Argo Blockchain facility in West Texas expects to start mining Bitcoin in May

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Cryp­to min­ing com­pa­ny Argo Blockchain’s plans to open a data cen­ter in West Texas are like­ly near­ing com­ple­tion fol­low­ing an inau­gu­ra­tion ceremony.

In a Thurs­day announce­ment on Twit­ter, Argo said it expects to begin min­ing oper­a­tions at its Helios facil­i­ty in Dick­ens Coun­ty, Texas start­ing next week. The announce­ment came more than a year after the min­ing firm pur­chased a 320-acre land plot to con­struct the facil­i­ty, first break­ing ground on the 200-megawatt data cen­ter in July 2021. 

Argo CEO Peter Wall told Coin­tele­graph the facil­i­ty was built in Dick­ens Coun­ty due to access to renew­able ener­gy sources in the company’s aim to “mine Bit­coin in the most eco-friend­ly way pos­si­ble.” As of August 2021, the com­pa­ny said that its cryp­to oper­a­tions had become “cli­mate pos­i­tive” for some clas­si­fi­ca­tions of green­house gas emis­sions, with a plan to even­tu­al­ly become car­bon neutral.

“A lot of [the avail­able pow­er] is some­what strand­ed, mean­ing there is not a lot of local demand or local load to use that pow­er, so we felt that this was a strong oppor­tu­ni­ty to help sta­bi­lize the grid,” said Wall.

The min­ing facil­i­ty will be run­ning with 20,0000 Bit­main S19J Pro rigs, which Argo said will be installed and made oper­a­tional in stages between May and Octo­ber. Argo’s ini­tial pow­er capac­i­ty at the data cen­ter will be 200 MW, with access to an addi­tion­al 600 MW “in the com­ing years.” The com­pa­ny expects a hash rate of 5.5 exa­hash­es per sec­ond by the end of 2022, antic­i­pat­ing the addi­tion­al pow­er capac­i­ty intro­duced lat­er will pro­duce 20 EH/s.

Esti­mates for the total cost of the data cen­ter have ranged from $1.5 bil­lion to $2 bil­lion, accord­ing to a reg­u­la­to­ry fil­ing from Argo in Novem­ber 2021. The min­ing firm also secured a $25 mil­lion loan agree­ment from Galaxy Dig­i­tal LP in Sep­tem­ber 2021 using its Bit­coin (BTC) as col­lat­er­al and said it would fund part of the facil­i­ty with a $57.5 mil­lion offer­ing of senior notes.

Relat­ed: Min­ing world­wide: Where should cryp­to min­ers go in a chang­ing landscape?

Texas has become some­what of a hot spot for cryp­to min­ers look­ing to set up shop, pos­si­bly due to its cheap elec­tric­i­ty and reg­u­la­tions friend­ly to min­ing firms. In April, the City of Fort Worth launched a pilot pro­gram to mine BTC using three Antmin­er S9 rigs in its city hall building.



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