Bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain has divested itself of its UST stake scot-free

Bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain has divested itself of its UST stake scot-free

The company said it was able to sell its minimum UST stake for around 93 cents per token before the price collapsed completely.

Argo Blockchain (ARGO), the mining company that diversified into Web 3 earlier this year through its subsidiary Argo Lab, said Wednesday that it had a stake in UST that was not material, and that it was able to keep its position "close to break-even" during the UST/Terra collapse.

"We weren't particularly invested in the Terra ecosystem," Argo CEO Peter Wall said during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call. "We had some UST, we were involved in revenue generation from the Anchor protocol," he added.

Argo was one of the first publicly traded crypto mining companies to create a non-mining business unit called "Argo Labs." The subsidiary was established in January with the aim of diversifying Argo's business and leveraging other opportunities in the blockchain ecosystem. Argo Labs' current investments include Polkadot (DOT), Ether (ETH) and Solana (SOL), according to the company's first quarter presentation.

Argo was able to sell its UST positions at 93 cents per token before the price completely collapsed, Wall said. UST was last trading at 10 cents, according to CoinDesk's price index. "In retrospect, selling at that level was a very good move, because the last time I checked, the price was at 12 cents," Wall said during the conference call. "Overall, on a net basis, we almost broke even on our positions in the Terra ecosystem, given the return we got from our holdings," he added.

Last week, Terra's LUNA tokens fell 99.7% as the U.S. dollar pegged algorithmic stablecoin terraUSD (UST) lost its peg and fell below 10 cents, leading to an outflow of funds from the Terra ecosystem and declining sentiment for the project in the crypto community.

The collapse of the Terra ecosystem has hurt numerous large and small investors. On social media and in forums, former LUNA supporters reported major losses, despair, and hopelessness.

Argo Blockchain reported its first-quarter results on Wednesday, in which net income slumped but revenue rose year-over-year, and reiterated its hash rate forecast of 5.5 exahash per second (EH/s) by the end of 2022. The miner's shares traded down about 4% in the U.S. on Wednesday, keeping pace with those of other publicly traded crypto miners.