Block reward miner Argo Blockchain secures loan to expand Texas facility

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U.K.-based blockchain company Argo Blockchain (LSE: ARB) announced it secured a £14 million (US$20 million) loan agreement to continue the build-out of its West Texas data center.

The loan agreement is for a six-month term financed by digital currency financial services firm Galaxy Digital LP. Argo backed the loan using a portion of its BTC holdings as collateral, thus avoiding having to sell any of its digital tokens to fund the facility’s expansion. Argo did not disclose additional details of the financing.

Argo CEO Peter Wall commented: “We are delighted to work with Galaxy Digital LP as we pursue our growth plans and to form a solid relationship with them as a financing partner. This agreement allows Argo to secure competitive terms on a loan facility while also allowing us to continue to HODL our Bitcoin.”

Argo was ahead of the curve in ramping up its North American operations. The firm had already signaled its intentions in Texas earlier this year when it touted that the facility would eventually have a power capacity of 200 megawatts (MW).

Argo’s recent round of financing comes when block reward miners are fleeing China at record numbers because of government crackdowns on the energy-intensive industry. The Chinese government may have finally woken up to realize that the BTC network’s high energy consumption requirements hinder its power grids and wastefully misuses energy.

Or, the crackdown is a precursor to the rumored forthcoming launch of its own state-backed blockchain-based digital currency.

No matter the reason, increasingly many of the displaced block reward miners are setting their sights on friendly North American regions. The states and provinces have historically been rich in cheap renewable energy, have advanced infrastructures, and offer more stable regulatory security around the industry.

Lars Jorgensen, Chief Operating Officer of TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), noted that: “This suddenly puts more pressure on the whole hosting situation, because now all of these really large mining farms from China will be pushing out to find hosting possibilities somewhere else.”

Block reward miners’ solution will realistically take longer than expected to get off the ground, i.e., moving to North America. If these companies continue to ignore that their resource-intensive activities are wasteful, they might be setting themselves up for another mass exodus soon.

BTC network supporters do little to nothing regarding increasing efficiency across industries, and because the chain can’t scale, companies can’t easily build business solutions onto it.

Real commerce and utility take place primarily on the BSV blockchain network. The only environmentally friendly digital currency is BSV.

Watch: CoinGeek Zurich panel, BSV is real green Bitcoin