Gordon Stein, CFO of CleanTech Lithium, explains why CTL acquired the 23 Laguna Verde licenses. Watch the video here.
Share buybacks would be better for shareholders than dividends in Argo’s case.
I think PW should consider a strategy of selling 5% of the HODL whilst BTC is at bull market highs to fund a stock buyback at bear market lows. And a larger % to fund further machine purchases.
Argo need to generate value for shareholders, not just accumulate BTC for the sake of it.
I’d like the opportunity to ask a blanket question to PW of “What is your primary strategic aim for Argo?”, as I think it’d reveal whether he’s a good CEO of a publicly listed company or just a crypto enthusiast.
Decent numbers for 1.6EH.
I was expecting an extra ~100 PH to be installed last month. Current installed hashrate is 1.605 EH, but previous RNSs have said ARB will get to 1.7EH.
Have I missed something in previous RNSs?
Nobody will, unless it gets investigated by the SEC.
Personally, I think it was very expensive for what it was; a land purchase with an interconnection agreement.
Either way, it doesn’t fill me with confidence that PW is able to do good business on behalf of his shareholders and team. Even if Helios was good value, some of that $200m could have been spent on machines. As could the $5m that went to ePIC (which isn’t generating any return whatsoever) - our money shouldn’t be PW’s personal slush fund, and any Chairman worth their salt would likely have challenged both the Helios purchase and the ePIC investment.
The priority for shareholders now should be a good Chairman; we need someone to challenge PW’s decision making to ensure he’s acting in shareholders’ best interests.
I’ve reduced my holding here significantly over the past few months, I won’t invest any more money in ARB until there’s a Chairman in post.
However, whilst I think PW and team have made a good strategic decision with Helios (and the value of this is being underestimated due to people think about bull rather than bear market), I think they have put far too much weight on cheap energy/input costs and risks, and completely forgot about mining machines/production.
ARB are going to have a state of the art facility, one of the most efficient in the world, and extremely well placed to remaining profitable during bear markets and well into the future as profitability reduces. Buy they aren’t going to to be able to fill this incredible facility with machines to actually mine the bitcoin - it’s farcical decision making of the highest order.
The Bitfarms growth model is much more appropriate for mid-sized miners - incremental growth in hashrate by incrementally growing both facilities and numbers of machines. Yes, they might not be as efficient as Helios but it’s a balancing act between all components that contribute to the production of a bitcoin; PW and team have not come close to finding this balance.
I think the China and Kazakhstan situation give us an idea of the direction of bitcoin mining…
1. To the West where there’s a more secure supply of energy
2. To green energy sources which aren’t affected by massive price fluctuations (and, long term, increasing costs)
3. Away from fossil fuel sources which are likely to bear the brunt of any regulation in the sector
4. Small/inefficient miners will struggle to remain profitable and will eventually succumb to rising energy costs
All of the above are positive news for ARB long term; there will be a global bitcoin mining scramble for cheap, secure, green energy over the next few years. MARA and others will probably find themselves in a few sticky situations over the next few years, and will likely buy out a smaller miner for their existing-access to cheap, green energy (such as ARB).
I’ve seen theories relating to;
- the switching on of the ~$500m of machines that El Salvador bought last year.
- Chinese miners waiting until 1st Jan to switch their machines back on hoping the government wouldn’t notice/be too bothered now that accessing exchanges is banned
- Chinese machines relocated to Kazakhstan with a target switch on date of 1st Jan, but the fuel crisis and riots led to power cuts and rationing of power use soon after
This has got me thinking, and this could be the ace up ARB’s sleeve.
I wonder if a full immersion set up could just use the hashboards immersed directly in the dielectric fluid, forgoing all other components.
If so, this could be a gamechanger as buying just hashboards will be far cheaper than buying full machines.
If accounting for immersion then that’ll take a decent amount of time; they’ll need to be prepped and cleaned - I guess they’ll just take the hashboard out, remove heatsinks, clean the board, connect up to PSU and immerse it.
Most of the IIs listed in Mike’s posts are buying for their bitcoin/blockchain/miner/crypto funds.
Funds buy the required amount of shares to reach their published weightings, and then buy and sell depending on how much capital flows into/out of the fund.
Whilst the topic of quality posting, whether negative or positive, is being mentioned, let me address the abysmal quality post above.
It might take an entire country of miners 6-12 months to relocate abroad - and the industry wasn’t discussing relocation to Kazakhstan, it was relocation abroad; even to the US.
It wouldn’t take ARB 6-12 months to relocate to Texas; set up a good process/production line and you could be looking at an average of 36-48 hours downtime per miner.
How will ARB be mining 500 a month?
