Argo Blockchain made its debut on the public stock exchange in London last week. Unlike conventional stocks and ETFs, Argo Blockchain is a crypto mining company that has yet to generate any revenue. To this point, they have only been able to gain funding from their few customers; yet despite that fact, they reached a market valuation of over $60 million on the London Stock Exchange. Argo Blockchain was founded by Jonathan Bixby and Mike Edwards, a pair of Canadian entrepreneurs. The company is less than 10 months old, meaning a valuation as high as it is a real feat at this point.
Crypto mining is the painstaking process of verifying cryptocurrency transactions. To verify these transactions, crypto miners have to perform an extensive computing process. As a result of crypto mining, individuals or companies are rewarded for verifying the transaction with cryptocurrency. With cryptocurrency serving the function of allowing for independent transactions at a decentralized level, crypto mining was originally meant to offer the same. What Argo has seen is that this is simply not the case. According to Bixby, 98% of current crypto mining is done on a large scale by wealthy miners.
Argo’s new idea is to serve as what they are referring to as the “Amazon Web Services of crypto.” In this sense, Argo plans to establish data centers across the world, including Canada, China, and Europe, and offer the opportunity for low-cost crypto mining to everyday users. These users would then be on a rolling monthly contract. Instead of the traditional mining focused on Bitcoin, Argo is only focusing on less resource-intensive cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Bitcoin Gold, and Zcash.
With the model that they set forward, it is very likely that Argo will be competing with Genesis Mining. Genesis Mining offers mining capacity to its client on a two or five-year contract basis. However, it is believed that Genesis Mining has a waiting list of more than one million people. Unlike Genesis Mining, Argo is aiming to educate the next level of crypto miners. They want to share the opportunities that exist with the next generation and show that they can earn a handsome dollar from various crypto opportunities. In the words of Bixby, “We believe a millennial, well everybody but specifically a millennial, should start building up a portfolio and in that portfolio, a certain percentage should be crypto assets.”
One of the main ways they hope to educate the next generation is to create an unavoidable presence to spread their word. They are hoping to get the first retail location up and running in London, followed by storefronts in Seoul, Tokyo, and Singapore. Rather than focusing on sales, Argo hopes to place its focus on educating the public and offering top notch customer service.
Since Argo went public, the price of the share has dropped 25%, but Argo and many investors remain optimistic.
