs the events leading up to Enron's collapse, including the company's false accounting techniques, off-balance-sheet financing schemes, and eventual bankruptcy filing. He also explores the complicity of external actors such as auditors, bankers, and regulators, who failed to identify or prevent the fraud.
What sets "Power Failure" distinctive is its rigorous attention to detail and extensive study of the Enron scandal. Cohan gives readers with a clear and nuanced grasp of the sophisticated financial manipulations and corporate governance errors that led to Enron's downfall, while also analyzing the broader ramifications of the crisis for American capitalism and corporate governance.
Overall, "Power Failure" is a riveting and depressing read that offers excellent insights into the dark side of corporate America. Cohan's engaging story and sharp analysis make this book essential reading for anybody interested in understanding the anatomy of a corporate crisis and the lessons to be learnt from Enron's stunning demise.
Free Audiobook with a free trial of Audible

Heads Will Roll Amidst a chaotic month for Tesla — even by its continuously plunging standards — Facebook cofounder and multi-billionaire Dustin Moskovitz has made some pretty dire predictions for the automaker, accusing it of committing "consumer fraud on a massive scale."
"This is Enron now, folks," Moskovitz wrote on Threads, referring to the corporation that went bankrupt in 2001 after it was exposed for one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. "It may keep going, but people are going to jail at the end."
His concerns stem from a graph Tesla shared to mark a key milestone: one billion miles driven using Full Self-Driving, the company's highly fraught advanced driver assist system. He then compares it with a new graph released during Tesla's latest earnings call — an event that came with its own eyebrow raising moments.
The point of the side-by-side is this: according to Moskovitz, the automaker is wrongly recognizing its deferred revenue — revenue for a product that hasn't been delivered, like an annual subscription fee — as earned revenue through the wider release of its Autopark feature last month. This is a sketchy move, Moskovitz claims, because an earlier version of Autopark was already released with FSD years ago, resulting in inflated numbers.
"The data is presented in fraudulent ways, and it doesn't say what they claim it says even when they make it up," he wrote.
Article continues. Read here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-cofounder-says-tesla-committed-135001013.html
What do we think of this?

From Texas Monthly:
The Battle of Big Taco
With their anything-goes approach to ingredients—and deep-pocketed investors—Torchy's Tacos and Velvet Taco have ambitious plans to expand nationally.
Something stops Clay Dover cold as he strolls behind the restaurant’s counter. The CEO of Velvet Taco has been all smiles and high fives since he entered the chain’s location in the Grandscape shopping center, amid the suburban sprawl north of Dallas. But now, staring at a few chicken strips in a bin under a heat lamp, he cuts off his friendly patter midsentence and pulls out one of the little brown hunks. He turns it over in his hand, tears it apart, takes a bite, and throws the rest in the trash with a faint trace of a pucker on his face. He’s not going to call anyone out on the spot, but he’s clearly not pleased.
Dover happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on chicken strips. As a former executive with Raising Cane’s, a Plano-based restaurant chain whose entire menu revolves around chicken strips, he knows instantly whether they’ve been made with tenderloins, a narrow cut found on the underside of the breast—“It’s the filet of chicken,” he says—or from an oversized breast that’s been sliced. He can detect whether a strip is crispy on the outside and moist on the inside or has devolved into a bumpy slab of rubber.
Today the strips in question were too small and too bready, suggesting that the crew had been serving customers the better pieces out of a batch and leaving the remains too long under the heater. The chicken didn’t pull apart with the telltale ease of a fresh tender. “Thirty-five percent of the protein in our tacos has chicken tenders in it,” he explains. “So if it’s not hot and juicy on the inside, if it’s not perfect—if you screw up the chicken, you’re done.”
Velvet Taco, which launched in Dallas thirteen years ago and now runs 46 locations in seven states, numbers among a handful of chains with the potential to redefine what a fast-food taco looks and tastes like. Sixty-plus years after Taco Bell turned a regional staple into a cheesy drive-through treat, there has yet to emerge a serious challenger with national reach, besides Chipotle, where tacos are a menu afterthought. But Velvet faces stiff competition for that prize position, and nowhere more than at home in Texas.
A few days after Dover’s Grandscape chicken-strip discovery and 220 miles south, Mike Rypka pulls on a fashionable knit blazer over his black T-shirt and heads into a conference room at the headquarters of Torchy’s Tacos, in East Austin. It’s headshot day at the chain Rypka founded in an Austin food trailer, in 2006, and which now operates 127 locations in fourteen states. “Sometimes I have to look professional,” he mutters, before stepping in front of the camera and transforming instantly from a 48-year-old tattooed dude into a corporate executive with thousands of employees.
Torchy’s started as the kind of lovably quirky local outfit whose devoted followers treat it like an extension of their personalities. But as the chain conquered city after city, it began to mirror the experience of a beloved local band that signs with a major label and lands a radio hit only to see its fans cry “sellout.” Rypka at one point stepped aside to make room for a seasoned CEO, but then he stepped back in to lead a changed company—one that’s poised to become a household name in every part of the country.
In phrasing that many taqueros might take umbrage at, Velvet’s and Torchy’s offerings have been described as “elevated” takes on the taco. What that means exactly differs quite a bit between the two chains, but each offers creative combinations of ingredients and an irreverent brand identity that trades on hedonism. Both have taken large investments—hundreds of millions of dollars—from coastal private-equity firms aiming to grow them into enormous publicly traded companies.
Mexican restaurants are on a tear in the U.S., recording some $50 billion in sales in 2022 and growing by more than 9 percent annually, far outpacing the overall economy, according to food-service consultancy Technomic. Meanwhile, Latinos have grown into the second-largest ethnic group in the country, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the population (and double that in Texas, where they constitute the largest ethnic group). As the U.S. absorbs the effects of changing demographics, opportunities for multiple national taco chains will only increase.
To be sure, other players are scrambling to claim a piece of that emerging mega industry—call it Big Taco—but Velvet and Torchy’s share an important advantage in being headquartered in Dallas and Austin, two of the best places anywhere for building food brands. “Both companies are expected to grow much faster than their competitive set,” says David Henkes, a senior principal with Technomic. It’s not surprising that the future of the taco business is being invented in Texas, but the reason has less to do with the state’s Mexican heritage and 1,200-mile international border and more to do with its proclivity for shrewd business.
Turning tacos into cash has been a Texas tradition since the late nineteenth century. Though tortillas emerged as far back as 10,000 BC, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century, according to the prevailing theory, that a stuffed tortilla became a “taco”—a word that Mexican silver miners also used to describe the little explosive paper-and-gunpowder wraps that they stuck in rock walls. When a group of women who came to be known as the Chili Queens of San Antonio started selling food from pushcarts and colorful stalls in the city’s plazas in or near the 1880s, they ushered in a blending of Mexican and American flavors that grew into Tex-Mex cuisine. Among the dishes that took off as a result—chili con carne, enchiladas, tamales—the taco was the most convenient.
It took a Californian, though, to build the first big brand around the taco. Into a crisp-fried tortilla, Taco Bell founder Glen Bell essentially stuffed a deconstructed cheeseburger—ground beef, iceberg lettuce, and shredded cheese. It was 1962. McDonald’s had revolutionized restaurants just a few years earlier with a quick-service concept that Bell adopted for his chain. By 1978, Taco Bell had nearly one thousand locations—including stores throughout Texas—thanks to an aggressive franchising model also borrowed from McDonald’s. With Mexican food still considered somewhat exotic in much of the United States, Taco Bell didn’t face as much competition as its burger brethren. But after it helped usher tacos into the mainstream, the differences between its food and that of mom-and-pop taquerias suggested an enormous opportunity to build something fresher and more authentic.
Enter Felix Stehling, the owner of a bar called the Crystal Pistol, who opened the first Taco Cabana in a decommissioned Dairy Queen in San Antonio in 1978. While Taco Bell emphasized assembly-line speed and precooked ingredients, Taco Cabana offered house-made tortillas, sizzling fajita plates, and a salsa bar. Taco Cabana’s success prompted a Minnesota entrepreneur to copy its formula almost exactly, in a Houston-based chain called Two Pesos. The resulting trademark lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1992. Taco Cabana prevailed and eventually bought Two Pesos. But after Stehling handed the CEO reins to a former Fuddruckers executive, the emphasis on fresh ingredients began to slip, and ultimately, so did sales. The chain, which had at one point expanded to seven states, has 149 locations today, all but six of them in Texas.
As Taco Cabana’s fortunes waned, a new entrant called Chipotle was rising in Colorado with a message about ethically sourced ingredients and an investment from McDonald’s. Chipotle was the first Taco Bell challenger to take a serious bite out of the market. By the time it went public in 2006, the chain had nearly five hundred locations in 21 states. Today it has more than three thousand, compared with Taco Bell’s eight thousand, and hauled in about $10 billion in 2023. By emphasizing the quality and freshness of its food, Chipotle popularized the fast-casual dining concept and ignited an industry revolution, an upscaling of fast food without sacrificing the “fast.” Workers chopped onions and lettuce by hand every day. Customers could see raw chicken being grilled on a flattop in the back of the kitchen. Some Chipotle items—such as carnitas and barbacoa—are prepared in a central kitchen and show up in big plastic bags, but none of it arrives frozen.
Amid the stampede of restaurant concepts that then attempted to re-create the Chipotle phenomenon in countless other formats in the first two decades of this century—burgers, grain bowls, pizzas, salads, sandwiches—Shake Shack stood out. Not only did the chain started by New York fine-dining impresario Danny Meyer create a better burger—a melty pile of guilty pleasures packaged in a spongy potato roll—but it charged two or three times as much as McDonald’s for a meal. While McDonald’s and Chipotle report some $3 million in annual sales per location, Shake Shack pulls in $4 million or more.
Shake Shack also showed how an aggressive private-equity investment could grow a restaurant brand as if it were a tech firm. Leonard Green & Partners, based in Los Angeles, had funded the expansion of other companies, such as the Container Store, based in the Dallas suburb of Coppell. It invested in Shake Shack in 2012, when the company operated only a handful of restaurants, and took it public less than three years later, with 63 locations. By then the goal for investors had shifted from finding the next Chipotle to finding the next Shake Shack—and it did not go unnoticed that in the taco space, there were fewer large competitors than in burgers.
Taco Bell delivered lower annual sales per location—about $1.6 million—than burger chains. And as much as Chipotle had changed the game, its menu emphasized burritos, not tacos. Meanwhile tacos were becoming a national obsession, with tiny trailers turning out Mexican-style street tacos, Netflix commissioning taco shows, and one storied magazine even hiring a dedicated taco editor (ahem, Texas Monthly; ahem, the James Beard Award–winning José R. Ralat).
The door was open for a new taco giant—if it had a novel concept.
There may be no metro area in America with more headquarters of mass-market restaurant chains than Dallas–Fort Worth (though Orlando offers stiff competition). It only makes sense, considering DFW’s low $7.25 minimum wage and dearth of natural or political barriers to suburban development. Chili’s, Cici’s, Which Wich, Wingstop—Big D dining concepts go on and on, their towering signs punctuating the view from North Texas highways while mirrored office buildings just beyond house their executive suites. Before Clay Dover took over as the CEO of Velvet Taco, the company was run by its founder, Randy DeWitt, among the most prolific Dallas restaurateurs.
A former commercial real estate salesman who developed strip centers around Walmarts and other national retailers, DeWitt has arguably passed even the late, legendary Norman Brinker as a restaurant savant. (Brinker brought the world Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale—brands that not only created the casual-dining category and established Dallas’s dominance but also ushered in lasting innovations, such as the salad bar.)
