Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Invests $100 Million to Prevent Argo Bitcoin Miner Firm Bankruptcy

Galaxy Digital, Michael Novogratz’s crypto-focused financial services firm will buy Argo’s Helios Bitcoin (BTC) mining facility and provide an additional $35 million loan to help with restructuring efforts.

This was announced in an official press release published by Argo Blockchain.

As a part of the deal, Galaxy will give Argo a new asset-backed loan in an aggregate principal amount of $35 million with an initial term of 36 months. This particular financing will be secured by a collateral package that includes mining machines currently operating at Helios, as well as some machines located at Argo’s Canadian data centers. 

Peter Wall, Argo’s Chief Executive, said, “This transaction with Galaxy is a transformational one for Argo and benefits the Company in several ways. It reduces our debt by $41 million and provides us with a stronger balance sheet and enhanced liquidity to help ensure continued operations through the ongoing bear market. It also allows us to focus on optimizing our operations with significantly lower capex [capital expenditures] and opex [operating expenses] requirements.”

Argo said it would use the cash proceeds from the sale of Helios, as well as a portion of the borrowings under the asset-backed loan, to repay existing debts, prepayment interest, and other fees of approximately $84 million owed to NYDIG ABL LLC and $1 million to North Mill Commercial Finance. Some $6 million will be returned to the company upon this repayment from a collateral account controlled by NYDIG ABL LLC.

Galaxy to host 23,600 machines

Galaxy will host Argo’s 23,619 Bitmain S19J Pro mining machines located at Helios for two years. The companies plan on working together on the transition at Helios in order to minimize disruption to operations, said the announcement.

Wall said that “Argo will maintain ownership of its fleet of Bitcoin mining machines, which represents approximately 2.5 EH/s of total hashrate capacity. Our miners currently operating at Helios will continue to be hosted there by Galaxy, which is a high-quality, institutional participant in the Bitcoin mining space.”

All this said, and given the newly made deal with Galaxy, Argo said that it would not report earnings results for the third quarter of this year. 

As reported, in October Argo warned that it could be forced to shut down after a $27 million share sale appeared to have collapsed, sending the stock plummeting the most since its 2018 initial public offering. It said that it raised about $5.6 million by selling almost 4,000 new Bitmain mining machines and was exploring other funding avenues. 

“Should Argo be unsuccessful in completing any further financing, Argo would become cash flow negative in the near term and would need to curtail or cease operations,” the miner was quoted as saying at the time – but this deal with Galaxy has helped the company keep its doors open.

And Argo is far from the only mining company struggling during this crypto winter. Compute North filed for bankruptcy in September, and Core Scientific did the same just recently. 

You can watch the full video of Peter Wall commenting on the Helios sale here:

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Learn more: 
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