One way galaxies grow in our physical universe is by swallowing up stars. In the financial universe that’s what happened last month when New York–based Galaxy Digital Holdings subsumed Argo Blockchain’s Helios bitcoin facility in Dickens County.
But Galaxy is no black hole. It’s a multi-layered financial services and investment management company, founded in 2018 by financier, visionary, and former Ivy League athlete Michael Novogratz.
Galaxy, according it its website, is a “digital asset and blockchain pioneer helping the world invest in economic progress”; the company holds that “crypto innovations will permeate and improve all aspects of our global economy.”
Representatives of the firm spent some time in the county last week to help local organizations get to know them and their goals.
“Communityisa very important aspect”
Amanda Fabiano, the firm’s head of mining, and Mich a e l Wusthorn, head of communications, visited sites around Dickens and Spur Jan. 11 with Helios assistant project manager Jonathan Gabel and Dickens County Judge Kevin Brendle before stopping by at the Texas Spur offices to field some questions.
Our first query might’ve been, “So what does a head of mining do, actually?”
But it was preempted by the one that’s top of mind for most locals.
“Is Galaxy still going to fix the pool?” Fabiano’s unblinking answer: Yes. A commitment to the same spirit of community service pioneered by Argo was one of Galaxy’s pledges from the start of their exploration of Helios, said Fabiano.
“Community is a very important aspect,” said Wusthorn. “We give Argo a lot of credit for teaching us that.”
Argo’s leaders had emphasized to them in early talks that being part of the community, and helping in ways only a major corporation can, was not only smart business but the right thing to do. “It was a component of the deal,” he said.
Galaxy has also retained Argo’s local staff.
A good deal of Fabiano’s time during her January visit, she said, was devoted to meeting with all the former Helios personnel one on one, a total of 38 appointments over the span of a weekend.
While some of those employees already resided in Dickens County, others were brought on during the rapid-fire construction and energization of the Helios plant. Not all had, or found, suitable accommodations in the area and have chosen to commute (one drives from Silverton; others taken the company shuttle back and forth from Lubock). Argo had constructed living quarters for those working long stretches on site, with three bedrooms.
“We want to make sure the people are taken care of,” Fabiano said, “while we learn how to grow Helios.”
The facility—named for the Greek god of the sun—harnesses enormous amounts of electrical power to drive the highly specialized computers that solve and claim Bitcoins. It’s a race to see who can push their ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) faster and cooler to get there first. The finish line yields digital money, or cryptocurrency. And the similarity of the process to early gold rushes naturally led to the metaphor of mining, even though there are no literal pickaxes and tunnels involved.
So, back to that first question: What does the head of mining do at a $1.48 billion corporation?
A lot, said Fabiano. While Galaxy entered the crypto game as an investor in crypto that purchased shared time on others’ equipment, it began mining for itself in 2020. The firm began work on its own standalone facility in Texas, the location of which hasn’t been publicly disclosed.
But as a diverified financial services company, it also offers other money-related services, such as venture capital, and a Miner Finance platform to connect bitcoin miners to trading, hedging, and financing— cleverly called MiFi.
From the start, when Galaxy moved into mining, its goal was always to build out a large-scale facility, the staffers said. The “perfect storm” last June—record high temperatures and correspondingly high energy costs, supply-chain issues in obtaining ASICs, and a market economy that swiftly switched from bear to bull—created major headaches for miners, but Helios’s quandary allowed Galaxy to push forward its timelime.
The firm’s acqusition of Argo’s facilty and machines kickstarted the process of mining for themselves.
Now, said Wusthorn, Helios is “the centerpiece of our mining.”
“The best bitcoin facility in Texas”
To get a better sense of what Galaxy is all about, and the corner of the crypto universe it inhabits, readers can tune in to founder Novogratz’ podcast, “Next with Novo.”
In fact, it’s a smart place to start with episode one, in 2021, with Fabiano herself.
A digital finance whiz who started out as a criminal justice major but became hooked on the concept of crypto while working Center for Applied Technology at Fidelity Investments. Talk of Bitcoin investment was everywhere—though little was said about the actual mining of it.
“The question ‘But why’ always drove me,” she said. “There’s no Bitcoin without Bitcoin mining, so why weren’t people focusing on it more?”
Fabiano followed up on that hunch. She met Novogratz at a Fidelity-hosted seminar she was leading—and became his first hire in mining. “I haven’t had a boring day of work in six years” as a consequence, she said. Operating a mine, she said, has a lot of components: physical facilities, client relations, business operations, and the software side of things as well.
She’s visited test facilities around the globe since, and has gained the long view of what it takes to succeed in a field that remains a mystery to many.
Galaxy is “a strategic firm that takes its time” and focuses on operational excellence, she said. The company anticipates appling that perspective on building out Helios.
“That is what we’re focusing on—to be the best bitcoin facilty in Texas.”
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.
