Possibly the first and last time a coin was minted in Spur, Texas, was in 1984 for the 75th anniversary of the city’s founding, when local artist Henry Johns designed a commemorative honoring the event.
But Monday night at Spur’s Palace Theater, Argo Blockchain CEO Peter Wall unveiled a whole different sort of coinminting operation in Dickens County—Bitcoin. His Canadian-based firm, which broke ground in the northern part of the county earlier this year and last week went public on the US NASDAQ stock exchange, is investing heavily in the future of cryptocurrency mining as well as in the future of this local community.
Capping off a big-screen presentation at the Palace was a bonanza for Spur: the restoration of the community’s longidled swimming pool in the city’s WPA-built Swenson Park.
Both Dickens County judge Kevin Brendle, who has steered the deal with Argo since 2019, and Spur mayor Louise Jones expressed gratitude and great satisfaction with the company’s willingness to back such an ambitious and transformative project.
Community members packing the 300-seat theater reacted with surprise and applause at the announcement, which had been kept under tight wraps.
Before the big reveal, though, Argo executives threw a barbecue dinner on the Palace grounds for some 300 people, complete with music by the Chad Maines band—and even valet parking via golf carts.
“Judge Brendle has been so welcoming here in the community,” said Wall. “We are excited about being here.” Wall and team members Justin Nolan, vice president of business development, Davis Zappfe, general counsel, and Matt Nackino, head of construction and design, made the trip to West Texas on Sunday to tour the construction site together early on Monday.
Nackino, who has already traveled to the plant site numerous times as grading and foundation work began, cited the prime factors that came together for Argo to locate in Dickens County. In addition to low-cost, renewable energy provided via the Cottonwood Substation and WETT transmission in AEP’s service area, the site will incorporate a multi-thousand-gallon-capacity water tank for firefighting, and it’s also convenient to already built-out fiber-optic digital cable lines laid by Cap Rock Telephone.
Argo leaders said that when the plant’s full capacity is reached, the energy they expect to use will amount to “the same as half of the amount of power of the city of Lubbock.”
“Dickens County is nirvana for cryptocurrency mining,” Wall told KCBD-TV reporters.
Bitcoin mining is very energy-intensive, Nackino said. “To be able to do it using majority renewable power is good and to do it at a low cost is great.” But Nackino added that in adverse weather, the plant can shut down operations and contribute stored energy back to the grid for consumer use, serving as a “reverse battery.”
The site is “also very accessible from Lubbock,” added Nolan, “and a beautiful drive to get here.”
Over lunch with Brendle, county attorney Aaron Clements and other courthouse staff, and Mayor Jones, Nolan explained how he and Wall brought their widely differing backgrounds together to create a significant player in the fast-moving cryptocurrency industry.
Nolan, whose expertise is in construction management, including development of a planning software that Argo continues to use, said, “At a lunch in 2019, a colleague was going on and on about how Texas was the perfect location for bitcoin mining,” said Nolan. He left the lunch with plenty to chew on — and upon investigation, determined the colleague was right.
He researched the relevant factors and made a deal for the land shortly after. But as he explained to the crowd at the Palace, “Covid hit right after we purchased the land; I was stuck in New York at home with thre kids under 5. I started calling everyone I knew in the Bitcoin industry, and convinced Peter Wall to buy us.”
Wall, a former videojournalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Company and the founder of a coworking space in Bali, came to crypto from an client inquiry in 2013. With many international clients in Bali, currency exchange was always a pain—and when one of them asked if he would accept Bitcoin as payment, Wall looked into the emerging concept and agreed.
The 33 Bitcoin they eventually earned from their customers back then was cashed into local currency—or they’d be millionaires several times over by now.
Wall helped set up Argo in the early going, as the firm’s third employee. “For the first two years I did everything,” he said. By the time he took over as CEO, the company’s staff was on a growth trajectory from seven to approximately 30.
Team members are dispersed across three continents, in Texas, Connecticut, Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto in addition to the UK team.
Local jobs was one primary goal for Brendle, who has seen Dickens County’s employment base shrink over the years. Argo has pledged 20 jobs based in the county, with postings going up in a few weeks and a job fair tentatively slated for November.
The audience at Monday night’s event—both inside the Palace and outside in the tent, where the presentation was livestreamed—were given a brief overview of how the electronic algorithm-solving of cryptocurrency mining works, a topic The Texas Spur will devote more space to in next week’s issue.
And despite a few hiccups with the portable sound system, which prevented many from following the slides, the big takeaways for locals were that regardless of whether anyone here chooses to buy Bitcoin from a machine at their local Allsup’s or trade online—or mine coins themselves—Argo’s presence in the county, and its corporate generosity, is likely to bring interesting change as it brings global trends to the hyperlocal level.
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