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A well-managed bitcoin miner - in huge contrast to ARB.
All that boosterist rhetoric from PW about Perry being the best “pound for pound” miner in the industry was clearly just that. Ben Gagnon > Perry.
PW is the best “pound for pound” snake oil salesman.
I’ll agree that the past year has been a comedy of errors for ARB. Poor decisions, poor timing, reduced transparency, increased misleading (if not untrustworthiness - the repeated mention of 2c/kWh is unforgivable). It has descended into farce now.
I still don’t understand why PW decided to build a 200MW facility in one fell swoop (and buy the transformers for the remaining 600MW) - the sensible approach would have been to develop 8 x 100MW buildings rather than 4 x 200MW buildings.
1. Build the Infrastructure. 2. Fully kit it out. 3. Full it with mining machines. 4. Get a PPA for that 100MW facility. 5. Move on to the next 100MW facility.
Obviously it doesn’t need to be entirely sequential/linear, but a more modular approach was clearly the best approach given what we know now about PPA and being unable to afford enough miners to fill the facility.
A comedy of errors. I actually can’t see Argo surviving the bear market. It’s almost inconceivable how badly PW and his team have managed ARB for the past year, particularly the more recent transgressions which have come to light. i struggle to grasp how they have managed to squander such a strong position relative to other bitcoin miners and end up in such a sorry state.
Hut8, BitFarms, Riot are all far more compelling investment propositions now - I don’t see any reason to stay invested in ARB. I’ve been reducing my holding for a while now, but I see no reason whatsoever to remain invested in ARB at all.
‘~$0.02/kWh’ was plastered all over the investor presentations - and ‘$0.04/kWh’ for the facilities in Canada.
$0.02/kWh was sold to investors as a fixed price, and that curtailment was the only risk to mining and profitability.
The ~85 BTC per EH is utterly, utterly atrocious.
With each passing month, ARB increasingly appears to be a masterclass in mismanagement. Times are only going to get tougher and, if PW doesn’t pull his finger out soon, ARB will go under before long.
PW and team really need to pull their fingers out now.
There’s no room for excuses; they need to deliver. Last month’s performance was abysmal. Mistakes like Terrapool can’t be made, Machines need to be installed and brought online as fast as possible, and the absolute maximum value needs to be extracted from existing machines.
I briefly spotted some estimates of $30k AISC per bitcoin mined - if I understood the logic/calculations correctly, those costs will incrementally decrease as hashrate (/number of bitcoin mined) incrementally increases.
That needs to be an immediate-term aim of ARB - to, as fast as possible, bring the AISC lower than the price of bitcoin.
Chaebol, it’s not a 7% loss though - it’s almost broke even. PW explained this… he said Argo Labs Luna investment was yield generating so after selling the Luna at 93p, it equated to almost break even.
You clearly know this but, as usual, decide to cherry pick the news to suit your agenda.
This is why you have no credibility.
Some excellent forensic accounting there Hexam.
As you suggest, I’m not sure it’s intentional, just some very sloppy work.
Argo really need to sort out their RNSs/publications ; it really is becoming farcical.
I’d guess Alex - the rent-a-CFO - has ultimate responsibility, and I’m not surprised that he oversees/delivers sloppy work. I’ve always been sceptical of his quality - particularly so after the NASDAQ ADR listing debacle. As Chaebol says, he needs to go - he’s the obvious weak link of the BOD, and the jury is out on Seb too as far as I’m concerned.
Not quite that simple in reality though is it?
You continually slated the company with your glib remarks; I think everybody has had concerns but you repeatedly promulgated how bad a company Argo is.
I don’t know if you noticed but every other publicly listed crypto miner is 70+% off their ATHs too. It wasn’t Argo that did this, it was crypto in general. And, with the general hubris and smugness within your posts, what do you expect?
Did you see my use of the word ‘directly’?
Of course that extra liquidity in the economy contributes to inflation; but quantitative easing didn’t cause oil and food prices to suddenly spike upwards did it?
Additionally, a lot of that extra liquidity resulted in asset price inflation; house prices, crypto prices, equities. That happened and has stabilised or is now in retreat.
The same will happen with CPI/RPI inflation.
Inflation isn’t driven directly by banks printing money, it’s driven by supply/demand.
