Member Info for HarChris

https://twitter.com/DylanLeClair_/status/1587804166839324673

Another story to follow. Not going under just yet but certainly another with cracks showing.

AB that's the best way to go (spreading across miners), which strategy wins out now is as much to do with luck than anything else. Take CLSK, for us the absolute best situation would be bitcoin trading between about $21K and $23K for the next six months, enough for CleanSpark to keep generating cash and too low for many others to survive, and hence able to continue to plough on with its strategy before bitcoin turns and we're looking at a 10EH/s bitcoin miner ready to explode.

Worse situation would be bitcoin tanking to <$15K for a number of months and CLSK itself becoming cashless and potentially distressed.

With BTC where it is CLSK should be able to continue implementing its strategy and become instantly very profitable once bitcoin turns.

It's almost certainly going to be a .75% rise today, the question is whether or not the commentary suggests another .75% rise in December or whether they take the foot off the gas and drop to 0.5% rises thereafter.

A lot is priced in I think but obviously if the language is particularly hawkish we'll see stock markets tumble.

I'm not sure what your point is?

In July Argo mined 219 BTC and sold 887 BTC (1295 remaining)
In August Argo mined 235 BTC and sold 432 BTC (1098 remaining)
In September Argo mined 215 BTC and sold 801 BTC (512 remaining)

There's no 'if they dump', it's a certainty and it will show up in the October update.

But yes 500 BTC sold is certainly going to have no impact on the bitcoin price, it absorbed over 10000 BTC sold by miners in one month earlier in the year.

I suspect you not only avoid forums but also research too, merely glancing at the share price before getting a quick dig in.

Or if it drops to ~4p here, then there might be a 100%+ rise on the cards.

Cine type rise is certainly possible here at some point but not without a catalyst... Argo are fighting for survival, why would it jump 200% without funding news or bitcoin rallying (and hence keeping them afloat)???

Back to Argo... very little ramping going on today, Is PI wishing he'd stuck with Cine yesterday instead of moving profits here instead?

As I've said previously I avoided Argo and Corz because they were in a race against time for bitcoin to turn before they ran into serious trouble, especially Corz with its enormous short term liabilities. Additionally they were in no position to build during the bear market which should be the aim of the game for all miners - once Argo instead went the offloading hash route the story was over.

Clsk potentially would be the next to show distress now that they're expanding more than others but they have considerably longer runway than what Argo and Corz had and we'd need to see bitcoin sink much lower for it to come in the next three to four months (and I don't see that personally, others do.) Will pain hit before the next bitcoin rally and before I have a chance to exit? Possibly but I think the odds are with me and the upside is bigger than others so it's a risk i'm willing to take.

Also I'm happy to see them taking on debt crystallising in 2025, like MSTR, as there's no way I'll be holding at that stage. Punters won't be worrying about that the next time bitcoin pumps, they'll instead be looking at the cash being produced.

Absolutely no Mara envy here! I bought CLSK but if I were to add any more miners it would be Mara next.

You can't compare Corz and Clsk, Chae, Corz f***** itself during the bull market in the same way that Argo did but to a far bigger extent. They bought BlockCap for $1.5B and it's worth 5% of that now. They took on enormous debts and expanded massively at the peak of the bull market.

Clsk haven't been caught out like Corz has, they are expanding at rock bottom prices. Of course their strategy may be based on bitcoin holding at $20K for the foreseeable and therefore could theoretically get caught out if it were to dive to $12k but there's a limit to how stung they could become and the risk is far, far lower.

For clsk to find themselves in trouble before the next bull run it would take management incompetence far beyond what we've seen from Peter Wall and Feinstein - sure it's possible but I'm happy to take my chances.

Chaebol I don't disagree with you but investing in Hut8 is basically like investing in MSTR or even BTC itself, it's an option and it's a relatively safe one but I've gone with the higher risk higher reward option. I suppose I've been quite heartened by bitcoin's resilience over the past three months, I expected it to retest that $17.6k low but the $19k support looks strong and if if it can jump just another 10% to ~$23k I think CLSK's strategy will start to look very good as their cash costs are low and there's a whole bull market to come before they need to worry about depreciation (in which time I'll certainly have exited). Also most of their debt is due 2025 onwards so again there's a bull market to be had first.

So I suppose it's sort of a trade, if bitcoin were to go on a rally in the coming months to $30K I'd be selling CLSK but if bitcoin settles into a range of $19K to $23K I think it'll end up a medium term play.

