Bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain completed the repayment of $35 million borrowed from asset manager Galaxy Digital in 2022 to avoid bankruptcy during the crypto bear market, according to a company filing dated August 12. Argo CEO Thomas Chippas stated that the repayment was a significant milestone for Argo and was achieved without a meaningful impact on Argo’s hashrate.
Significant Step by the Mining Company
Hashrate measures the computational power of a crypto mining operation and is directly related to how much Bitcoin a miner can earn over a certain period. In December 2022, Argo narrowly avoided bankruptcy by agreeing to a multi-part deal with Galaxy, which included selling its Helios Bitcoin mining facility in Dickens County, Texas, for $65 million and refinancing its debt with a $35 million loan.
Argo stated that the loan was secured by Argo’s 23,619 Bitmain S19J Pro mining machines currently operating at Helios and certain machines located at Argo’s data centers in Canada. As part of the agreement, Argo agreed to lease back the space at Helios to continue operating its Bitcoin mining equipment.
According to Argo’s 2023 annual report, the company has since continued to enhance its mining capabilities and deployed approximately 2,750 BlockMiner machines from ePIC Blockchain Technologies in the third quarter of 2023. With these developments, especially the repayment of the company’s debt, the company expects to increase its earnings and investments.
Details on the Matter
By the end of 2023, Argo had a hashrate of 2.7 exahash (EH/s) per second. According to data from CoinWarz, the total hashrate of the Bitcoin network is currently 677.43 EH/s. In July, the company announced that Argo was mining an average of 1.5 Bitcoin per day, totaling 48 Bitcoin.
According to a report by Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer, Galaxy announced plans on August 1 to expand and monetize the high-voltage power capacity at its flagship Helios data center in Dickens County, Texas. Palmer stated that Helios would benefit from the expected enormous power demand from artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) projects.