DeWitt, 65 years old with an eye-crinkling smile and a flourishing head of politician hair, first fell in love with restaurants as a bartender in Waco while he was a student at Baylor University. He got his start in Dallas in the nineties with a coffee bar and then a seafood chain called Rockfish, whose expansion was financially backed by Brinker’s company, Brinker International. In 2005, DeWitt came up with the concept for a racy sports bar called Twin Peaks. The now infamous chain, he says, unapologetically, would “do everything better” than breastaurant pioneer Hooters, from its double entendre menu items to the acreage of skin displayed by its all-female waitstaff to the not-so-subtle innuendo in the brand name.
By 2013, Bloomberg described Twin Peaks as the fastest-growing chain in America, and DeWitt was an abundantly wealthy man. He moved a few years ago from exurban Frisco to exclusive Highland Park, where he rebuilt a home to include underground parking, a turret, and various Spanish-inspired architectural details that match those of the glittering Highland Park Village shopping plaza a few steps away.
As his empire took shape, DeWitt determined that his strengths lay in spinning up new restaurant concepts and getting them started, not in operating vast chains. So he built his company, Front Burner Restaurants, as a kind of incubator aimed at selling its creations once they proved viable. At the Ranch at Las Colinas, a Texas-themed restaurant he’d opened in Irving in 2008, he noticed the line cooks were experimenting with tacos at the end of each week, combining unexpected ingredients and feeding the staff. DeWitt began looking forward to tasting their latest creations: a rotisserie chicken taco one night, a shrimp-and-grits taco the next.
Light bulb. He’d seen plenty of new and old taquerias that focused on traditional street tacos or Tex-Mex flavors. But what if he could build a restaurant around the idea of the “liberated taco”? He originally planned to call the chain Taco Libre, but when that name turned out to have been taken by a caterer in California, he settled on Velvet Taco—“implying this is luxury and refined and something more upscale,” he says now. On the menu: a fried-oyster taco (since discontinued), a chicken tikka taco (still the chain’s best-seller), and a smashburger taco that one-ups Taco Bell’s deconstructed cheeseburger by reconstructing it.
For the logo, DeWitt chose a design that evoked a royal medallion. Or perhaps both the name and image slyly evoke a part of the female anatomy that Twin Peaks hadn’t. He has a hard time denying that. “We like playful names,” he says with a shrug, before insisting that any innuendo is accidental.
Clay Dover, boyish at 52, has the ambiguous logo embroidered into nearly every piece of clothing he owns, including shirts he wears out for date nights with his wife. He joined Velvet Taco in 2017, when it operated just four locations—in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Chicago. DeWitt had just sold a majority stake to a private equity group called L. Catterton that’s based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and affiliated with the family of Bernard Arnault, the French luxury kingpin who runs the LVMH conglomerate and regularly trades places with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person.
Before his seven years at Raising Cane’s, Dover led a Dallas restaurant group that owned a passel of once successful chains that had lost their edge—Norm Brinker creations Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale, along with steakhouse rivals Bonanza and Ponderosa. He’d met DeWitt, and they’d talked about working together (though not at Twin Peaks—“My wife would kill me,” Dover says), so he’d watched the early growth of Velvet Taco with great interest. The idea was fresh. It reflected a changing Dallas—and a changing country. The restaurant kept its purple neon lights on until four in the morning, to serve revelers in need of taco therapy before calling it a night. Dover spent a full day and night watching the scene at the Fort Worth location before he agreed to join. “It’s a rockin’ place,” he concluded.
Private equity investors tend to come in two flavors: the ones that strip a company for parts and sell them off and the ones that help a promising brand grow to the next stage before selling it to an industry giant or taking it public. Catterton is the latter, and in the five years that it was the majority owner of Velvet Taco, it expanded the chain from 4 locations to 31—before selling it in late 2021 to another private equity company, Leonard Green & Partners—the same $70 billion fund that took Shake Shack public in 2015.
Velvet’s headquarters occupies 10,000 square feet on the second floor of a building overlooking the Dallas North Tollway. There Dover oversees a staff of several dozen who work on everything from marketing campaigns to real estate development. The business end of a taco brand that aims to conquer the world looks more like a 2010s-era tech startup than your typical taqueria. In the Velvet office, a Ping-Pong table stands amid a row of cubicles near a mural of Marie Antoinette sensually eating a slice of the brand’s signature red velvet cake.
When Dover joined Velvet, he was the sole corporate-level employee; everyone else worked at one of the restaurants. Rather than tinkering with the menu, he took his first year to “understand the brand and what it means to consumers”—which involved developing a kind of handbook of catchy slogans meant to encapsulate the culture and principles of the workplace and the food the company hoped to offer. Out went “temple of the liberated taco,” for instance, and in came “tacos without borders,” a more sensitive phrasing that avoided the suggestion that the taco’s Mexican heritage was somehow holding it back.
Today the corporate team’s priorities are more tangible, including how to maintain quality standards at Velvet’s first airport outpost at Houston Hobby. Self-service touchscreen-order kiosks are another priority, but where to place them in a restaurant is a big debate. It’s one thing to figure out where they’ll get the most use, but will cost savings on labor come with trade-offs? How will average order size change? Will diners be more or less likely to explore the menu?
Perhaps most important, there’s the matter of where to expand. Dover plans for eight more locations in 2024, and then a growth acceleration in 2025. In September, Velvet opened its first restaurant in Florida—in Fort Lauderdale. Arizona is next. At some point they’ll likely expand to Southern California, home to the headquarters of both Chipotle and Taco Bell, along with a million tiny taco stands that measure up just fine against their Texas counterparts.
A team from Velvet that included DeWitt recently spent several days scouting SoCal locations and testing tacos from local chains. One restaurant served “almost exactly the same taco” as Velvet’s popular chicken tikka, DeWitt says with a nervy grin. “We know they were inspired by Velvet Taco. But what are you going to do? I came away reassured that if and when we go to that market—” he stops himself. “I shouldn’t say ‘if.’ When we go to that market, we are going to be very successful.”
On a busy weeknight near the southern end of the hypergentrified South Congress shopping district, in Austin, a steady stream of families and teenagers and a single pair of old South Austin hippie types fill the tables of an architecturally ambitious Torchy’s location designed to evoke a fifties roadside attraction. With a ridged metal roof and a series of bright red X-shaped support structures lining the front, the restaurant functions as something like a flagship location for Torchy’s—its most distinctive building, on Austin’s most iconic avenue. Runners scurry about delivering trays of tacos with names such as the Democrat (brisket, avocado, and onions on a corn tortilla), the Republican (jalapeño-cheddar sausage and pico on flour), the Tipsy Chick, and the Trailer Park, along with beers and ranch waters.
If Velvet Taco is the consummate Dallas chain—from its flashy branding to its corporate lineage—Torchy’s is as Austin as it gets. Rypka’s original Torchy’s trailer anchored a gravel lot just a few blocks from today’s flagship, on a then-scruffy stretch of South First Street across from a ramshackle botanica.
Rypka grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs amid the eighties punk scene—an only child of divorce whose dad, a celebrated photojournalist, was living on another continent. He picked up drugs and alcohol by age eight, developed a crack habit by fourteen, and spent two years in and out of rehab before getting clean at seventeen. Less than a year into community college, where he’d hoped to train to become a drug and alcohol counselor, Rypka woke up one night with a bolt of inspiration to drop out and become a chef.
By the time he finished culinary school a couple of years later, he knew all too well how rampant substance abuse was in professional kitchens, so he sought a straitlaced job with a company that ran in-house dining halls for large corporations. He started at the World Bank, in D.C., before working at Enron, in Houston (“I literally served the last supper there,” he says), and then at Dell, where he fell in love with Austin and decided to stay. Then an opportunity arose to repurpose a friend’s old barbecue trailer.
In 2006 food trucks were still a novel concept, but Rypka envisioned a path from those humble beginnings to a proper restaurant or even a small chain. He just needed the kind of bold flavors that make a lasting impression. From his World Bank days, where he’d run a food court with stations representing various global regions, he’d developed a wide palette of preparations to experiment with. And when he took a tour of Texas taco joints to assess the competition—in San Antonio, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Houston and Dallas and the east side of Austin—he saw his opportunity. “They were all good, but they were kind of in the same genre,” he says. “They weren’t doing anything to sort of flip it on its head.”
Authenticity wasn’t what he was after; he was a suburban East Coast white guy with a creative streak, so he built a menu accordingly. “Not everybody in the world uses serrano peppers the same way they use them in Central America,” he says, “so you can take ingredients like that and do fun things with them. Our playground is kind of limitless when it comes to food.” Each month Torchy’s offers a different limited-time special. Its first was the Trailer Park, which put hunks of fried chicken in the starring role, alongside pico de gallo and green chiles. Ordering it “trashy” style meant dousing it in queso, turning it into a celebration of gluttony that would make Guy Fieri proud. It was a home run that soon joined the regular menu.
The early years of Torchy’s coincided with the peak of Austin’s capitalizing on its “weird” image. The city hadn’t fully succumbed to the forces of Big Tech, and it still represented a kind of laid-back lifestyle mecca, even if the old-timers were already fearing a corporate takeover. Torchy’s fit right in, with graffiti-inspired bubble letters in the logo and a little red devil mascot flanked by the words “Damn Good.” Austin was a party town, and this was indulgent party food. With taco names like the since-discontinued Dirty Sanchez (a reference to . . . well, you can look it up), it also flirted with the bounds of decency (or gleefully trampled right over them).
After the taco trailer took off, Rypka opened a brick-and-mortar shop down the street, and then another location, and another, and by 2010 the chain had expanded to Dallas. Torchy’s hadn’t just drafted on Austin’s vibe; it had become something of an Austin icon itself, popular enough that even then-president Obama stopped at the South First restaurant on his way downtown from the airport before attending an event in 2016. The company had just opened its first location outside Texas, in Denver. The world awaited.
Rypka, who shaves his head and road trips in a lowrider Volkswagen bus, tells his story in a hexagonal sitting room that juts off the back of his three-story home built into the side of a steep slope above Lake Austin. In the past decade plus, the start-up boom that accompanied Austin’s explosive growth transcended tech and began to turn out trendy new consumer brands. Some of these have blown up into international icons—Kendra Scott, Tecovas, Yeti—but most of the restaurant chains born in the capital—including another beloved taco shop, Tacodeli—have remained local or regional cult phenomena.
In the far more populous Dallas–Fort Worth area, by contrast, where new chain eateries can draw from a large pool of back-office talent with deep industry experience, growing quickly by running a proven playbook is more readily achievable, even if the results don’t always inspire a passionate following.
As Torchy’s began to expand beyond Texas and exceeded forty restaurants, it needed money to fund its next phase. General Atlantic, a New York–based private equity group, bought “a significant minority stake” in 2017—and three years later added to its stake with a $400 million second investment. Among the first moves when GA came on board was to bring in the professionals—big-time executives with big-time experience who could turn Rypka’s promising little project into a global giant.
Rypka stepped aside, while G. J. Hart, who had most recently served as the CEO of California Pizza Kitchen, took over. Hart had made his name in the industry overseeing the expansion of Texas Roadhouse from $63 million to more than $1 billion in annual revenue. (Texas Roadhouse, alas, is not a Texas brand; it’s based in Louisville, Kentucky.) During Hart’s four years in charge, the Torchy’s restaurant count shot up from 45 to 96, even though the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the office lunch rush and dine-in traffic in general.
Meanwhile, Rypka, who had been eager for a break from the business, grew frustrated by what he regarded as the new management’s unforced errors. Some of the new expansion cities, he felt, were questionable choices. “They’d pick markets where Roadhouse did well,” he says. Shreveport, Louisiana. Wichita, Kansas. “But we’re not at all the same customer as Roadhouse—which is a pretty blue-collar, red-state type of deal. I mean, I’m not afraid to say that we’re a f—ing liberal brand. You know what I mean?”
