Member Info for HarChris

Yeah I'm with you on this AB, I'm confident hashrate is not ripping. The only reliable source really is the two week difficulty adjustment and the most recent one, before all this chaos ensued, showed a very small decrease. I'm sure the next adjustment in 9 days will show a drop:

https://btc.com/stats/diff

Strange, all the posts relating to Saylor have been wiped...

Anyway someone was asking about MS's liquidation price, according to twitter it's $13643 as of most recent data (June 30th): https://twitter.com/BTC_JackSparrow/status/1590801749975044099/photo/1

Wait didn't PW sell 1.5m shares at £2.50 a share in early 2021? If he gives that £3.75m back to Argo it'll keep them in business an extra month...

Any remaining hope of a restructure is dashed by the recent fall in BTC. On top of the $850m debt they have $17m in monthly debt repayments and with BTC at $16k it gives them a monthly cash flow of just $1.2m - so that's a further $15.8m they are haemorrhaging a month.

They are toast, almost 100% yet ironically there's one last pump going on right now as we speak.

Bitcoin was looking stable and strong, in a range form $19.5k to $21.5k. Monday at open the FTX fiasco had not yet taken place, BTC was at $20.7K many of us thought bitcoin was ready to attempt a bit of a breakout to the upside and Argo opened at 8.59p. As stated by many on here Argo badly needed upward momentum in bitcoin in the weeks ahead.

Then we had the mother of all weeks, bitcoin has dropped 20% to new 2 year lows trading now at $16.6k, the whole space is looking shaky and fears of contagion and shouts of $10k BTC are coming from all corners. And yet many on here think Argo should be trading at 10p+ now?!

They are also tied up with Core Scientific who will be defaulting very soon on their $850m debt to a whole host of crypto companies and lenders. NYDIG are owed about $40m if I remember correctly, money they won't be getting back (but will receive partial payment in used machines)

Nah, I don't agree. We know most miners are worse off mining currently than switching off machines but yet still they continue. The first to move on this front looks weak, it signals that they are at their limit and can't absorb such losses any longer. What they become are bitcoin miners that aren't even mining bitcoin anymore, warehouses with machines mothballing.

Perhaps not 50% drop but certainly will cause a sharp fall in share price. Let's say for example, I dunno, Bitfarms shuts down first, do you think investors are going to go 'right, this week i'm dca'ing into Bitfarms?!'

' some will not want to be seen to stop and no doubt there are plenty of other considerations on top.'

This is a very good point. Miners who blink first and then have to announce that machines are being temporarily switched off will see their share prices halve over night, it's a distress signal. In an industry that's relied so much on placings and equity raises share price strength is everything so whilst there may be many miners that would be better off switching off machines now, the overall result will be much worse for them than just taking the bigger losses.

For that reason I think we'll see publicly listed miners continue to mine but privately owned switch off.

'CLSK are one of the more efficient miners but with BTC falling further we really are in the territory now where all miners should be considering stopping production. Will depend how much cost they can save over and above just power by doing so. CLSK may be losing cash at $17k but they would almost certainly lose more if they stopped mining because of fixed costs that have to be paid regardless.'

Game theory in action. Whilst they may all save by switching off machines that immediately changes once the shutdowns happen (due to difficult downgrade), so those keeping their machines on will end up back in a position where they are generating cash once again.

Basically those a mile off generating cash (like Argo) have no incentive to try and wait for others to switch theirs off first so it only makes sense for the least efficient to shutdown in the coming months.

I'm sure all of you see Michael Saylor boasting about how well MicroStrategy has done vs nasdaq/s&p/gold but it's actually the shareholders that stomached the losses to keep MS afloat. Last June they actioned an At the Market Offering of $1B and issued 1.6m shares at an average price of $630 per share from June through to December. Anyone buying shares during those offerings is now about 72% down.

So the reality is that almost anyone investing in MicroStrategy since they adopted a bitcoin standard is heavily down, it's just Michael himself that is doing very well out of it (he owns 23.7% of the company). He hasn't bought any shares since but has sold a small percentage at what looks like the peak in early 2021 (around $800 a share).

He's dodgy.

50% down on their 130K BTC purchases though and nothing left to buy more at these lower levels - fail

I think MSTR are fine. It's 2024/25 that the big debt payments kick in.

But more importantly institutions preparing a move into the space are clearly going to steer well clear now.

This could have long term consequences for crypto and the industry. I've previously talked about the hundreds of thousands of individuals who most likely got into crypto, bitcoin and altcoins a few years ago prior to any stock market exposure. Since then they will have started to familiarise themselves with the stock market, with trading, with the different options other than bitcoin/ethereum/altcoins. Where do you think their money is going today? It's probably Tesla, or Apple, or Shopify.

Apple added over $200B to its valuation just since yesterday, that's not far off the total bitcoin network!

We're just talking cash generation, so no machine costs, no capex, no depreciation. Simply if for example clsk paused expansion plans and sold the BTC mined each month, would the cash figure go up each month or down... this is particularly important for those with no HODL (and like Argo no new machines to sell either).

As for your other comment, yeah it's so damn obvious that bitcoin has no chance of rallying with all the fear in the market and uncertainty over contagion. We are going to see more worrying news every day, probably multiple catalysts that cause sudden sell offs so I have no idea why anyone would be chancing it right now...

I'm waiting a bit longer and only diving in if we see irresistible lows (like $14k BTC or say Mara at $7.50, clsk @$2).

I am taking that into account AB, I argued that $17k vs $20k won't make all that much difference to network hash rate but thinking about it again it probably given a few more monthsl. I tend to imagine the publicly listed miners (of which Corz is the only one at risk of folding in the very near term) makes up a bigger percentage of the total pie than it does, but actually the big 11 only make up 17.8%, and 25% of that is Corz...

Really? You think Clsk can generate cash at $17k? I had about $20k as the figure in my head.

Realistically it should be fairly safe buying the likes of Mara, Riot, Clsk, Hut8 today and just assuming they'll make it through the next 12-24 months in full health (depending on when bitcoin turns) and therefore seeing decent returns on the flip side but it just seems too likely that more crypto crises are to come and there will be entries 15, 20, maybe even 30%+ lower.

Very possibly! Hopefully you are sensible and take a little profit along the way

This very neatly in one tweet summarises how Argo have ended up at 8p a share.

https://twitter.com/cazenove_uk/status/1591055324370313216/photo/1

The problem is at $17k-$19k the mining space is pretty much uninvestable. Of the twelve largest publicly listed miners Corz is the only one likely to fold in the next couple of months and all such a low BTC price does is force all of them to absorb more losses, hurting their long term investment case.

Yet any Nasdaq rally will keep share prices high despite the actually businesses weakening.