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(Alliance News) - Argo Blockchain PLC on Friday celebrated a return to growth in its total hashrate capacity in July, despite mining less bitcoin compared to June.
During July, the London-based cryptocurrency miner mined 129 bitcoin or bitcoin equivalents, together known as BTC. However, at a rate of 4.2 BTC per day, this represented an 11% decline from 4.6 BTC per day mined in the previous month.
Argo Blockchain said the decrease was driven primarily by greater downtime at Helios from weather-related curtailment and onsite construction. Helios is a 125,000 square-foot bitcoin mining facility in Dickens County, Texas.
In July, the Helios operations also participated in economic curtailment, which Argo said had generated additional cash proceeds despite reducing bitcoin production. Economic curtailment is the practice of reducing generator power output when running costs exceed the wholesale electricity market price.
Mining revenue for July was USD3.9 million, similar to USD3.8 million in June.
Further, Argos installed and energised 1,242 BlockMiner machines in July at its Quebec facilities. This brings the company's total hashrate capacity to approximately 2.6 EH/s - or quintillion hashes per second.
"I am thrilled that we are resuming growth in our total hashrate capacity with the deployment of the BlockMiner machines. This is a testament to the efforts of our technical and operations teams, and we look forward to deploying the remaining machines," said interim Chief Executive Officer Seif El-Bakly.
"I am also pleased with our economic curtailment programs that contribute to the stability of the Texas grid during periods of peak demand while simultaneously reducing our total power costs."
Argo Blockchain shares were trading 3.5% lower at 9.75 pence each in London on Friday morning.
By Holly Beveridge, Alliance News reporter
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