The corporate playbook that might make sense when Torchy’s has hundreds of locations didn’t work for a brand that was still relatively unknown outside Texas and Colorado, Rypka reasoned. Bloomberg reported in early 2021 that the chain was exploring an initial public offering that would value it at $1 billion in its stock market debut. But by the end of that year, the IPO had failed to materialize, some of the new locations were underperforming, and the staff at headquarters had ballooned to nearly two hundred. Hart stepped down.
Tired of what he terms “farting around at the lake,” Rypka returned as CEO with a newfound energy and focus. The company needed to get scrappy and entrepreneurial again, and that was his comfort zone. “I always do better when things are a little bit on fire,” he says. He laid off 65 employees at headquarters, closed three restaurants (including the two in Wichita), and started upgrading some ingredients— making fresh tortillas in the restaurants, for example. Now, from a one-story, metal-sided headquarters building in East Austin, he’s back to fanning out across the country, this time aiming to expand to cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville—and his old haunt, D.C.
It’s hard not to notice that the founders of both Torchy’s and Velvet Taco are non-Hispanic white men. So are the industry-veteran CEOs each company hired. So was the founder of Taco Bell. And the founders of two long-established, Texas-based Taco Bell copycats: Abilene-born Taco Bueno and Fort Worth’s Taco Casa. And the founder of Irving-based Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, a fast-growing franchise that’s aimed at a lower-priced tier of the market than Torchy’s and Velvet. Add Chipotle and California-based Del Taco to the list, for that matter, and on down through the ranks of Big Taco giants and aspirants.
Even the founder of San Antonio–born Taco Cabana fit the Anglo profile—and if there’s one large city in Texas that ought to be the birthplace of a Latino-founded taco giant, it’s San Antonio. Taco Palenque, which began in Laredo and has started to spread north into other parts of Texas, is an exception [see sidebar], but so far, it’s still a regional play. (Its founder, Juan Francisco Ochoa Sr., also started California-based El Pollo Loco.)
The taco has become as much an American staple as pizza, so it’s not surprising that its mass-market brands reflect corporate America’s boardrooms more than the culture that gave rise to the food in the first place. As Texas Monthly’s taco editor, José R. Ralat, puts it, “I’m not going to say that so-and-so shouldn’t open a business because it might represent cultural appropriation. But it’s worth noting that a popular food is always going to attract the type of entrepreneurs who already have the wealth or connections to gain access to investor meetings or consultants. And who is that? Not an immigrant.”
Ralat notes that Taco Cabana might be the one chain that historically “got it right”—by which he means emphasizing fresh ingredients, at least at first. Some of its locations still do an excellent job, he maintains, such as the one near where he lives, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. But the chain’s history is a cautionary tale, as it eventually prioritized growth over maintaining its standards. It became a publicly traded company, beholden to shareholders above all. Then it was acquired by a large New York–based restaurant group, then spun off into another outfit, the Dallas-based Fiesta Restaurant Group. Over the past several years, Taco Cabana’s sales plunged 20 percent, and the chain closed 23 restaurants. Now it’s poised to grow again, but with a new risk factor.
Taco Cabana was purchased in 2021 by a company called Yadav Enterprises, a Northern California–based operator of hundreds of franchise locations of Denny’s, Jack in the Box, TGI Fridays, and a few other brands. Franchising is a risky business model but a common one in the fast-food industry. It can enable rapid expansion because the franchisees—independent operators who buy the rights to open locations—take on the financial burden of building out new markets. But no matter how stringent a chain makes the process and guidelines for its franchisees, it inevitably loses some control over quality and branding.
Franchising tends to work best with the simplest operations, such as Taco Bell—or more recently, Fuzzy’s, where a whopping 98 percent of its more than one hundred locations are franchises. Anil Yadav, the owner of Taco Cabana’s new parent company, announced that he hoped to expand the chain to one thousand locations all over the country—naturally, by franchising.
Both Velvet Taco’s Clay Dover and Torchy’s founder Mike Rypka say they understand the hard realities of the franchise model and vow to keep their chains growing at a more measured pace, with the companies owning every location they open—much as Shake Shack and Chipotle have done. “We’re going to keep it real tight and ‘core’ because we want to maintain the control,” Dover explains. “The details, the quality of the ingredients, the prep that goes into things ahead of time—it’s hard to go, ‘Hey, we’re just going to whip out fifty of these.’ ”
As Torchy’s and Velvet continue their national expansions, they will bump up against other challengers. Ohio-based Condado, for instance, has locations in several Midwest and Southeast states, with a creative-tacos concept that sits roughly at the culinary midpoint between those of Torchy’s and Velvet, with Korean gochujang sauce and Thai chiles mixed in among more traditional Mexican American flavors. Florida-based Capital Taco has begun selling franchises to operators in other states eager to serve its self-described “Tex-Mex” menu that oddly includes a cheesesteak taco and something called the South Beach Hot Chicken.
At some point, the word “taco” can become a questionable description of the items on these menus. Velvet, for instance, serves a chicken-and-waffle taco that involves fried chicken wrapped in, you guessed it, a waffle, topped with maple syrup; it makes Taco Bell’s Doritos Cheesy Gordita Crunch taco look like a Oaxacan street-food classic. “The tortilla is just the vessel,” Dover told me one afternoon over a tableful of his tacos. “You can do anything you want”—including, apparently, replacing the tortilla.
In any case, the caliber of investors and number of dollars that have backed Torchy’s and Velvet make it obvious to anyone in the restaurant industry that they’re onto something big. “Tacos Are Poised to Take Over Fast Casual,” the trade publication Restaurant Business declared last year. Can Torchy’s or Velvet ever equal Taco Bell’s 8,000 stores? Not a chance, say the leaders of both companies. The menus are simply too complicated to work in that many locations, because lower-traffic spots just wouldn’t be able to turn a profit—whereas Chipotle and Taco Bell can because they require far fewer ingredients and employees. But 1,000 Torchy’s restaurants, or 1,500? “That’s the fully mature version, yeah,” Rypka says.
Early in a restaurant chain’s growth, the executives will choose expansion locations based largely on gut instinct and what’s available. But at a certain point, companies begin to rely on real estate consultants who weigh a complicated matrix of factors. A Taco Cabana might make sense in a Walmart parking lot, for instance, whereas a Torchy’s or Velvet works better in the shadow of a Target. They look at satellite images to understand whether an area’s crowds coincide with a chain’s top selling hours. They look at cellular data to profile demographics that match a chain’s strong suits. At Velvet Taco, a concentration of Indian Americans is a positive indicator—perhaps explaining the popularity of the chicken tikka taco, Dover suggests.
When all of those factors come together, sometimes the result is a Torchy’s and a Velvet sharing the same parking lot. In Lubbock, in a shopping center one short block from the campus of Texas Tech University, the two direct competitors sit not one hundred yards apart, with nothing but a Potbelly Sandwich Shop between them. In North Dallas, Torchy’s and Velvet occupy kitty-corner strip malls at the intersection of Preston Road and Forest Lane. The future of Big Taco might not be Torchy’s or Velvet, but both.

Just the money involved to investigate the fraud in such cases is more than what any of our parents made during their entire life times.

Last report I anticipated a stock price jump based off 2023 Q4 earnings. On March 19th WULF stock closed at $1.72, released earnings, and jumped the following day to $2.29 with the following week it getting up to $2.90 and settling back down to $2.33.
I still believe WULF is extremely undervalued at anything under $4, but anticipate it going much higher than that. Below is a write up why.
Company : Terawulf
NASDAQ stock Ticker : WULF
Based out of Maryland, USA
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LAYMAN’S TERMS
The company Terawulf was formed in 2021 and started building a computer that runs on very cheap energy.
During 2021 and 2022 Terawulf spent a lot of money building the computer, and wasn’t able to make any money.
In 2023 Terawulf was finally able to turn on some of the computer and make some money. They’re continuing throughout 2024 and 2025 to build this computer and turn more of it on making more and more money.
Unlike similar companies, Terawulf is very transparent and is constantly releasing their financial information. So before “official” quarterly earnings come out, anyone paying attention can have a good idea of if the earnings are going to be good.
A lot of people don’t understand how to read Terawulf’s financial information since it is somewhat filled with computer jargon. However, if you can understand what Terawulf is saying you can have a leg up everyone waiting to see the “official” earnings report which is very easy to understand.
Looking at Terawulf’s information, I can easily predict that the official Terawulf 2024 Q1 report that comes out in mid May 2024, will be very good. It will show they’re making a lot more money than ever before while eliminating their debt at a rapid pace.
Based off Terawulf’s total company value of about 700 million, paired with the fact that they are currently making over $500,000 a day in profit after expenses, leads me to believe they are very undervalued at their current price of $2.33
As they continue into 2024 and 2025 they are growing their computer size and power.
The company has talked about using the computers in the future to potentially run AI, but right now Bitcoin works by using this Terawulf computer, and in exchange Bitcoin gives Terawulf money.
That’s the basics in very simple terms. Here’s another slightly more complex but still very simple breakdown.
Terawulf has built two facilities in New York and Pennsylvania that are basically two huge state of the art computers. They’ve built these computer facilities to create an enormous amount of computing power. They then use this computing power to make money.
Terawulf “mines Bitcoin” or using their computing power, Terawulf helps run the Bitcoin network. Similar to how Google could hire Terawulf’s computing power, to help run their email system GMAIL.
Terawulf, gets paid in Bitcoin daily, and immediately sells it for a hefty profit. The Terawulf CEO has invested millions of his own money into Terawulf and stated that the company is not in the business of speculating on the price of Bitcoin. They simply “Mine” Bitcoin everyday for a profit in American Dollars, not Bitcoin.
The mining of Bitcoin relies heavily on the cost of energy to run your computer. Terawulf’s CEO Paul Prager specializes in energy, and has been able to lock in very cheap energy prices for several years, which is why Terawulf is positioned to become the next leader in Bitcoin mining.
TERAWULF’S BACKSTORY
TERAWULF was formed in 2021, and their plan was to lock in long term cheap North American power (5-20 year plans). Not just any power, but Zero Carbon energy. Not only is it better for the environment, but in a world where regulations are moving in that direction, it’s better to be ready for it.
Once they locked in inexpensive green power, they bought land and started construction on buildings. Right now they have buildings in New York and Pennsylvania. Two states that have had discussions and laws even passed against companies mining bitcoin… but mining bitcoin with “bad” energy. Since Terawulf’s goal is 100% carbon free energy, they don’t have to worry.
Terawulf spent all of 2021 - 2022 getting their facilities ready. They started turning on the computers in 2023, but are still building and turning on new machines for 2024, and anticipate this continuing into 2025.
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STOCK PRICE
Terawulf began this venture in 2021, during the last cryptocurrency bull run. Speculation was crazy in 2021 around anything crypto and Bitcoin related. Along with many other assets and mining companies, WULF’s price rocketed to a high of $44 per share in Nov 2021.
However soon after Bitcoin’s price went down and so did Terawulf’s stock price. WULF shares dropped as low as $0.53 in March 2023.
Rightfully so, I mean Terawulf up until that point had just taking on hundreds of millions in debt to build their facilities. According to their earnings reports this company just lost money month after month, year after year. They were just an idea in 2021.
Most people don’t know what Bitcoin Mining is, so when they see Terawulf, they see it’s a bitcoin mining company and don’t really know what the hell that means.
They’re investors not computer tech folks. So investors look at what they do know… the earnings reports. Well… the earnings reports are terrible. Average investors don’t know why or care, and just move on to the next potential investment.
However we now know the earnings reports were bad not because Terawulf was a failure, but because Terawulf is still in the building stages.
It’s as if Ferrari spent over two years building a race car. But every month people asked how fast the race car was, and Ferrari said it went 0 mph. So everyone continued to write off this race car as a failure, without knowing that it was going to take 3 years to build.
We shouldn’t judge a race care on how fast it goes until it’s built, just like the market shouldn’t have judged Terawulf on how profitable it was before it was built.
