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(Alliance News) - Shares in Argo Blockchain climbed on Tuesday following the announcement of a new agreement with Canadian data centre provider GPU.one, which is expected to more than triple its power capacity.
Shares in the cryptomining services provider were 22% higher at 9.69 pence on Tuesday in London.
Under the agreement, Argo's access to clean power supplies will increase from 14 megawatts to 64 megawatts, covering a three-year period starting from June 25, with the option to extend for another two years.
The addition of power is expected to allow the company to run up to 15,000 more mining machines at the same time, bringing its total Bitcoin mining capacity to 1.36 exahash per second, compared to 505 petahashes as at July 4.
Hash rate is the measure of the bitcoin miner's performance, the speed at which the miner solves the Bitcoin code. One exahash is equal to one quintillion hashes per second.
The new agreement will be funded solely from crypto mining operating proceeds from Argo's existing facilities in Quebec.
Argo first signed a deal with GPU.one in August last year, which saw Argo lease two data centres from GPU.one in 2018 in a contract which included the supply of hydroelectricity at CAD0.038, or USD0.030, per kilowatt hour.
This past June, the contract was updated, allowing Argo to up its crypto-mining capacity by 47% to 14 megawatts from 9.5 megawatts at its two Quebec data centres.
"We are taking another major leap in expanding our mining capacity as the cryptomining industry goes from strength to strength. By 2020, our aim is for Argo to be both the most efficient and the largest publicly listed crypto miner in the world," said Executive Chair Mike Edwards.