Increasing demand for goods as the world emerges from covid will be logarithmic (I.e. Reducing rates of growth). Reduced supply of oil and food due to the Ukraine war will likely have seen the biggest impact on inflation already. Central banks have stopped pumping money into their economies. I can’t see inflation being sustained at this level.
I can see the economy sat on the precipice. I can see rat hikes and quantitative tightening absolutely decimating the economy. I can see central banks restarting quantitative easing in the not-too-distant future to stop their economies from collapsing.
So what will drive these 25% inflation rates? You do realise that inflation is a rate of change measure right? The war in Ukraine is well underway, emerging from covid has mostly happened. What global events/changes do you suggest will continue to drive inflation upwards?
Additionally, if inflation does continue to run rampant, why would people take cash positions? Why would the BOE drive the economy into severe recession by upping the base rate to 5%?
An equally plausible outcome is that inflation starts to fall, and economic activity continues to drop off a cliff, so the BOE restart QE to get the economy moving again.
I just got round to listening to the annual results, which were all round excellent.
I think Argo are really starting to get into their stride after a ropey 6-12 months; PW was as confident as I’ve seen him.
Shareholders’ disgruntlement has been heard and acted upon; so no dilution this year. Helios is on schedule, and probably has outperformed expected timelines. It’s shaping up to be one of the, if not the, best facilities in the world. The miner swap with Core was a brilliant move. It looks like the ERCOT issues won’t be an issue for Argo. The priority supply agreement with Intel to allows custom built Argo rigs to maximise performance, for a lower cost per TH. Efficiency is industry leading, and that’ll only increase when Helios is online.
Argo are so building so many competitive advantages in the sector, and building some key relationships; this is what is needed to succeed.
Argo may not be taking the brute force approach that Mara et al. are, but they’re definitely taking the more refined, smarter approach. There’s an F1 vs NASCAR analogy in here somewhere.
After today, I fail to see how you can’t be bullish on ARB if you believe in bitcoin. It was significantly undervalued even before today’s news. PW alluded to more big news being in the pipeline too. My concerns with this company have now been alleviated.
This Ercot news is concerning; hopefully Argo will put out an RNS to clarify exactly how much power they have access to.
It’s good to get opposing views but, Chaebol, the residents of Texas pay 15c per kWh because they use electricity at times of peak demand, Argo will pay 2c per kWh because they won’t use electricity at times of peak demand. It really is that simple.
More than anything else, a good chairman is needed ASAP.
PW is judge, jury and executioner as things stand, and some of his decision making has been questionable at best. A chairman would act as a filter for any decisions, and ensure decisions are made to create value/benefit shareholders.
The engagement, the Q&As, the enthusiasm, the drive - I’m not seeing it in PW currently; he used to be excellent, not so much these days.
Intel aren’t claiming that - that’s 1000x compared to the latest GPUs.
S19 Pro uses ASICs rather than GPU chips; and lots of them.
Current evidence suggests the first gen Intel miner is 15% more efficient than S19 Pro and second gen (2023) is 40% more efficient.
Not 100000%.
Why is it S19 with immersion vs Intel with no immersion?
That’s a logical stretch, to say the least.
The S19s bought by Argo likely won’t be immersed. But if an S19 can be immersed, an Intel miner can also. I’d posit that the Intel miner is more likely to be cooled using immersion than the S19s.
You’re the person repeatedly promulgating the fact that bitcoin mining is a race… if it drives costs down, then, yes, more machines will be bought, but by the same logic, you could buy more more efficient Intel machines and get much higher hashrate.
You can buy 15% more machines or buy 15% more efficient machines - they both result in the same hashrate AKA the ‘race’ you keep mentioning.
15% more efficient is not something to turn your nose up at. That’s huge given that it has taken Bitmain ~3 years to get such a gain.
Next year that 15% more efficient will become ~40% more efficient.
That 40% may, next year, end up being ~30% to Bitmain’s top miner, but add immersion and Argo could end up needing half as many machines for the same hashrate as competitors (obviously funding is an issue though).
It’s highly unlikely that Bitmain will be able to compete; they’ve essentially used the same chip architecture for 3-4 years - their efficiency gains have only come from process node improvements.
Bitmain do not have the technical expertise and experience for chip design that Intel has.