I think the stock market thinks Terawulf is a fully built race car that goes 0mph, when in reality it is a half built race car that when fully built, will be the fastest car in the race.
Earnings reports are a major factor in how investors judge a company. Most articles and reports online are based off Terawulf’s released earnings reports. Those earnings reports don’t go past 2023, and those reports were bad up until the end of 2023.
Currently, when you research Terawulf online, you’re likely to find a writeup that an algorithm wrote based off earnings reports before Oct 2023. The reports are filled with BAD numbers, and don’t explain that Terawulf was simply building their race car.
Now normally everyone has to wait until the company releases its earnings report to know how everything going. Not with Terawulf though.
Terawulf is not your average company, they are very transparent and have been releasing their numbers on their social media and their website. They are proud of what they accomplished and believe in a company that doesn’t hide behind walls, but instead informs investors of exactly what is going on.
They don’t pay for fancy marketing, they just make a damn good product and wait for word to catch on.
However, NOBODY is reading Terawulf’s reports… their twitter posts get maybe 100 likes, and a few spam comments.
So unless you’re one of the few like me listening, you are judging their company on the earnings reports from 2023.
However they just started turning on their machines in 2023, and have been expanding at a rapid rate throughout 2024.
On Fidelity and Charles Schwab if you click on reports for Terawulf and look at earnings… MISSED in big red letters pops up.
For investors it’s basically saying LOSER LOSER LOSER, over and over and over.
My question is how did the person estimating earnings not get it right when the company is literally telling you the numbers to go off of?
I think it’s because people are trying to put Terawulf into an algorithm instead of seeing it as a unique new company that needs a proper investigation.
Now if you’re following Terawulf on social media and understand Bitcoin Mining you’d know that 2024 Q1 was a big winner for Terawulf. However, the a lot of people simply wait for the official earnings reports in mid May.
Basically we are ahead of curve by over a month and a half.
I don’t know when exactly Wall Street is going to catch up on this, but right now WULF seems undervalued. The confusion around what exactly is Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, mixed with waiting for earnings reports has falsely labeled Terawulf a loser.
I anticipate that between now and summer of 2024 the market will catch on.
P/E ratio We discussed the price of the stock versus the earnings of the company. This is called a P/E ratio for short. Terawulf’s P/E ratio right now is about 4/1 since the entire value of the company is four times more than their gross earnings for the year.
.5M a day after expenses x 365 days is about $180M which is about a fourth of companies total value of about 700 million.
In comparison to the software industry average of 56/1 which is what fidelity chose to compare it to Terawulf to.
A 56/1 P/E for Terawulf would value the stock $28 a share instead of $2 a share.
MARA Marathon Digital is a mining company that has a current P/E of 23/1.
WULF at $11 a share would be a 23/1 P/E.
Now there are many other factors to consider and I think $10 a share is closer to a fair value at the moment.
I also think the stock could go to $100 a share considering how crazy the market can get, especially around something with the word Bitcoin in it.
However I am not an expert with how to value a company like this, should it be 3 billion or 10 billion, I’m not sure. What the stock market values and what it doesn’t is a best guess.
There’s so many things to consider, and nothing is guaranteed in this world. A comet could hit the Terawulf facility and blow it up tomorrow and drive the price to a few pennies.
I’m not a finial advisor, I have no idea your finances nor can I guarantee my beliefs or that I am missing something. I’m simply stating what I find interesting about this company and sharing that info and my beliefs.
Anyway, thanks for reading my overall theory. Below is some more details and info to consider.
DEEPER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
SHORTS
Another reason why the price is so low, are the shorts have been opening up on this stock since 2022. I think it was a smart move at first, but now is the time to close those shorts as Terawulf continues powering up.
Here’s a in depth analysis on Terawulf’s shorts leading to a short squeeze.
https://www.reddit.com/usejamesroland17/comments/1bjhanmy_wulf_short_squeeze_thesis/
STOCK DILUTION
One negative I noticed was how Terawulf has been diluting their stock. Kind of how when the FED prints more dollars and as a result the price of groceries goes up. It’s normal for a company to be issuing stock to pay bills and incentivize employees. About 40% of the company is owned by insiders, which means the people working for the company seem to believe in its success. They don’t seem to plan on heavy stock dilution for 2024 from what I’ve heard them say, and while it’s something to consider, I don’t see it as a major red flag since the CEO actively addresses it. We’ll wait and see how 2024 pans out stock dilution wise.
Some believe that since insider ownership is so high, they can just majority vote to dilute all they want and make their money that way while hurting the shareholders. I don’t think this is the case since it’s actively addressed.
HIGH SG&A
Another concern is an unusually high SG&A for such a small company. I reached out to them and heard this back.
“SG&A break-down of $27-$28MM guidance for 2024
Executive mgmt. team payroll + annual bonus: ~$8MM
All supporting staff (internal audit, legal, operations, etc.): ~$9MM
Public co costs (ie auditors, lawyers, investor relations, insurance):~ $10MM
As a comparative note, all of our public peers have significantly higher SG&A expenses (i.e. CIFR and BITF are >$70MM annually) and do not provide forward guidance. Our level of transparency is unmatched.”
While it didn’t answer all my questions, the fact that there is so much insider ownership makes me believe that they truly are looking to make the stock price go up. At the end of the day I’m chasing to believe what the company is saying their goals are, seeing how profitable they actually makes me still bullish even with this high SG&A.
​
WULF HISTORY Terawulf was started in 2021, they bought IKONICS CORPORATION in 2021. So if you look at the history of the stock ticker symbol WULF, you will notice it goes back to 1993.
However, this price data doesn’t apply to the current company Terawulf, since as planned Terawulf sold Ikonics in 2022.
This WULF stock history adds to the confusion and messes with any algorithms taking in numbers from the old company and projecting it onto the new company.
Another reason why this company is flying under the radar… for now.
DEBT Terawulf took on Debt, they have been paying off their debt enormously the last few months. They could act like an ATM and just sell shares to pay off their 58 million debt as of February 2024, but instead they’re protecting shareholders in my opinion by paying off their debt quickly with their profits. They’re expanding at a healthy pace and are looking for the best deals in order to expand further. They’re not just expanding to expand if it doesn’t make sense profits wise. A lot of other Bitcoin miners are just diluting shares rapidly and in my opinion aren’t set up with cheap enough power to be that profitable in the future.
TECH INFO On the off chance someone reading this understand BTC mining, here are some basic tech specs. TeraWulf Inc. announces 7.9 EH/s of self-mining capacity, with plans to reach 10 EH/s by mid-2024. In March 2024, the company self-mined 379 bitcoins bringing the yearly total to 1,056 bitcoins at an average rate of 12.5 bitcoins per day. The power cost per bitcoin was $13,798, with an average operating hashrate of 7.6 EH/s. The average total cost including all expenses is $25,000 per Bitcoin with the average sell price of $67,394.
BITCOIN PRICE Bitcoins price does effect WULF’s profit, but they have set themselves up to be profitable well into the foreseeable future, including after the April 2024 Bitcoin Halving. Explaining the Bitcoin halving would be a lot right now, but it’s basically an event happening in April 2024 that effects the profits of Bitcoin miners. There’s a lot of miners that aren’t in a good position to capitalize on this event. Terawulf is in my opinion set up to be one of the most profitable mining companies after the halving. Once again this is a very complex thing to understand, but I’ve seen articles scaring Bitcoin Mining investors about the halving, and rightfully so. Just because Terawulf is set up for success doesn’t mean the Bitcoin Mining Market as a whole might not panic and temporarily drive down mining company prices. Another thing of many I’ve considered and any investor should too. WULF released that the total cost with all expenses to mine a Bitcoin will be $37,000 so as long as BTC is above this price after the halving, Terawulf is profitable mining Bitcoin.
In conclusion, Terawulf is positioned in 2024 to pay off all debt and set record breaking profits. Main things I’m keeping an eye out for… share dilution, BTC under 40k, Shorts.
THANK YOU Once agin, I could be missing something here, Terawulf could be lying like Enron for all we know, I do not know everything nor can I predict the future.
So if you do your own research please let me know if you find something I missed, I’ll be very grateful.
Thanks for reading!
John
Bitcoin tips for internet strangers who may capitalize on this info, I expect no tips and will be overjoyed at even an anonymous dollar.
BTC address: 3Cu1hbvWc6mVzZdDjkNsy66VgncKQ8pjVx
A smile to a stranger goes further than we could ever know : )

Haven’t seen anyone post about this before, but apparently somebody went through the trouble of making a full LinkedIn profile for Lester McClintock and it is absolutely hilarious. Look at his work history, it says he worked for Enron and the Weinstein Company before coming to Brightstar Cruises and that he was subsequently imprisoned at Rikers Island for his crimes. Absolutely hilarious.
