In June, public mining companies sold a total of about 14,600 BTC, equal to 23% of their total reserves in the first cryptocurrency. Analysts at Arcane Research noted this.
The public miners only sold 20 — 40% of their BTC production from January to April this year.
This strategy worked well until the bear market arrived, and in May they sold more than 100% of BTC production for the first time.
In June they sold almost 400% of their BTC production pic.twitter.com/Iffk3Iscxt
— Jason Mallory (@JMellerud) July 15, 2022
From January through April, the rule of thumb was selling 20–40% of mined cryptocurrency; in May miners for the first time sold 100% of the digital gold they generated. In June, the figure rose to more than 400%, said Jason Mallory.
Leading the liquidation of bitcoin holdings were Core Scientific and Bitfarms. The former shed nearly 10,000 BTC over the past two months, of which more than 7,000 were in June.
Earlier this year, Core Scientific, the leader by hash rate, held the largest bitcoin reserves among public miners. By the end of June the company had fewer than 2,000 BTC remaining.
The leader by the volume of owned cryptocurrency was Marathon Digital Holdings, confirming its commitment to the accumulation strategy for the mined asset.
In June, the market experienced what Mallory called the “worst sell-off” of bitcoin by public miners. He is confident that in the coming months miners will have to sell a smaller portion of the cryptocurrency they receive than in May–June. He noted two main reasons why such a mass dump is unlikely in the foreseeable future:
- Companies have already realised a substantial portion of their reserves, and those that did not, such as Marathon or Hut 8, are more likely to continue holding assets;
- The volume of bitcoin-collateralized loans has fallen sharply, reducing the principal risk of a sell-off of the cryptocurrency.
In June, bitcoin miners generated total revenue of $668 million. The metric fell by 26% compared with the previous month.
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