The recent Bitmain WDMS conference featured discussions among publicly listed Bitcoin miners who challenged the prevailing sentiment that Bitcoin miners selling their rewards is bearish for the cryptocurrency. Analysts, traders, and influencers often use miner behavior as a sentiment gauge for Bitcoin’s price direction, with the belief that miners sending rewards to exchanges signals impending sell pressure and miner distress.
At the conference, Jeff Taylor, the Executive Vice President of Data Center Operations at Core Scientific, shared his company’s strategy. He highlighted that Core Scientific follows a “hodl strategy,” amassing a significant Bitcoin hoard during a previous bull market. However, this approach led to financial difficulties. Consequently, they now sell their Bitcoin production daily to stabilize profitability. Taylor emphasized the importance of cost reduction, efficiency improvement, and financial innovations in a miner’s strategy.
Panelists Taylor Monnig from CleanSpark and Will Roberts from Iris Energy echoed similar sentiments. CleanSpark adopted a conservative approach during the previous bull market, selling Bitcoin at its peak and expanding operations when Bitcoin’s price dropped. They plan to continue with this strategy and expect other miners to adopt a similar approach.
Roberts stated that Iris Energy sells all its mined Bitcoin daily. He emphasized that mining and operating data centers constitute a distinct business model from investing in Bitcoin. Their primary focus is generating shareholder value through data center operations and cash flow. Selling Bitcoin allows them to reinvest and potentially pay dividends in the future.
Nazar Khan, co-founder of TeraWulf, mentioned that the cryptocurrency landscape has evolved since the last bull market. TeraWulf, like other miners, sells every Bitcoin it produces daily. They view themselves as converters, emphasizing the efficiency of the conversion process from kilowatt hours of power to Bitcoin hash rate. TeraWulf monetizes every Bitcoin it sells daily and gauges efficiency as a key performance metric.
In summary, these miners at the Bitmain WDMS conference challenged the conventional belief that miners selling their rewards is necessarily bearish for Bitcoin. Their strategies prioritize stabilizing profitability, generating shareholder value, and efficiently converting power into Bitcoin, with the understanding that market dynamics have evolved since the previous bull market.