https://au.linkedin.com/in/lester-mcclintock-6a2023278

I put together a little writeup I've been sending to friends, I'd honestly love any questions or concerns as I'll be keeping a very close eye on Terawulf over the coming months. It's also lacking a lot of technical jargon when it comes to Bitcoin Mining and investing since not all my friends are not super versed in crypto and investing. Company : Terawulf NASDAQ stock Ticker : WULF Based out of Maryland, USA SYNOPSIS The WULF stock price of $2 is very very undervalued. This belief is heavily based on the fact that after expenses the company is currently pulling in $500,000 a day (including weekends), yet its market cap or total value of the company is only about 500 million. Imagine buying a penthouse for $5 million dollars and then being able to rent it out at a fair market price for $1.8 million dollars a year. It would seem as if the penthouse was sold for way under value. Below is an in depth explanation on why Terawulf is way under value. WHAT DOES TERAWULF DO? Terawulf has built two facilities in New York and Pennsylvania that are basically two huge state of the art computers. They’ve built these computer facilities to create an enormous amount of computing power. They then use this computing power to make money. For Example: AI or artifice intelligence requires a lot of computing power. Terawulf is currently working with Talen and Amazon where they might sell their computing power to Amazon to power Amazon’s AI. Basically Amazon rents Terawulf’s facilities computing power, instead of building their own. This potential Amazon deal is however a speculative future endeavor and not why I am writing this today. It just helped me explain what Terawulf has built without using the scary B word... Bitcoin. However, that’s exactly what Terawulf is doing with their computing power. They are “mining Bitcoin” or using their computing power, to help run the Bitcoin network. Similar to how Google could hire Terawulf’s computing power, to help run their email system GMAIL. Terawulf, gets paid in Bitcoin daily, and immediately sells it for a hefty profit. The Terawulf CEO has invested millions of his own money into Terawulf and stated that the company is not in the business of speculating on the price of Bitcoin. They simply “Mine” Bitcoin everyday for a profit in American Dollars, not Bitcoin. TERAWULF’S BACKSTORY TERAWULF was formed in 2021, and their plan was to lock in long term cheap North American power (5-20 year plans). Not just any power, but Zero Carbon energy. Not only is it better for the environment, but in a world where regulations are moving in that direction, it’s better to be ready for it. Once they locked in inexpensive green power, they bought land and started construction on buildings. Right now they have buildings in New York and Pennsylvania. Two states that have had discussions and laws even passed against companies mining bitcoin... but mining bitcoin with “bad” energy. Since Terawulf’s goal is 100% carbon free energy, they don’t have to worry. Terawulf spent all of 2021 - 2022 getting their facilities ready. They started turning on the computers in 2023, but are still building and turning on new machines for 2024, and anticipate this continuing into 2025. This all leads into why I believe they are so undervalued. STOCK PRICE Terawulf began this venture in 2021, during the last cryptocurrency bull run. Speculation was crazy in 2021 around anything crypto and Bitcoin related. Along with many other assets and mining companies, WULF’s price rocketed to a high of $44 per share in Nov 2021. However soon after Bitcoin’s price went down and so did Terawulfs. WULF shares dropped as low as $0.53 in March 2023. Rightfully so, I mean Terawulf up until that point had just taking on hundreds of millions in debt to build their facilities. According to their earnings reports this company just lost money month after month, year after year. They were an idea in 2021. Most people don’t know what Bitcoin Mining is, so they see Terawulf, they see it’s a bitcoin mining company and don’t really know what the hell that means. They’re investors not computer tech folks. So they look at what they do know, the earnings reports and well, the earnings reports are terrible. They don’t know why or care, however we now know it’s because Terawulf is still in the building stages. It’s as if Ferrari spent over two years building a race car. But every month people asked how fast the race car was, and Ferrari said it went 0 mph. So everyone continued to write off this race car as a failure, without knowing that it was going to take 3 years to build. They shouldn’t judge how fast it goes until it’s built, just like the market shouldn’t have judged Terawulf on how profitable it was before it was built. I think the stock market thinks Terawulf is a fully built race car that goes 0mph, when in reality it is a half built race car that when fully built, will be the fastest car in the race. Earnings reports are a major factor in how investors judge a company. Most articles and reports online are based off Terawulf’s released earnings reports. Those earnings reports don’t go past sept 2023, and those reports are very bad. Currently, when you research Terawulf online, you’re likely to find a writeup that an algorithm wrote based off earnings reports before Oct 2023. The reports are filled with BAD numbers, and don’t explain that Terawulf was simply building their race car. Now normally everyone has to wait until the company releases its earnings report to know how everything going. Not with Terawulf though. Terawulf is not your average company, they are very transparent and have been releasing their numbers on their social media and their website. They are proud of what they accomplished and believe in a company that doesn’t hide behind walls, but instead informs investors of exactly what is going on. They don’t pay for fancy marketing, they just make a damn good product and wait for word to catch on. However, NOBODY is reading Terawulf’s reports... their twitter posts get maybe 100 likes, and a few spam comments. So unless you’re one of the few like me listening, you are judging their company on the terrible earnings reports from 2021 thru September 2023. However they just started turning on their machines in 2023, and have been expanding at a rapid rate throughout 2024. On Fidelity and Charles Schwab if you click on reports for Terawulf and look at earnings... MISSED in big red letters pops up. For investors it’s basically saying LOSER LOSER LOSER, over and over and over. However, on March 28th 2024 the official earnings report comes out for Oct-Dec 2023. Now if you’re following Terawulf on social media and understand Bitcoin Mining you’d know that Q4 was a bit of a winner this time. You’d also know that Q1 of 2024 is an even bigger winner. However, the vast majority of people simply wait for the official earnings reports. Basically we are ahead of curve by 6 months. I don’t know when exactly Wall Street is going to catch up on this, but right now WULF seems like a diamond in the rough. The confusion around what exactly is Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, mixed with the delayed earnings reports has falsely labeled Terawulf a loser. I anticipate that between now and summer of 2024 the market will catch on. We discussed the price of the stock versus the earnings of the company. This is called a P/E ratio for short. Terawulf’s P/E ratio right now is about 4/1 since the entire value of the company is four times more than their gross earnings for the year. In comparison to the software industry average of 56/1 which is what fidelity chose to compare it to Terawulf to. A 56/1 P/E for Terawulf would value the stock $28 a share instead of $2 a share. MARA Marathon Digital is a mining company that has a current P/E of 23/1. WULF at $11 a share would be a 23/1 P/E. Now there are many other factors to consider and I think $10 a share is closer to a fair value. I also think the stock could go to $100 a share considering how crazy the market can get, especially around something with the word Bitcoin in it. However I am not an expert with how to value a company like this, should it be 3 billion or 10 billion, I’m not sure. What the stock market values is a best guess. There’s so many things to consider, and nothing is guaranteed in this world. A comet could hit the Terawulf facility and blow it up tomorrow and drive the price to a few pennies. I’m not a finial advisor, I have no idea your finances nor can I guarantee my beliefs or that I am missing something. I’m simply stating what I find interesting about this company and sharing that info and my beliefs. Anyway, thanks for reading. Below is some more info to consider. DEEPER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE SHORTS Another reason why the price is so low, are the shorts have been opening up on this stock since 2022. This is just speculation, but I believe these shorts are coming from knowledgeable traders, who understood they would be out of profit for two years, or lenders who have hedged their investment. For anyone who doesn’t understand Shorts, it’s basically a way to make money if the stock price goes down, and coincidently, investing in a short position on a stock helps drive the price down. The shorts are slowly beginning to close and I have a feeling those shorts will close up completely by June 2024. Shorts closing brings stock price up. TRENDING BUZZ WORDS CREATING HYPE To add fuel to the fire, Terawulf prides itself in using green clean energy that’s carbon free, a very popular narrative. One thing I’ve learned in trading is that the best “story” often wins out. They also announced in Dec 2023 that they’re working with amazon and A.I. to capitalize the use of their mining machines. Two great buzz words for investors, “A.I.” & “Carbon Free Energy.” This mixed with the hype around Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies makes me think Terawulf’s stock price could go from highly undervalued to high over valued. STOCK DILUTION One negative I noticed was how Terawulf has been diluting their stock. Kind of how when the FED prints more dollars and as a result the price of groceries goes up. It’s normal for a company to be issuing stock to pay bills and incentivize employees. 40% of the company is owned by insiders, which means the people working for the company seem to believe in its success. They don’t seem to plan on heavy stock dilution for 2024 from what I’ve heard them say, and while it’s something to consider, I don’t see it as a major red flag. WULF HISTORY Terawulf was started in 2021, they bought IKONICS CORPORATION in 2021. So if you look at the history of the stock ticker symbol WULF, you will notice it goes back to 1993. However, this price data doesn’t imply to the current company Terawulf, since as planned Terawulf sold Ikonics in 2022. This WULF stock history adds to the confusion and messes with any algorithms taking in numbers from the old company and projecting it onto the new company. Another reason why this company is flying under the radar... for now. DEBT Terawulf took on Debt, they have been paying off their debt enormously the last few months. So while the old earnings reports have their debt listed over 100 million, it’s more like 50 million and dropping. BITCOIN PRICE Bitcoins price does effect WULF’s profit, but they have set themselves up to be profitable well into the foreseeable future, including after the April 2024 Bitcoin Halving. Explaining the Bitcoin halving would be a lot right now, but it’s basically an event happening in April 2024 that effects the profits of Bitcoin miners. There’s a lot of miners that aren’t in a good position to capitalize on this event. Terawulf is in my opinion set up to be one of the most profitable mining companies after the halving. Once again this is a very complex thing to understand, but I’ve seen articles scaring Bitcoin Mining investors about the halving, and rightfully so. Just because Terawulf is set up for success doesn’t mean the Bitcoin Mining Market as a whole might not panic and temporarily drive down mining company prices. Another thing of many I’ve considered and any investor should too. THANK YOU Once agin, I could be missing something here, Terawulf could be lying like Enron for all we know, I do not know everything nor can I predict the future. So if you do your own research please let me know if you find something I missed, I’ll be very grateful. Thanks for reading!

I put together a little writeup I've been sending to friends, I'd honestly love any questions or concerns as I'll be keeping a very close eye on Terawulf over the coming months. It's also lacking a lot of technical jargon when it comes to Bitcoin Mining and investing since not all my friends are not super versed in crypto and investing. Company : Terawulf NASDAQ stock Ticker : WULF Based out of Maryland, USA SYNOPSIS The WULF stock price of $2 is very very undervalued. This belief is heavily based on the fact that after expenses the company is currently pulling in $500,000 a day (including weekends), yet its market cap or total value of the company is only about 500 million. Imagine buying a penthouse for $5 million dollars and then being able to rent it out at a fair market price for $1.8 million dollars a year. It would seem as if the penthouse was sold for way under value. Below is an in depth explanation on why Terawulf is way under value. WHAT DOES TERAWULF DO? Terawulf has built two facilities in New York and Pennsylvania that are basically two huge state of the art computers. They’ve built these computer facilities to create an enormous amount of computing power. They then use this computing power to make money. For Example: AI or artifice intelligence requires a lot of computing power. Terawulf is currently working with Talen and Amazon where they might sell their computing power to Amazon to power Amazon’s AI. Basically Amazon rents Terawulf’s facilities computing power, instead of building their own. This potential Amazon deal is however a speculative future endeavor and not why I am writing this today. It just helped me explain what Terawulf has built without using the scary B word... Bitcoin. However, that’s exactly what Terawulf is doing with their computing power. They are “mining Bitcoin” or using their computing power, to help run the Bitcoin network. Similar to how Google could hire Terawulf’s computing power, to help run their email system GMAIL. Terawulf, gets paid in Bitcoin daily, and immediately sells it for a hefty profit. The Terawulf CEO has invested millions of his own money into Terawulf and stated that the company is not in the business of speculating on the price of Bitcoin. They simply “Mine” Bitcoin everyday for a profit in American Dollars, not Bitcoin. TERAWULF’S BACKSTORY TERAWULF was formed in 2021, and their plan was to lock in long term cheap North American power (5-20 year plans). Not just any power, but Zero Carbon energy. Not only is it better for the environment, but in a world where regulations are moving in that direction, it’s better to be ready for it. Once they locked in inexpensive green power, they bought land and started construction on buildings. Right now they have buildings in New York and Pennsylvania. Two states that have had discussions and laws even passed against companies mining bitcoin... but mining bitcoin with “bad” energy. Since Terawulf’s goal is 100% carbon free energy, they don’t have to worry. Terawulf spent all of 2021 - 2022 getting their facilities ready. They started turning on the computers in 2023, but are still building and turning on new machines for 2024, and anticipate this continuing into 2025. This all leads into why I believe they are so undervalued. STOCK PRICE Terawulf began this venture in 2021, during the last cryptocurrency bull run. Speculation was crazy in 2021 around anything crypto and Bitcoin related. Along with many other assets and mining companies, WULF’s price rocketed to a high of $44 per share in Nov 2021. However soon after Bitcoin’s price went down and so did Terawulfs. WULF shares dropped as low as $0.53 in March 2023. Rightfully so, I mean Terawulf up until that point had just taking on hundreds of millions in debt to build their facilities. According to their earnings reports this company just lost money month after month, year after year. They were an idea in 2021. Most people don’t know what Bitcoin Mining is, so they see Terawulf, they see it’s a bitcoin mining company and don’t really know what the hell that means. They’re investors not computer