Argo Blockchain shares crashed to fresh lows on Tuesday after the bitcoin miner issued an operational update for September.
The Argo Blockchain share price fell over 25% to 16.5p in early trade on Tuesday, the lowest level since December 2020. Argo Blockchain shares are now down 83% in 2022 and trade at just a fraction of their all-time high around 330p.
Argo’s fall from grace is inextricably linked to waning interest in cryptocurrencies with the most popular coins losing a large proportion of their value this year.
However, today’s decline follows an operational update that showed Argo mined less Bitcoins in September than the prior month, and said they were curtailing their operations due to high energy prices.
Argo mined 215 Bitcoin or Bitcoin Equivalents in September, down from 235 in August. It is difficult to see a favourable scenario for increased mining activity in the near-term with high energy prices set to persist.
Mining revenue diminished significantly falling to $4.27 million in September from $5.23 million in August. Although revenue fell, Argo saw their mining margin increase to 25% from 20%.
Argo recently announced a scramble to raise capital by selling mining machines and issuing equity.
“As another month of high energy prices and uncertain market conditions ended, Argo continues to execute on its plans to grow operations at Helios,” said Peter Wall, Chief Executive Officer at Argo Blockchain.
“We are nearing completion of the installation of our new Bitmain S19J Pro machines, which will increase our total hashrate capacity to 2.9 EH/s by the end of the month. This will represent a 81% increase in total hashrate capacity since Q1 2022. I continue to be proud of our team for its efforts to deliver long-term growth in the interest of our shareholders.”