After the November plunge in profitability, Bitcoin miners have begun to sell off their coins and share their company stockpiles.
Miners are selling Bitcoin ( TC) at a lower time than usual, with a current holding of $43,500. This is 33% less than the all-time high (ATH), which was $69,000. But, equipment and electricity bills must be paid.
Glassnode, an on-chain analytics company, has data that shows Bitcoin miners are now net sellers after being net hodlers for several months.
According to data from blockchain research firm Arcane Research, the average return on mining one BTC has fallen by 50.5% since Nov. 9. This means that returns on investment have decreased faster than the price for BTC.
Mining’s profitability has declined due to a large increase in hashrate. Because more miners are trying to find the next block, there is more competition among them.
Cointelegraph reported that Bitcoin had achieved a new AATH in hashrate on February 13. This milestone was reached by jumping from 188.4 exahashes/second (EH/s), to 284.11EH/s in one day. According to Ycharts, the hashrate currently stands at 232.19 EH/s.
Some large mining companies have chosen to sell stocks over crypto in order to grow their cash or pay their bills. A spokesperson for Marathon Digital Holdings Inc.’s (MARA) mining operation stated that they had started hodling in Oct 2020 and have not sold one satoshi since.
Marathon instead filed with Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to sell $750,000,000 in securities and stocks. Seeking Alpha reports Marathon plans to use a substantial portion of the funds for hardware purchases and other general purposes.
MARA is down 0.56%, and priced at $258.24 after-hours trading.
D.A. is a wealth management company. Davidson stated to Bloomberg that miners have both business and ideological reasons not to sell Bitcoin.
“Big miners prefer to sell equity because their shareholders want them hold their Bitcoin and not think about selling it.”