tech folks. So they look at what they do know, the earnings reports and well, the earnings reports are terrible. They don’t know why or care, however we now know it’s because Terawulf is still in the building stages. It’s as if Ferrari spent over two years building a race car. But every month people asked how fast the race car was, and Ferrari said it went 0 mph. So everyone continued to write off this race car as a failure, without knowing that it was going to take 3 years to build. They shouldn’t judge how fast it goes until it’s built, just like the market shouldn’t have judged Terawulf on how profitable it was before it was built. I think the stock market thinks Terawulf is a fully built race car that goes 0mph, when in reality it is a half built race car that when fully built, will be the fastest car in the race. Earnings reports are a major factor in how investors judge a company. Most articles and reports online are based off Terawulf’s released earnings reports. Those earnings reports don’t go past sept 2023, and those reports are very bad. Currently, when you research Terawulf online, you’re likely to find a writeup that an algorithm wrote based off earnings reports before Oct 2023. The reports are filled with BAD numbers, and don’t explain that Terawulf was simply building their race car. Now normally everyone has to wait until the company releases its earnings report to know how everything going. Not with Terawulf though. Terawulf is not your average company, they are very transparent and have been releasing their numbers on their social media and their website. They are proud of what they accomplished and believe in a company that doesn’t hide behind walls, but instead informs investors of exactly what is going on. They don’t pay for fancy marketing, they just make a damn good product and wait for word to catch on. However, NOBODY is reading Terawulf’s reports... their twitter posts get maybe 100 likes, and a few spam comments. So unless you’re one of the few like me listening, you are judging their company on the terrible earnings reports from 2021 thru September 2023. However they just started turning on their machines in 2023, and have been expanding at a rapid rate throughout 2024. On Fidelity and Charles Schwab if you click on reports for Terawulf and look at earnings... MISSED in big red letters pops up. For investors it’s basically saying LOSER LOSER LOSER, over and over and over. However, on March 28th 2024 the official earnings report comes out for Oct-Dec 2023. Now if you’re following Terawulf on social media and understand Bitcoin Mining you’d know that Q4 was a bit of a winner this time. You’d also know that Q1 of 2024 is an even bigger winner. However, the vast majority of people simply wait for the official earnings reports. Basically we are ahead of curve by 6 months. I don’t know when exactly Wall Street is going to catch up on this, but right now WULF seems like a diamond in the rough. The confusion around what exactly is Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, mixed with the delayed earnings reports has falsely labeled Terawulf a loser. I anticipate that between now and summer of 2024 the market will catch on. We discussed the price of the stock versus the earnings of the company. This is called a P/E ratio for short. Terawulf’s P/E ratio right now is about 4/1 since the entire value of the company is four times more than their gross earnings for the year. In comparison to the software industry average of 56/1 which is what fidelity chose to compare it to Terawulf to. A 56/1 P/E for Terawulf would value the stock $28 a share instead of $2 a share. MARA Marathon Digital is a mining company that has a current P/E of 23/1. WULF at $11 a share would be a 23/1 P/E. Now there are many other factors to consider and I think $10 a share is closer to a fair value. I also think the stock could go to $100 a share considering how crazy the market can get, especially around something with the word Bitcoin in it. However I am not an expert with how to value a company like this, should it be 3 billion or 10 billion, I’m not sure. What the stock market values is a best guess. There’s so many things to consider, and nothing is guaranteed in this world. A comet could hit the Terawulf facility and blow it up tomorrow and drive the price to a few pennies. I’m not a finial advisor, I have no idea your finances nor can I guarantee my beliefs or that I am missing something. I’m simply stating what I find interesting about this company and sharing that info and my beliefs. Anyway, thanks for reading. Below is some more info to consider. DEEPER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE SHORTS Another reason why the price is so low, are the shorts have been opening up on this stock since 2022. This is just speculation, but I believe these shorts are coming from knowledgeable traders, who understood they would be out of profit for two years, or lenders who have hedged their investment. For anyone who doesn’t understand Shorts, it’s basically a way to make money if the stock price goes down, and coincidently, investing in a short position on a stock helps drive the price down. The shorts are slowly beginning to close and I have a feeling those shorts will close up completely by June 2024. Shorts closing brings stock price up. TRENDING BUZZ WORDS CREATING HYPE To add fuel to the fire, Terawulf prides itself in using green clean energy that’s carbon free, a very popular narrative. One thing I’ve learned in trading is that the best “story” often wins out. They also announced in Dec 2023 that they’re working with amazon and A.I. to capitalize the use of their mining machines. Two great buzz words for investors, “A.I.” & “Carbon Free Energy.” This mixed with the hype around Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies makes me think Terawulf’s stock price could go from highly undervalued to high over valued. STOCK DILUTION One negative I noticed was how Terawulf has been diluting their stock. Kind of how when the FED prints more dollars and as a result the price of groceries goes up. It’s normal for a company to be issuing stock to pay bills and incentivize employees. 40% of the company is owned by insiders, which means the people working for the company seem to believe in its success. They don’t seem to plan on heavy stock dilution for 2024 from what I’ve heard them say, and while it’s something to consider, I don’t see it as a major red flag. WULF HISTORY Terawulf was started in 2021, they bought IKONICS CORPORATION in 2021. So if you look at the history of the stock ticker symbol WULF, you will notice it goes back to 1993. However, this price data doesn’t imply to the current company Terawulf, since as planned Terawulf sold Ikonics in 2022. This WULF stock history adds to the confusion and messes with any algorithms taking in numbers from the old company and projecting it onto the new company. Another reason why this company is flying under the radar... for now. DEBT Terawulf took on Debt, they have been paying off their debt enormously the last few months. So while the old earnings reports have their debt listed over 100 million, it’s more like 50 million and dropping. BITCOIN PRICE Bitcoins price does effect WULF’s profit, but they have set themselves up to be profitable well into the foreseeable future, including after the April 2024 Bitcoin Halving. Explaining the Bitcoin halving would be a lot right now, but it’s basically an event happening in April 2024 that effects the profits of Bitcoin miners. There’s a lot of miners that aren’t in a good position to capitalize on this event. Terawulf is in my opinion set up to be one of the most profitable mining companies after the halving. Once again this is a very complex thing to understand, but I’ve seen articles scaring Bitcoin Mining investors about the halving, and rightfully so. Just because Terawulf is set up for success doesn’t mean the Bitcoin Mining Market as a whole might not panic and temporarily drive down mining company prices. Another thing of many I’ve considered and any investor should too. THANK YOU Once agin, I could be missing something here, Terawulf could be lying like Enron for all we know, I do not know everything nor can I predict the future. So if you do your own research please let me know if you find something I missed, I’ll be very grateful. Thanks for reading!

I put together a little writeup I've been sending to friends, I'd honestly love any questions or concerns as I'll be keeping a very close eye on Terawulf over the coming months. It's also lacking a lot of technical jargon when it comes to Bitcoin Mining and investing since not all my friends are not super versed in crypto and investing.
Company : Terawulf
NASDAQ stock Ticker : WULF
Based out of Maryland, USA
SYNOPSIS
The WULF stock price of $2 is very very undervalued.
This belief is heavily based on the fact that after expenses the company is currently pulling in $500,000 a day (including weekends), yet its market cap or total value of the company is only about 500 million.
Imagine buying a penthouse for $5 million dollars and then being able to rent it out at a fair market price for $1.8 million dollars a year. It would seem as if the penthouse was sold for way under value.
Below is an in depth explanation on why Terawulf is way under value.
WHAT DOES TERAWULF DO?
Terawulf has built two facilities in New York and Pennsylvania that are basically two huge state of the art computers. They’ve built these computer facilities to create an enormous amount of computing power. They then use this computing power to make money.
For Example: AI or artifice intelligence requires a lot of computing power. Terawulf is currently working with Talen and Amazon where they might sell their computing power to Amazon to power Amazon’s AI. Basically Amazon rents Terawulf’s facilities computing power, instead of building their own.
This potential Amazon deal is however a speculative future endeavor and not why I am writing this today. It just helped me explain what Terawulf has built without using the scary B word... Bitcoin.
However, that’s exactly what Terawulf is doing with their computing power.
They are “mining Bitcoin” or using their computing power, to help run the Bitcoin network. Similar to how Google could hire Terawulf’s computing power, to help run their email system GMAIL.
Terawulf, gets paid in Bitcoin daily, and immediately sells it for a hefty profit. The Terawulf CEO has invested millions of his own money into Terawulf and stated that the company is not in the business of speculating on the price of Bitcoin. They simply “Mine” Bitcoin everyday for a profit in American Dollars, not Bitcoin.
TERAWULF’S BACKSTORY
TERAWULF was formed in 2021, and their plan was to lock in long term cheap North American power (5-20 year plans). Not just any power, but Zero Carbon energy. Not only is it better for the environment, but in a world where regulations are moving in that direction, it’s better to be ready for it.
Once they locked in inexpensive green power, they bought land and started construction on buildings. Right now they have buildings in New York and Pennsylvania. Two states that have had discussions and laws even passed against companies mining bitcoin... but mining bitcoin with “bad” energy. Since Terawulf’s goal is 100% carbon free energy, they don’t have to worry.
Terawulf spent all of 2021 - 2022 getting their facilities ready. They started turning on the computers in 2023, but are still building and turning on new machines for 2024, and anticipate this continuing into 2025.
This all leads into why I believe they are so undervalued.
STOCK PRICE
Terawulf began this venture in 2021, during the last cryptocurrency bull run. Speculation was crazy in 2021 around anything crypto and Bitcoin related. Along with many other assets and mining companies, WULF’s price rocketed to a high of $44 per share in Nov 2021.
However soon after Bitcoin’s price went down and so did Terawulfs. WULF shares dropped as low as $0.53 in March 2023.
Rightfully so, I mean Terawulf up until that point had just taking on hundreds of millions in debt to build their facilities. According to their earnings reports this company just lost money month after month, year after year. They were an idea in 2021.
Most people don’t know what Bitcoin Mining is, so they see Terawulf, they see it’s a bitcoin mining company and don’t really know what the hell that means.
They’re investors not computer tech folks. So they look at what they do know, the earnings reports and well, the earnings reports are terrible. They don’t know why or care, however we now know it’s because Terawulf is still in the building stages.
It’s as if Ferrari spent over two years building a race car. But every month people asked how fast the race car was, and Ferrari said it went 0 mph. So everyone continued to write off this race car as a failure, without knowing that it was going to take 3 years to build.
They shouldn’t judge how fast it goes until it’s built, just like the market shouldn’t have judged Terawulf on how profitable it was before it was built.
I think the stock market thinks Terawulf is a fully built race car that goes 0mph, when in reality it is a half built race car that when fully built, will be the fastest car in the race.
Earnings reports are a major factor in how investors judge a company. Most articles and reports online are based off Terawulf’s released earnings reports. Those earnings reports don’t go past sept 2023, and those reports are very bad.
Currently, when you research Terawulf online, you’re likely to find a writeup that an algorithm wrote based off earnings reports before Oct 2023. The reports are filled with BAD numbers, and don’t explain that Terawulf was simply building their race car.
Now normally everyone has to wait until the company releases its earnings report to know how everything going. Not with Terawulf though.
Terawulf is not your average company, they are very transparent and have been releasing their numbers on their social media and their website. They are proud of what they accomplished and believe in a company that doesn’t hide behind walls, but instead informs investors of exactly what is going on.
They don’t pay for fancy marketing, they just make a damn good product and wait for word to catch on.
However, NOBODY is reading Terawulf’s reports... their twitter posts get maybe 100 likes, and a few spam comments.
So unless you’re one of the few like me listening, you are judging their company on the terrible earnings reports from 2021 thru September 2023.
However they just started turning on their machines in 2023, and have been expanding at a rapid rate throughout 2024.
On Fidelity and Charles Schwab if you click on reports for Terawulf and look at earnings... MISSED in big red letters pops up.
For investors it’s basically saying LOSER LOSER LOSER, over and over and over.
However, on March 28th 2024 the official earnings report comes out for Oct-Dec 2023.
Now if you’re following Terawulf on social media and understand Bitcoin Mining you’d know that Q4 was a bit of a winner this time. You’d also know that Q1 of 2024 is an even bigger winner. However, the vast majority of people simply wait for the official earnings reports.
Basically we are ahead of curve by 6 months.
I don’t know when exactly Wall Street is going to catch up on this, but right now WULF seems like a diamond in the rough. The confusion around what exactly is Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, mixed with the delayed earnings reports has falsely labeled Terawulf a loser.
I anticipate that between now and summer of 2024 the market will catch on.
We discussed the price of the stock versus the earnings of the company. This is called a P/E ratio for short. Terawulf’s P/E ratio right now is about 4/1 since the entire value of the company is four times more than their gross earnings for the year.
In comparison to the software industry average of 56/1 which is what fidelity chose to compare it to Terawulf to.
A 56/1 P/E for Terawulf would value the stock $28 a share instead of $2 a share.
MARA Marathon Digital is a mining company that has a current P/E of 23/1. WULF at $11 a share would be a 23/1 P/E.
Now there are many other factors to consider and I think $10 a share is closer to a fair value.
I also think the stock could go to $100 a share considering how crazy the market can get, especially around something with the word Bitcoin in it.
However I am not an expert with how to value a company like this, should it be 3 billion or 10 billion, I’m not sure. What the stock market values is a best guess.
