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Public bitcoin mining companies have been caught between a rock and a hard place with the decline in bitcoin prices. Since their cash flow had fallen significantly, they had switched to selling BTC to keep track of the costs of their operations. The huge supply of BTC that these public miners had piled up during the incredible year of 2021 is now making its way to the market. But they will soon run out of coins to sell.
Bitcoin Miners Dump Coins
Over the past three months, there have been reports of Bitcoin miners dumping thousands of BTC. The amount of BTC sold was alarming because they were more than the miners produced in a month.
On September 2, blockchain data aggregation firm CryptoQuant revealed that bitcoin miners had sold about 4,586 BTC in 3 days. At the time, the price of bitcoin was just above $20,000, bringing the dollar value of the sale to over $93 million at the time.
In the month of July, public bitcoin miners had sold a collective 5,700 BTC. The trend was set to continue into the month of August as miners continued to ask more questions. By the third week of August, they had dumped more than 6,000 BTC.
By selling their stock of BTC, public bitcoin miners have been able to keep bankruptcies at bay. However, their supply of BTC is not bottomless and they are running out of coins to sell.
Miners’ balances are running out
Public bitcoin miners have now sold a healthy share of their balance sheets. The sales were understandable given the state of the market, but miners are now facing another problem, which is the fact that they are running out of BTC to sell.
Since they have sold more BTC than they have produced, their balances have taken a hit. The companies that suffered the most were Marathon Digital and Hut 8. At the end of March 31, before they started selling BTC, both miners had huge balances. In the past three months, Marathon Digital, along with Stronghold, has sold over 60% of its BTC shares. Hut 8 has sold about 40% of its holdings, while Core Scientific has sold about 33%.
Miners running out of BTC to sell | Source: Arcane Research
However, not all miners have followed this trend. Some miners have even taken this time to increase their holdings. Riot Blockchain is an example of a public bitcoin miner that has increased its holdings by nearly 100% in the past 3 months. Cleanspark also recorded a roughly 15% increase in its BTC balances.
Despite the fact that these miners have to sell large amounts of BTC, the majority continue to do well financially. The only one on the list to see deep financial trouble is Stronghold, and this has to do with the fact that the company wasn’t much in the way of a large BTC balance to begin with.
Featured image from Vecteezy, charts from Arcane Research and TradingView.com
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