Well they are just different approaches but difficult to say one is objectively better than the other without knowing how long the bear market continues for. What is good about the CLSK strategy is that management hasn't been caught out by the steep bitcoin drop, they are expanding knowing full well how bad the bear market is which suggests they aren't likely to become distressed at any point soon.

It also depends on what is going to be valued higher in the next bull market, profit or assets? Take Hut8 for example, they have a huge HODL of 8388 vs Clean Spark's 594 so obviously one is way ahead of the other. But Hut8 mined 277 in September vs 448 for CLSK. With one expanding faster than the other that could soon be more than 200 per month more than Hut8 / 2500 a year.

Now which one should be worth more based on the above stats? Hut8 obviously but they *are* valued higher, $441m vs $154m, almost three times higher. I think there's a case to be made for the latter offering bigger upside with more options than hut8 in the next bull market due to vastly higher cash flows.

Chaebol I notice you don't seem to be all that keen on CLSK. Interestingly three weeks ago Argo was valued at $200m (day before dreaded rns landed) and today CLSK is valued at $154m. Seeing as the former was valued at $200m based on the 'hope' of reaching 3.2EH/s by the end of the year with no ppa in place vs CLSK ending the year at 5.5EH/s and still able to expand on the cheap, would you admit there's value there?

Adding that much EH is not going to happen unless bitcoin rallies and they raise heavily, let's be honest. Or perhaps they manage to pull off some Maraesque CLN deals?

I've just gone ahead and bought my first shares in CleanSpark AB. I think there's a case to be made for bitcoin having bottomed now and that the miner capitulation occurred earlier in the year. Currently we have Corz and Argo most at risk of folding but neither of them have any bitcoin to hurt the market with so there's no risk of heavy miner selling pressure in the near term. Mara and hut8 hold the most BTC but they seem financially healthy enough to be able to continue HODLing, so again no real risk of miner dumping.

Considering how much the market absorbed earlier in the year (eg Corz selling 7200 BTC in June) I think the picture is fairly rosy for some of the miners currently. I'm not expecting the start of the bull run for some time but if $20K becomes the new floor with fluctuations between $20K and $30K over the next six months the likes of CLSK will be very well set up once the next bull market strikes.

The problem is PI once you're loss making your assets become more or less worthless.

Argo's 2.5EH/s would be worth $37.5m if new but they aren't new, they could probably sell those machines in batches for about $25m. I'm sure a buyer would be interested in taking Helios and all the installed machines for $50m, maybe more but however you swing it as a distressed seller Argo's value is not worth much more than the current share price suggests.

They are absolutely dependent on bitcoin rallying in the next couple of months.

I might be wrong Hexam but I think what AB is saying is that at $1500 per machine and with a ppa in place of 3 cents per kwh (or lower) and with the land and building already there to instantly plug in the new machines then miners would be able to make an in instant profit on the new machines bought (not overall). And hence it's worth them buying at this price and expanding if the above is true.

That's with BTC at current $20450.

In other words AB any machines bought now (at the price CLSK just bought machines from Argo for) will be instantly profit making once plugged in?

I have a question for you, Hexam or anyone else able to answer this. So we saw Argo just sold brand new still in box Bitmain S19J Pro's for $1450 per unit. Are there any precedents for used machines being sold and how much they go for compared to new-in-box machines? For example Core Scientific will almost certainly be forced to start selling soon and if not it will be the administrators doing the selling... they have 13EH/s self-mining hash rate and a total of 22.5EH/s when including hosting - surely whoever is best placed to take these off their hands are going to be head and shoulders ahead of the rest in the mining space?

Thanks Hexam, that's really helpful.

'For any of the bitcoin miners to move bitcoin will have to move. So why not just buy bitcoin?'

This comes up so often Thunks and there's a simple reason... when bitcoin rises hash rate is unable to keep pace. On top of that all the public listed miners have fallen at least 85% from highs but most have fallen even further.

Let's take CLSK for example. Last year they hit a high of $40 per share. Since then they have expanded considerably and yet the share price is $3.45. What do you think happens if bitcoin surges to $60k in early 2023? Do you thin CLSK trebles to $10 a share matching BTC? No almost certainly it does at least double that, maybe more.

This won't be true of all miners and some won't even be around by that point but yes, after such gargantuan falls there is once again a reason to invest in miners vs BTC directly besides simply wrapping it in an ISA.

On the whole though I'd avoid those at risk of bankruptcy, Corz obviously top of that list and currently Argo second.

Chaebol you've done your research on CLSK, they don't have much cash left to deploy do they?

Still, they've absolutely nailed their strategy expanding like they have at rock bottom prices.