Publicly traded Bitcoin miners sold nearly everything they mined in 2022, but appear to have resumed reserves accumulation.
Throughout 2022, publicly traded Bitcoin miners sold almost all of the Bitcoin they mined, sparking a debate over whether the sales created a “persistent headwind” for the Bitcoin price.
In a Dec. 26 tweet, analyst Tom Dunleavy of blockchain research firm Messari revealed that approximately 40,300 of the 40,700 BTC mined by Core Scientific, Riot, Bitfarms, Cleans Park, Marathon, Hut8, HIVE, Iris Energy, Argo, and Bit Digital from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30 were sold.
Mining firms’ reserves fell significantly in the second half of 2022, particularly in November, as the crypto industry reeled from the effects of the FTX fallout.
Dunleavy believes that miners selling off newly produced Bitcoin on a regular basis puts downward pressure on the price of the leading cryptocurrency.
However, some industry observers, such as BitMEX’s former CEO, Arthur Hayes, believe that the increased sales of Bitcoin miners create negligible selling pressure.
In a blog post published on December 9, he stated that “even if miners sold all of the Bitcoin they produced each day, it would barely impact the markets at all.”
According to Bitcoin Visuals, the daily trading volume for Bitcoin on December 26 was $12.2 billion. According to CryptoQuant, the outflow from miners on the same day was 919 BTC ($15.35 million), representing only 0.13% of the total volume traded.
Miners’ reserves increased by nearly 1% in December, indicating a slight recovery. The figure supports the view expressed by crypto analyst IT Tech in a Dec. 27 post that the situation for miners appears to be stabilizing.