There’s so many things to consider, and nothing is guaranteed in this world. A comet could hit the Terawulf facility and blow it up tomorrow and drive the price to a few pennies.
I’m not a finial advisor, I have no idea your finances nor can I guarantee my beliefs or that I am missing something. I’m simply stating what I find interesting about this company and sharing that info and my beliefs.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Below is some more info to consider.
DEEPER DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
SHORTS
Another reason why the price is so low, are the shorts have been opening up on this stock since 2022. This is just speculation, but I believe these shorts are coming from knowledgeable traders, who understood they would be out of profit for two years, or lenders who have hedged their investment.
For anyone who doesn’t understand Shorts, it’s basically a way to make money if the stock price goes down, and coincidently, investing in a short position on a stock helps drive the price down.
The shorts are slowly beginning to close and I have a feeling those shorts will close up completely by June 2024. Shorts closing brings stock price up.
TRENDING BUZZ WORDS CREATING HYPE
To add fuel to the fire, Terawulf prides itself in using green clean energy that’s carbon free, a very popular narrative. One thing I’ve learned in trading is that the best “story” often wins out. They also announced in Dec 2023 that they’re working with amazon and A.I. to capitalize the use of their mining machines. Two great buzz words for investors, “A.I.” & “Carbon Free Energy.” This mixed with the hype around Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies makes me think Terawulf’s stock price could go from highly undervalued to high over valued.
STOCK DILUTION
One negative I noticed was how Terawulf has been diluting their stock. Kind of how when the FED prints more dollars and as a result the price of groceries goes up. It’s normal for a company to be issuing stock to pay bills and incentivize employees. 40% of the company is owned by insiders, which means the people working for the company seem to believe in its success. They don’t seem to plan on heavy stock dilution for 2024 from what I’ve heard them say, and while it’s something to consider, I don’t see it as a major red flag.
WULF HISTORY
Terawulf was started in 2021, they bought IKONICS CORPORATION in 2021. So if you look at the history of the stock ticker symbol WULF, you will notice it goes back to 1993.
However, this price data doesn’t imply to the current company Terawulf, since as planned Terawulf sold Ikonics in 2022.
This WULF stock history adds to the confusion and messes with any algorithms taking in numbers from the old company and projecting it onto the new company.
Another reason why this company is flying under the radar... for now.
DEBT
Terawulf took on Debt, they have been paying off their debt enormously the last few months. So while the old earnings reports have their debt listed over 100 million, it’s more like 50 million and dropping.
BITCOIN PRICE
Bitcoins price does effect WULF’s profit, but they have set themselves up to be profitable well into the foreseeable future, including after the April 2024 Bitcoin Halving. Explaining the Bitcoin halving would be a lot right now, but it’s basically an event happening in April 2024 that effects the profits of Bitcoin miners. There’s a lot of miners that aren’t in a good position to capitalize on this event. Terawulf is in my opinion set up to be one of the most profitable mining companies after the halving. Once again this is a very complex thing to understand, but I’ve seen articles scaring Bitcoin Mining investors about the halving, and rightfully so. Just because Terawulf is set up for success doesn’t mean the Bitcoin Mining Market as a whole might not panic and temporarily drive down mining company prices. Another thing of many I’ve considered and any investor should too.
THANK YOU
Once agin, I could be missing something here, Terawulf could be lying like Enron for all we know, I do not know everything nor can I predict the future.
So if you do your own research please let me know if you find something I missed, I’ll be very grateful.
Thanks for reading!
Bitcoin tips for internet strangers who may capitalize on this info, I expect no tips and will be overjoyed at even an anonymous dollar.
BTC address: 3Cu1hbvWc6mVzZdDjkNsy66VgncKQ8pjVx A smile to a stranger goes further than we could ever know : )

Hi all, former employee here. Burner account for reasons, but anyone reading this that was involved will quickly know who I am. I wrote the bulk of this before the layoff announcements today. As a result of these layoffs, I’d expect Customer Service wait times increase significantly.
A few months ago I left my position at Toast after two years of fighting “system issues”. Some may think of me as a disgruntled employee, trying to put a hit on my former employer out of spite; that isn’t the case (though, believe me, the inclination to be spiteful rattles my bones). I may be disgruntled, but I have been holding off on doing this as, while a small group of ‘powerful’ individuals within Toast are going through with some pretty heinous changes to the workplace, many of my former coworkers do not deserve to be punished for the management’s poor performance. I am also concerned about repercussions after some pretty troubling HR experiences. As some of you may know, Toast just laid off 10% of their employees. I was holding off on posting to help protect them, but seeing as half of my former team was just let go, I’m gonna let y’all in on some secrets.
If you have had issues with Toast’s billing, removing services, adding services, or just plain getting customer service to talk to you; Hi, strap in.
If you don’t want to read all this, I don’t blame you - TLDR: Be extra nice to a customer service agent at Toast when next you get to speak to them! Toast is a publicly traded company and is acting as cutthroat as possible, possibly in order to boost their sales figures to sell off the company. The employees are trapped between unemployment and bad/unethical management strategies.
My history with Toast:
I started with Toast right before the COVID outbreak shut down US restaurants. I was trained to take inbound phone calls for a week or two, then laid off. I was relatively annoyed, as I really enjoyed the atmosphere at Toast. The people who worked there were all great, the business seemed to have good ethics and treat employees well - in opposition to many other companies I had worked for prior that were more akin to a meat grinder.
A few months later, Toast realized it laid off way too many of its employees (I think at the time it was 50% of the workforce) and had to start a mass rehiring campaign. This included them reaching out to me and seeing if I was willing to come back (less training to do, I guess). I happily accepted as I was getting close to running out of my emergency funds while I looked for other employment.
I took the job, took calls from home for a few months and began working my way into the typed Chat program for customer support. We were taking three chats at a time, trying to balance where our energy needed to be. I’d be helping one customer with their Online Ordering menu on one chat, working on a customer’s marketing campaign in another and troubleshooting a printer on the 3rd. The chat was necessary because phone times were way too long. Due to the breadth of problems we saw, it was required that we be trained in every aspect of Toast; Hardware, Software, networking, billing etc.
Due to issues with Customer Service wait times, Toast did another mass hiring campaign, invested into outsourcing Customer Service work to a 3rd party outside of the US and lassoed everyone into “Campaigns”. Campaigns essentially set the work type you would receive, so, a new employee gets hired on the Hardware team/campaign, they learn everything about hardware, they take calls related to hardware and that’s all. This makes sense if you need to really atomize knowledge, but if any customer ever called in with more than one problem, it was an issue. The hardware person would help with whatever they were trained on, then transfer the customer back through the Interactive Voice Response (IVR - “Press 1 for hardware, 2 for Networking”, etc.) system or directly transfer them to the campaign that was going to work on the next issue. This obviously adds unnecessary time to the queue, versus getting one employee who just does everything. The person who implemented campaigns was an executive level employee and left the company shortly after campaigns launched. Campaigns have since started to be weaned out because, again (and obviously) it was a bad idea.
Everything at Toast is too interconnected to not have a broadly informed Customer Service team.
- Printer not working? -
“Okay, I can walk you through the steps to troubleshoot hardware problems, but if it’s none of those, I’ll have to transfer you to a networking expert to check the connection”
Only to find out the actual problem is that the printer is just broken and needs to be replaced. The only way to confirm that within campaigns is to hand it off to an employee in networking and double checking the network equipment and cables. All this wasted time seems to get recycled and added to the queue, preventing the CS team from getting to more customers.
TACO:
I moved from the chat team to the Customer Care Advisory team (AKA Subscription Services, AKA Toast Account Operations (TACO) ) and became a triage customer service agent. I was responsible for going through a queue and grabbing cases or emails for things our regular CS team could not solve. We were allotted the time and resources to investigate issues that were well outside of what our CS team needed to be doing and trying to address them. This seems simple on the surface (and at the time, it was) but soon work started being transferred to us from other teams. The Business Operations team had formerly been responsible for deactivating closed/lost accounts (we call them Churns internally, I will use that phrasing going forward) but due to their workload were unable to keep up with that, so it fell back onto the TACO team. Billing pushed credit requests onto our team (more on that later) and a few other less impactful things, but more work nonetheless.
We had to be pretty agile to keep up with the new workload on top of what we were already doing. During this time, we lost some people in our engineering department that basically told us “Good Luck with the future” - They must have seen the writing on the wall before we did. They seemed legitimately annoyed with Toast and we all just sort of thought they were blowing off steam. They were not.
Within a year at TACO I was promoted from a Customer Care Advisor 1 to a Customer Care Advisor 2 and then 3 (the top most non-managerial position in that org) and so, my upward mobility stopped. I was not going to be eligible for a big raise/promotion unless I left the team and moved to a different department for work. I really enjoyed the work I was doing though, so moving was not really on the table, I’d just suffer through the money problem and enjoy my job.
Then amendments happened.
You see, Toast had gone public in 2021 and that was great for us. Toast had been giving bonuses in the form of Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) which reduced the price of Toast stock after a vesting period. If I got a bonus, it might be a few hundred dollars with 50 stock units at $12 a share. After 5 years or so the 50 stock units would vest, and I could buy them for $12 per share and then sell them at whatever value they are now. So now, you didn’t really get a bonus unless you are also willing to stay for 5 years. Not a problem… if the company doesn’t start making awful decisions which directly affect the stock price and the employee’s mental well being.
The idiom “golden handcuffs” comes to mind.
Near the end of 2022 my manager told me about a big change that was coming, called “Contract Amendments”. The system to remove subscriptions had previously been a series of check boxes. We would load a restaurant’s SubscriptionSsuite, deselect or select a radio button and then click save. Done. The request went to BizOps to formally deactivate the service.
As Toast is now a publicly traded company, they must adhere to new regulations, primarily the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). SOX compliance act seeks to avoid a possible ENRON situation again, forcing companies to be held accountable for financial reporting. Each quarter (I think it is quarterly) a financial officer at every publicly traded company has to sign a document saying “All of our controls are in order, and everything is accurate”. Amendments aimed to ease this burden, by making a one stop shop for Subscriptions, Hardware and packaged deals. It was pitched as being faster and more accurate than the previous versions.
We tested it, it looked okay - At my fastest, I could complete a simple Subscription removal request in 7 minutes. The previous time to complete was closer or less than 5 minutes. Off to a bad start.
The launch of the program got pushed a week or two and then launched without a retest by my team. Surprisingly, nothing worked! I am not an engineer and won’t ponder what happened during that time, but my guess is “catering to the Sales team”. We discovered a few days before the real launch that not only did none of this work, but even more impressively, in order to even use the Amendment features, the user needed a special license to a 3rd party software.
Allegedly, these licenses were very expensive to provide to all of Customer Service. The TACO team (Consisting of 12-15 people at that time) was now going to handle all of the downsell requests of the company, which previously had been handled by 2,000 or 3,000 people at at least 2 minutes longer per case (I really honed my amendment skills and could do it in 7, but at the time I was by far the fastest and no one else was getting close to 7 minutes - not bragging, trying to paint a clear picture of how convoluted all of this was). I was constantly being pulled into Zooms to try and help explain why things weren't working, how to workaround certain roadblocks and then reporting my findings to our engineering team. The work of 2000-3000 people had been bottlenecked into a team of 12 individuals who, by the way, still had our normal work duties to respond to. This caused our case backlog to go from less than 50 cases a day to 800-1000 cases per day. The amendment system was so broken that none of us could get a single case done. Any time a case couldn’t be completed, we were forced to create a ServiceNow ticket, at which point an engineer would look at the issue and address it, either on a case by case basis or building out new sprints to update the functionality. I made myself an expert in amendments, finding workarounds and being the point person for the TACO team in regard to amendments. I created tracking spreadsheets, trained when new changes happened and just tried to mitigate as much damage/fallout as I could. Notably my pay did not change during this time outside of, maybe, a normal bump increase for good performance.