A large, well-ventilated shed doesn’t mine bitcoin, ASIC mining machines do. ARB doesn’t have enough machines on order to get close to 500 BTC per month. The machines on order will be delivered and installed over several months to July. Ironically, the 2021 machines were supposed to be delivered and installed over 2/3 months to July, but this ended up being October/November.
ARB needs a chairman ASAP to start representing shareholders’ interests and start holding PW’s feet to the fire.
There’s no way ARB will be able to raise the $600m+ needed to fill Texas. It’s almost the entire market cap of the company, during a time when BTC is facing bearish sentiment, as is ARB. It’d likely halve the SP, making any future capital raises even more difficult, thus making it more difficult to keep up with total network hashrate growth which, in turn, negatively affects the share price. A downward spiral. Furthermore, there’s no chance of getting any new machines in 2022, so a raise now to then wait 12+ months for machines - the SP won’t just bounce back. ARB will need to do another raise - at a lower SP - to buy the next batch of machines. A downward spiral.
Ultimately though, I doubt there’s enough interest in the sector to raise $600m.
Either way, as things stand, Texas will be mostly empty and not generating income. Therefore, the capital used to build Texas has been poorly deployed and, therefore, it shouldn’t have been built - at least to the specification it has been built to.
I doubt a raise is coming anytime soon. I don’t think there’s the appetite for it… sentiment is yet to recover from the botched IPO and BTC is looking bearish.
Any attempted raise for the levels of capital needed would almost certainly fail and it’d be the end of ARB as a bitcoin mining company. The IPO mortally wounded ARB due to low SP = inability to raise funds, another capital raise anytime soon would be the death knell.
It’s already looking like Texas will be mostly empty. **** poor decision making from management has resulted in all the money being spent on the very thing which doesn’t generate any income.
ARB can only succeed as a hosting company now, and their mining operations will need to grow by reinvesting hosting income into new machines.
The future looked very bright for ARB early last year, and now it looks gloomy at best. Possibly the most frustrating/failed potential company I ever invested in.
By all means keep an eye on the BTC price.
But also keep an eye on total network hashrate which absolutely rocketed on 1st Jan - from 140EH to 220EH, a ~50% increase.
Seems a strange coincidence that such a large amount of hashrate comes online on 1st day of the new year, after the China BTC ban takes effect.
I’ve been catching up with friends and family from across the globe over the Xmas period. Obviously bitcoin and bitcoin mining has been a topic of discussion. I was told that bitcoin miners are more or less viewed as hobbyists/enthusiasts/cowboys in the tech world currently.
I am highly sceptical of ePIC as of this evening; Henry Quan mentioned how his team are industry leaders in GPU design and have a close relationship with TSMC which would benefit them.
Apparently that’s absolute rubbish. TSMC’s fab capacity is fully booked for the next 2 years at least. Apple are moving away from Intel, Tesla, Qualcomm, AMD, Nvidia, VW, Mercedes, Ford, all the global mega companies have bought up 7nm, 5nm and are reserving 3nm capacity. Bitmain already get the crumbs despite being lucky over the last year due to larger companies reducing their orders, and are likely to get fewer chips in future years than this year.
ePIC have absolutely no chance of getting any TSMC chips for the next 2-3 years at least. I think PW May have fallen for the boosterist marketing of a startup that needed some money. Not impressed.
However, I’m confident Bitmain are have hugely overpromised and won’t come remotely close to meeting all orders throughout 2022. So total network hashrate is very likely to not grow anywhere near as fast as we might expect. This would be a relative positive for ARB and probably most detrimental to MARA who certainly won’t hit 20EH+ by end 2022.
Again, however, TSMC aren’t the only semiconductor manufacturer - Samsung and Intel also produce huge numbers of chips albeit they’re more expensive and less open to custom/bespoke design. So perhaps Bitmain will look to other manufacturers, but this is highly unlikely.
So, the golden nugget was a rumour that Intel are developing their own bitcoin mining ASIC on their new Intel 4 node. It’ll likely be more expensive but as this is Intel, and their new process mode is better than TSMCs current 5nm node. I’d guess the collective genius of Intel is better than the collective genius of TSMC, and with a better process node, Bitmain could be in for a bit of a shock after more-or-less monopolising the market over the past year.
This is the thing with emerging tech - and PW keeps saying “crypto years” but ‘tech years’ aren’t hugely different - a big player spots a growing market and gets involved or radical new tech completely upturns the entire landscape. It’s not always about buying as much as possible as fast as possible, sometimes it’s about keeping your ear to the wall and finding the most opportune moment to buy.
I’ve had a few wines but an incredible discussion with old friends tonight.