Seven months ago most citizens of Dickens County would’ve been hard pressed to say what “blockchain” was.
The first week of October, 2021, the community met a corporate newcomer with the term in its business name. Argo Blockchain treated Dickens County to a block party celebrating the start of an ambitious flagship enterprise—and now they’re on the verge of launching it.
Next Thursday, May 5, Argo will fling open the doors of its Helios bitcoin mining facility north of Dickens for a grand opening event. For a few hours, members of the public, elected officials, and VIPs will get a glimpse of Argo’s banks of computers churning out the complex computations that create a 21st-century version of money.
Guests will be treated to a barbecue lunch, live music, and a guided tour of the facility, preceded by welcome remarks, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
A limited number of tickets to the event are available to residents of Dickens County. Tickets may be reserved at rsvp@argoblockchain.com or (806) 269-0422 and claimed in person at Spur Hardware or Dickens City Hall during regular business hours until Friday, April 29 at 5:00 p.m.
All attendees must have a ticket for entrance; there is a limit to two tickets per household for residents of Dickens County.
‘A big moment for us’
Argo CEO Peter Wall, in an interview with The Texas Spur last week, said that the Helios project represented the culmination of many years’ work. Though cryptocurrency may seem to have arrived in Dickens County like a bolt out of the blue, Wall and his team have been involved for some years in figuring out the most energy-efficient way to produce digital money, which involves massive amounts of computing power.
Founded in 2017 in London, Argo already mines crypto in Quebec, using mostly hydropower. But as Wall told the New York Times recently, Argo was drawn to the ample green energy in West Texas. The piece points out that the Helios facility “will be connected to the western sector of the Texas energy grid, where about 85 percent of electricity comes from wind and solar infrastructure, including a set of turbines that sit practically next door to the Argo construction site.”
When Texas investor Justin Nolan zeroed in on the Dickens County parcel adjacent to the Cottonwood Substation, he approached Wall with a proposal for a crypto operation that would be fueled primarily by wind and solar. It was, as Wall has often described it, “Bitcoin mining nirvana.” The renewable energy source is right there on the horizon, where the sun glances off the blades of Invenergy’s McAdoo wind farm.
Seeing the project through to launch in the coming days, Wall said, represents “a big moment for us.”
Local impacts
While some area residents still scratch their heads trying to understand what exactly turns the West Texas wind into spendable currency, Wall and his team haven’t been hesitant to show their good citizenship.
Back at that October 4 grand opening, Argo pledged to hire 20 staff from the local employment pool—and, speaking of pools, stepped up to provide a big wish-list item for the Spur area, a 21stcentury community swimming pool. Construction is already under way on the latter promise; as for the former, Wall said that his firm has put some 40 staff to work from the region.
“The community has been super welcoming,” he said.
The technology of digital money
The Helios grand opening will provide the first, and likely only, given the high level of security the facilty will require, glimpse of Argo’s cryptocurrency mining in operation.
Wall who’s commented that he wished the industry term were something more like “validators” than “miners,” described what visitors will see inside the 125,000-square-foot Helios building. In due time, Wall anticipates some 55,000 miners—purpose-built computers featuring ASIC (applicationspecific integrated circuit) chips—to be churning out solutions to the complex digital equations that allow their owners to claim Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. (Among those, Wall confirmed, will be a substantial number of the new Intel Blockscale ASICs, which haven’t shipped yet.)
Blockchain is a shared, immutable ledger for recording transactions, tracking assets and building trust. —IBM.com
Computers, as anyone who’s ever held a cellular phone in the palm of their hand or anyone who’s ever felt the back of their office laptop knows, generate lots of heat. Though most office computers use air, turned by fans, to dissipate this heat, Argo’s banks of ASICs will use liquid. The machines are immersed in a dieletric coolant fluid, which cycles through a series of tanks, pumps and pipes to outside air coolers, which work much like other types of heat exchangers familiar in West Texas. “Think of it like a spa for computers,” Wall said.
Argo technicians have been working diligently to install these units in the building, while AEP energy staff and WETT (Wind Energy Transmission of Texas) workers have also been working to complete their part of the power connection.
Flipping the switch at Helios
Will there be computers actually online, generating bitcoin, when visitors arrive for their brief glimpse next Thursday? Wall hopes so. Energization of the system takes a while, perhaps weeks.
But no one’s more eager to see the circuits hum than Peter Wall. “We’re pretty excited, he said. “I’ve always felt, from the first time I stood on this land, that it was prefect for bitcoin mining.”
ARGO’S HELIOS GRAND OPENING
Date: Thursday, May 5
Time: 10:30 a.m.—1:00 p.m.
Location: 984 County Road 112, Afton, Texas Limited tickets available for Dickens County residents by advance reservation only
A video showing construction progress at Argo’s Helios facility is posted at www. twitter.com/ArgoBlockchain. Learn more about Argo at www.argoblockchain.com and
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