Argo Blockchain Clears Massive Loan, Steers Clear of Bankruptcy

Argo Blockchain has successfully paid off a $35 million loan from Galaxy Digital, which it took out in 2022 to avoid bankruptcy during a tough period for cryptocurrencies.

CEO Thomas Chippas highlighted that this repayment is a crucial achievement for Argo and did not significantly affect their mining capacity, known as hashrate. Hashrate measures the computational power used in Bitcoin mining, influencing the amount of Bitcoin generated.

In late 2022, Argo struck a deal with Galaxy Digital to prevent bankruptcy. This deal included selling its Helios mining facility in Texas for $65 million and taking out a $35 million loan.

The loan was backed by Argo’s mining machines located at Helios and in its Canadian centers. Argo continued to operate its equipment at Helios by leasing back space.

Since then, Argo has expanded its operations, adding 2,750 new mining machines from ePIC Blockchain Technologies by Q3 2023, as per their annual report. By the end of 2023, Argo’s hashrate reached 2.7 exahashes per second, while the total Bitcoin network’s hashrate was 677.43 EH/s. In July, Argo mined an average of 1.5 BTC daily, totaling 48 BTC for the month.

Additionally, on August 1, Galaxy announced plans to boost and monetize the power capacity at its Helios data center, anticipating high demand from AI and high-performance computing projects, according to Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer.