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Interesting @Herdie. What do you think he's done to weather the bear market? All I see is a company not prepared to deploy it's own capital (for reasons) diverging from it's core market but into things that accelerate bull run returns rather than anything defensive. What have I missed?

Selling pressure should start to taper off later tomorrow, but may carry on through to Monday or Tuesday. Depends on how quickly people are trying to flip PB or bail out. I imagine most PB flips will have been done by now but might not be recorded till tomorrow morning. Some weak hands will see that as selling continuing and fold. Hopefully after the weekend people will be able to move on from what's happened.

Investors might not remember what Peter's done, but they will remember how he made them feel and I'm not convinced that's good for the SP long term as many will head for the door when the bear comes along who might not have done so before. I'll reallocate some ARB over the coming weeks as I'm overpositioned. Every opportunity is going to have a "will this be better long term than leaving it in ARB" question attached, which is a good thing to have IMO.

"I’m sure Peter Is also focusing on differentiating Argo as more of a broad blockchain company, hence the Pluto investment so that Argo is not subject to the boom and bust of bitcoin cycles and is therefore more of a compelling investment for prospective shareholders - this has to be the short to medium term plan otherwise shareholders will just cash out when the bull run finishes"

When the party stops alts die off after bitcoin. It's how it goes. When the bull run finishes there will be a run for the door the likes of which you've never seen. It's just how crypto goes. The smart thing to invest in would be companies like coinbase or predominantly non-crypto payment systems like Paypal, or holding non-correlated assets like gold. Investing in alts is an accelerator on returns in a bull run, not a strategy for surviving a bear.

All this talk of staking alts is only going to hold in a bull run. Look at the alt charts for coins like peercoin (first PoS in 2012), dash (major masternode coin), FunFair (comparable to Plutos investment in lepricon). No staking coin survived 3 bears and came out on top. None. Yes there are profits to be made, yes survivors (like peercoin) would've increased in dollar value but no they're not going to win.

Best thing to do is go through the pluto portfolio page, look at the holdings, find out what they do and read up on similar alts in prior bull/bears. That's probably the best indicator you can get. Without a bear plan Pluto will shoot for the moon and then end up a frozen corpse in space for at least a year before waking up.

If they're not going to dilute further then they should come out with it. If there's anything else, even news on the Nasdaq front it's best to let things die down and keep shtum for a week. Sales will be fulfilled early next week and things will die down. If he pops up now he's just whipping it all up again.

As long as this doesn't turn into another Bidstack situtation it'll all be good. Bidstack whipped up a whole load of people to support them then when things turned sour it got very ugly. Doesn't help the SP, doesn't help investors. It's just not worth it.

Nobody commenting here did the full DD on Pluto and the deal. I did some digging but it's incomplete. So nothing anyone here can say comes from any position of knowledge unless they have something to do with either company.

Yes, most definitely

It just needs time and no more surprise dilutions. Get to the weekend, let everyone have the weekend off and on monday things will have calmed down, the shares will have gone and things will have bottomed out.

I wouldn't expect a rerate based on whatever BTC's done this week. Best to assume that damage is done. We will hopefully not drop if BTC retraces, and any other shenanigans notwithstanding I would be unsurprised to see this drifting up from mid-week. If gwe get a NASDAQ announcement a week or two after that should be fine. Worst thing that could happen would be a Nasdaq announcement while this is all fresh in peoples heads.

@Jblancashire if this place was just for posting facts it'd be awfully quiet!

From what I've seen across boards and socials it seems a lot of investors are upset about different aspects of the last raising. Some are taking profit or otherwise reducing ARB positions and allocating some to MARA, RIOT etc. Add to that people selling yesterday to cover their PB discount buys and tomorrow's share issue general sentiment looks more bearish than bullish. You can see it in the way the RSI behaves on the daily and hourly. We're caught in a channel between 231 and 280. If we can hold above 231 and there are no more surprise dilutions sentiment should return some time next week. I'm no longer buying and will reduce my position slightly above 280. Based on BTC sentiment and the stimulus we really ought to be challenging 290 rn. People make mistakes, I'm sure the BoD will learn from them.

Doesn't look quite fully formed from here. RSI is low but the timing isn't quite optimum for a reversal. I'd prefer to see things trundle along till next monday. Then we can have a breakout and head back towards 280.

I said I'd try to post more positive stuff, so here we are.

Looking at the daily chart we appear to be touching the 20MA. If we can hold through the 11th, I imagine there'll be some upward price pressure from early next week as the placing damage dies down subject to BTC not pooping the bed. Anything above 280-285 is an indicator of a resuming bull trend. Anything below 225 is might be brown trowser time for some. Above 285 is probably worth buying. Below 225 may be worth buying. If we see a drop through the 20MA today or tomorrow I imagine thursday morning's issue will push things lower, after which might be time to buy for those interested. If all goes well we may see a retest of 300 in a couple of weeks providing any surprises on the way are only good news.

I keep some powder dry. Still updating my own investment thesis in light of recent events. Until I've reached a conclusion I'd be tempted to scale in from 305 up or 210 down. HTH, GLA

Also just to add. If people don't like what I'm saying feel free to filter me. Contrary to what people claim I'm not someone else who's been banned. Long time lurker but only started posting recently. As I said in another thread I tend not to post in the good times and think it's valid to raise and discuss concerns. If this makes you unhappy you're better off filtering me out, but then you'll miss out on the analyses I've committed to posting in the good times too. GLA.

I also get that I'm posting fairly negative stuff here. I'm unfortunately not a happy clappy worshipper. I think it's legitimate to voice my concerns and discuss them. I tend not to post in the good times because there isn't much to add. For the benefit of the board I'll share my more positive research on ARB, ZEC and Pluto's holdings when it starts moving up again even if I've sold out by then. I think that's at least fair.

@Wassap yes I'm heavily invested. I'll write to Peter today, the nature of the response I receive will determine whether or not I continue to be heavily invested. In all likelihood I will reduce my allocation because being affected by these actions means my position is at best too big.

Dilution isn't 3%, it's closer 10% with the last 8 weeks or so. We had over $50 million in shares announced in a day. That's insane. I'm not concerned about an individual dilution. I'm concerned with a pattern of dilutions, surprises and what looks like from the outside frankly poor governance. If a company is profitable but cannot keep the lights on without diluting investors it's badly run. Don't be blinded by the fact that BTC is going up. It will go down too, and at that point if overdiluted selling will become more difficult.

Peter talked about the long term in this video. He will know the long term includes crypto bear markets. If he keeps diluting the company will fare worse when they come. Placings are not the only way to raise funds. They literally have a stake in a DeFi business. How they can not look at staking or DeFi-based funding is beyond me. They wouldn't lose their crypto going down that route but would still get the money.

It's probably people selling shares in advance of buying them back at the discount from PB. After that it'll be suppressed due to the new shares being issued on the 11th. This is a consequence of a poorly executed raise and dilution. The price will go up when all this calms down, but without the dilution we'd probably be enjoying higher prices now followed by higher prices later.

Yesterday's flash sale was additional shares to maintain their stake. They didn't have to notify because the dilution was below voting requirements. The Texas money was voted on at a recent EGM, not the prior AGM. The prior AGM vote was about the initial stake in Pluto with the ability to keep up with dilution. The way things were worded suggests a possible interpretation by Argo that they don't need a vote to dilute to keep their 25%, while some investors would argue the vote was for the purchase, which included the facility to raise extra money to maintain their 25%.

The issues aren't the votes themselves, it's the $54.5 million of total placings announced. Some of the money will be used for "Working Capital" - this means they have a negative return on capital employed, or rather are running out of operational money. They will have almost certainly known about both placings when they sold their shares earlier.

There are red flags and sirens everywhere with this action. I firmly believe this is just from poor advice, not malice. This is the kind of behaviour I expect with an AIM stock, not the LSE. Even gold miners sell some of their holdings in bull runs to fund working capital. They should not be diluting investors to pay for things like salaries and office toilet roll. Having said that if they come out with a proper plan to tell investors how they're going to raise money in the future and how much then that goes a hell of a long way towards putting things right. Surprise dilutions cannot be the norm.

The crazy thing is they don't need to sell their crypto to put it to work. For people in the space they seem to be oblivious to DeFi staking and loan raising. They could've had the money in under 15 minutes through DeFi loans against some of their BTC, then paid it back later to sell the BTC when ready. Typically only distressed businesses issue placings at discounts which is where my point about red flags comes from. Crypto mining companies burn cash, they seem to think diluting investors is the best way for them to raise money to keep the lights on. For them it's probably right. For investors not so much.

I'd prefer to believe this is just following poor advice than anything deliberate. It's fast moving, they clearly don't want to sell BTC and are doing what they can to avoid selling it. I can completely understand the desire given where BTC is headed but it's ill founded. They will make crazy bank holding on to BTC till closer to the top, but the company will become so diluted it'll be homeopathic. Unfortunately screwing over PIs with placing after placing is just not the way to run a business. It needs to be balanced. They do at some point need to sell assets or access that $100 million credit facility they told us all about, because right now this month alone we're well on the way to being the $100 million credit facility.

Issuing shares for "Working Capital" is an AIM-grade move. Whomever put that forward as a serious idea needs to be fired right now. It's effectively taking from investors to buy (or in this case not sell) BTC. I understand the issues around selling BTC but the dilutions are going too far. There needs to be a balance between dilution, BTC sales and debt. People here are acting as though dilutions are free money. They are not.

I agree with Mysteryguy that it needs to expand, not convinced diversification really means anything in this space (and I've been in it professionally for a very long time). All price action in this space is at the whim of BTC anyway. Nothing ARB do in this space will protect them from BTC losing 80%+ of value.

They'll need more capital to build the Texas facility. If this is to be funded through raises they need to be upfront about it, lay it all out and put it to a vote. That way investors aren't being diluted to nothing for no reason. At some point BTC will crash and the market will be flooded with shares nobody wants to buy.

The comms are normally on fire but this time was handled terribly. Peter needs to answer the uncomfortable questions about this, honestly and quickly. His video didn't touch on any of the awkward questions about private placing money, how much he knew when the directors sold or any of the other questions if ignored send the wrong signals.

It's not diversification if a crypto miner (price action dependent on bitcoin's) buys into a crypto investment (price action dependent on bitcoin's) incubator.

Diversification would be if they received shares in a regular online payments firm in exchange for helping them work with crypto payments. This is peak ICO BS territory. Every dilution is stealing growth from existing investors. I know ARB don't want to sell their crypto now when they could get far more for it later. That doesn't justify an endless sea of placings eroding value. We're multiples of what our competitors have in terms of issued shares already. When Bitcoin crashes (as it always does) these shares will flood the market. Peter knows all this but they do it anyway. He probably knew about these issues when they put out the vote for the GM. He probably knew about these issues when him and the other directors sold their shares recently.

I'm one of those people who will object to dilution generally, which is why I checked out the numbers. My main concerns with my sums were around that first lot calculation being based on current shares rather than current plus new but the difference is about 0.01% (0.96%/0.95%).

Dumping the full 12.5 mil-worth in one hit in a BTC low would probably have a bigger impact from news rather than actual dilution, but it would make sense to split into chunks of say, 1% for a similar impact to this thursday. 3 further dilution events of around 1% a time would then seem reasonable to me. Tying dilution to contractual milestones that contribute to returns looks shrewd to me.