Bitcoin Miners Sell Record Amount of BTC Ahead of May Price Jump
Bitcoin
BTC hit a new all-time high of $109,000 on Wednesday , but that doesn't bring much relief to Bitcoin miners who were forced to sell a significant portion of their BTC holdings last month, TheMinerMag reports.
The company's latest research data shows that public miners sold 115% of their April Bitcoin output, meaning they sold more than they were able to produce. This level is the highest since the end of the 2022 bear market.
Even today, as Bitcoin set a new record by surpassing $109,000, the hash rate (the reward miners receive for a unit of computing power) has not followed suit. It is only $55 per petahash per second (PH/s), well below the $63/PH/s it briefly reached when Bitcoin last crossed $100,000 in December. Increased network difficulty and low transaction fees continue to put pressure on revenue.
However, the leading players in the mining space continue to expand. CleanSpark (CLSK) has surpassed 40 EH/s in hashrate, and IREN (IREN), which recently surpassed Riot Platforms (RIOT) to become the third-largest public miner by realized hashrate, has seen a 25% increase in hashrate and is now aiming to reach 50 EH/s by June. Meanwhile, Cango (CANG) plans to increase its capacity by another 18 EH/s by July.
MARA Holdings (MARA) still has the highest installed hashrate at 57.3 EH/s, according to a report from investment bank Jefferies on Tuesday. IREN has the highest estimated uptime at about 97%, followed by HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE) at about 96%, according to the report.
Meanwhile, there’s a shift in how miners are getting new hardware. Several public companies have entered into agreements with Bitmain that allow them to pay for mining rigs in bitcoin while retaining the right to buy back their coins at a predetermined price — a hedge against further price increases.
Mining stocks that took a beating in the first quarter have started to recover — some are up more than 60% in April alone — though most are still down compared to where they started the year. Only CleanSpark and MARA Holdings are posting positive results for the year.
Source: cryptonews.net