I discussed with our senior managers the clear cause for concern but they were more apt to point at two or three employees who were underperforming, basically claiming we were slacking off and could do more (“the team is overpaid and underperforming” is a quote from my grandboss (my boss’ boss) in a one on one we had and soon became the sarcastic mantra for us when things we called out would fail, inevitably did and made our jobs harder).
To prove their point, we engaged in a contest where for a certain period of time (if I recall it was one week) we would be paid $20 per case or something as a bonus. Everyone hit the numbers because we were dodging subscription deactivation orders as they just couldn’t be done. This ‘proved’ to management it was a laziness issue and not a system issue. Despite the obvious nonsensical trap they tried to place, we kept forging on with the Amendment engineers to try and salvage what we could.
Despite calling all of these issues out to senior leadership, nothing happened. It seemed like every day was a little worse. There was no meeting regarding the problems until months later when our team’s performance was called out. Having already explained the issues to Sr. Management, we had to again, explain the issue, when they came to start holding meetings regarding our low performance. I had a meeting with my grandboss and someone within enablement to show them what was happening. In that meeting, they were disgusted; clear as day were the issues that were stopping or progress - yet - nothing changed. We had to reach out internally to individuals in various senior technical roles to see if we could get their help both solving issues and finding a long term solution/fix to the issues. Performance kept being the only thing of importance to management - the fix to them was simple. Solve more cases. Obstacles be damned. They continue to have no idea what is going on, nor does it seem like they care - some of us started thinking the only way this level of incompetence is possible in a company this successful is if it is willful ignorance. No one was willing to take on the project and instead of dealing with it, wanted to blame others.
A few months after launching the Amendment program, the entire engineering team that had initially worked on Amendments moved to different projects and were replaced with ServiceNow Contractors who had no idea how the system was supposed to work. We spent the better part of a month training them on what we needed done. In all the time previous to this switch, the engineering team was extremely hostile and closed our cases without any known resolution- which required us to go back through the case, create the problem again and then create a new ServiceNow ticket, which we would then have to pray to God/Satan/Molag would be answered appropriately.
Toast agreed to expand our team. The starting wages for my team were on par with what Tier 2 Customer Service agents were already making, but because of bad management and the amendment issue, no talented agents wanted to come over. Everyone that was smart enough, stayed away. I don’t blame them. I tried to make an argument that in order for us to hire talented people, we would need to pay them for that talent. The entire TACO team’s salary should be raised, including starting wages, and then we could get some really good people to come help us. Instead, Toast decided to keep our pay what it was and hired out of desperation. Without truly talented people, people who weren’t just there for the paycheck, we were in a worse spot than before. All of our attention was moved off of cases and into making sure our teammates' work was quality. Quality is not what Toast seemed to want, but quantity - and as cheaply as possible.
This wasn’t a week of torment. This wasn’t a month. A whole year. 2022 to 2023 was a nightmare at Toast. My mental health suffered greatly from putting 16+ hours in a day trying to find something, anything that would help us get our queue under control. Some days I felt the overwhelming burden of the absurdity of our plight. My coworkers were beaten and exhausted and it showed. We all burned out in the span of about a month. All of us. I emailed the Toast employee relations team, as I was trying to understand why all of this work was getting dumped on my team, but our pay wasn’t changing. My job got 100% harder multiple times over the course of a year. Employee Relations thought the issue was more catered to HR because of the pay aspect, so I set a meeting with HR.
HR and my grandboss (bless their hearts) at the time met with me to talk about amendments, why workloads were being added without an equivalent pay increase, etc. I was basically told to step back in line and that amendments were getting worked on - all of this would be solved shortly (spoiler: it was not).
Y’all remember that fiasco where Toast was going to automatically charge patrons of Toast Restaurants $0.99 per order. Loudly protested by the employees. It happened here, mid-the-amendment fiasco. We were ignored. Once it launched, and reasonably so, there was a huge backlash. We received a huge influx of cases to deactivate Online Ordering out of protest. The CEO at the time stepped down so Toast could save face, but I am not convinced he had anything to do with this. Or maybe he too saw the writing on the wall and walked away.
Toast closed the doors on its Woburn warehouse and offered jobs to those team members to come over to TACO. The Warehouse team did not speak to customers, ever. They were coordinating hardware orders and getting them shipped out all over the US and were offered to be unemployed OR go to TACO team. TACO team’s training implementation was dismal at best. All of our energy was being diverted to bail the sinking ship out. Tier 3s were put in charge of training, but because of the absolute whirlwind of new stuff we were dealing with, keeping up with our current and new responsibilities, using programs that didn’t work; it was virtually impossible to create a meaningful training regiment.
There was a period here where we were given a workaround by engineering to get by some Amendment program nonsense and actually start removing subscriptions. Two or three months later we found out, not only did the workaround not work, it added duplicate subscriptions to accounts. So we had to take a step back, work all of those accounts again and then figure the refunds that were due for the overcharge. Basically any removal we did using the workaround created a new case a few months later when the customer received their bill and created a case for review. Effectively, our work was doubled during this time.
Toast hired a small group of people in India to work on the TACO team in their time zone, to give us close to 24 hour coverage. I am pretty sure I was told a direct threat about outsourcing the whole team because we couldn’t keep up with the work, though when I reported it, my team had an HR meeting saying we were catty and a rumor mill. We were gaslit into believing that even if we did believe that rumor, it was based outside of reality. C’est la vie!
Sometime after this I reached out to employee relations again, and again was sent to HR, this time with a different message. HR and my grandboss told me (in not so many words) that if I didn’t like how things were going, I could quit. They’d give me 4 weeks severance but I couldn’t tell anyone else about the severance. I inquired about the folks that came from the Woburn warehouse and that they have mentioned this job is far more stressful than their previous one, and they believe they ought to be paid more due to that - HRs response was to say that I need to worry about myself and not everyone else. (be a leader, except when we don’t want you to be).
The next day my manager and a coworker were fired - both had a LOT of Toast experience and both were extremely valuable to the company. If there was an issue with their performance it was not because they were incapable, it was because the system around us was going to hell and we simply couldn’t help our customers in the way that was needed. It was incredibly frustrating, even more so when we got the ire of customers because of things that were well outside of our control. Things we starkly protested against. We couldn’t even empathize with our customers appropriately because everything in and out of Toast is monitored. We’d have to tow that company line.
I stayed for 5 weeks and quit without notice. They implemented a mandatory 8 hour on-call shift where my team was going to have to sit at our computers in an “Active” call state so that we could take transfers from CS Tier 1 and 2. Remember those warehouse workers from Woburn? To date they have not received any sort of call training, despite requesting it. Amendments still don’t work correctly, though they are in a far better state. I was told recently by a friend that is still there that two of the TACO team members just went to train more non-US based TACO members, very clearly training the very people who are going to take their jobs. A 7 year employee walked out today, many more are considering it. If I take a step back, away from my anger in this situation, is the narrative Toast wants us to believe that all of these formerly stellar employees were actually bad the whole time?
Well that’s what happened/is happening to TACO. My former coworkers still message me from time to time, and I am always somewhat relieved that I made the right decision to leave.
Transition to Billing:
Ever wonder why your invoices are so screwy? Why do you have 3 Online Ordering charges, some of which have a quantity of (-1) etc. This was always a problem at Toast but became a much worse problem post amendments. The invoicing system presupposes that all of Toast’s services are contracted and not variable until the end of the contract.
Let’s say you wanted to remove Online Ordering. You call or chat with Customer Service, they make a request for TACO team, TACO team tries to do the Amendment (probably still a pretty high failure rate) - If the Amendment goes through, essentially an “Amendment” to the contract is made, but the invoicing software will show what was historically on the contract until the contract term ends (standard for this is two years for your first contract, then it starts to renew each year). So instead of removing the Online Ordering charge for $75, Toast creates a second invoice line called (-1) Online Ordering for -$75, which balances to $0. Then when the customer gets their invoice they see Online Ordering and think “What the blazes? I asked for this to be removed!” and then a whole other point of Customer Service contact is required, creating a new case. Once the contract expires, a new contract is automatically generated and the invoices should be cleaned up, but for new customers that can be up to two years, for existing customers, it’s at least a year. We begged for them to change these invoices but were repeatedly told it’s not possible and is “just the way it’s always been”.
During the amendment period the billing team also made a ton of really fun changes, mainly, that they were not responsible for Customer Credit memos anymore, that would fall on the TACO team. The billing team would approve or deny the requests based on various criteria. The target was always moving. Some weeks we’d need to include screenshots of Sales records to prove some point, others it wasn’t needed. We would need to include exact dates, links to subscription removal requests or screenshots of something a Sales person lied about to solidify an agreement. We would absolutely need these in writing, no way it would get approved without a text or email from a Sales team member saying “Oh yeah, if you buy online ordering it’s free for 10 billion years” (I’ll admit to committing hyperbole, but honestly it was close to stuff like this). Every day my responsibilities were: -Solve 11 cases
-Try to solve as many amendment cases as possible, some were a year old and never solved.
-Try to provide credit when Toast engaged in any error that financially burdened Toast’s customers (of which, many were rejected and had to be re-approved through the system, starting from the beginning)
- Deactivate restaurants who had requested it
- Cross Departmental meetings with Billing, BizOps, Order Operations, Engineering (you name it) to try to fix ongoing issues
-Try to train non-Customer Service oriented professionals, not only to use our broken systems, but how to communicate with customers
Now that I’ve left the responsibilities include the above AND: - waiting in silence for a phone call because management thinks rather than fixing their billing issues, customers just want to hear from a person that it’s broken (just fix it, damn!)
- training their replacements for when outsourcing happens (2024 note - layoffs just happened).
I am not here to mildly complain - these were all really serious issues while I worked for Toast and still are in my mind after. I think Toast is acting completely irresponsibly in the wake of going public and I think it is criminal that our Customers don’t know what is going on. Unfortunately, as an employee I lacked the power to really do anything about it. Toast Customers have proven they have the heart to protest poor changes and I think for this ecosystem to change Toast employees and Customers need to work together to combat bad management.
We were told, too many times to count, that the reason Toast seemed like such a bad place to work for was because we only hear from troubled customers. That’s completely inaccurate. My problems were never angry customers (though I talked to many of them) - it was having to lie to angry customers because Toast willed it so. It was not being able to say, “Yeah, I’m with you!” because then you’d be written up or terminated. Toast had a lot of potential, it feels to me that they lost it entirely and weren’t willing to listen to the people doing the work. I sincerely hope that I am wrong about ONLY hearing about angry customers, and that all the restaurateurs reading do have great experiences with Toast - I just find it rather hard to believe.
So what can you do? I’m not an economist and I’m certainly no genius but here are some thoughts. As a Toast customer, support a Toast Employee Union. Changes made to my job in my time there were not democratic decisions, and were being made by senior managers who swap in and out of those positions once every two years or so. They aren’t the heart of Toast. They never did 12 hour shifts on the phones with Toast customers - and notably they never will. A democratic approach to the workforce may not have entirely solved our problems, but it would have at least given us some power to push back on ridiculous changes that were going to hurt our customers.
You can and should support a labor movement within Toast - currently Customer Service is looked at as an expendable resource, despite also being touted as "the most important part of Toast". They can continue to find ways to cut costs (for example, the Payroll/Employee Cloud QA team was laid off because they are “automating” QA with AI. This is ONLY going to hurt Customer service going forward - (to explain further the QA (Quality Assurance) team reviews calls and grades them based on preset rubrics. They then give feedback to the agents to make them better. AI will not be able to do this in any meaningful way). When I started with Toast it was all about customer service. I loved helping customers operate at their highest capacity. My thoughts are with everyone who lost their jobs/careers today. It doesn’t feel like it now, but you are better off - without a 180 degree pivot, Toast is going to be a pretty bad place to work.