Bitcoin Miners Now In Selling Mode For A Year: Should You Be Concerned?
December 16 2024 - 5:00PM
NEWSBTC
On-chain data shows that Bitcoin miners have been selling for
around a year now. Here’s how much they have sold so far. Bitcoin
Miners Have Shed Over 4% Of Their Holdings In Past Year As pointed
out by CryptoQuant community analyst Maartunn in a new post on X,
the BTC miners have been in net selling mode for a significant
period of time. The on-chain metric of relevance here is the “miner
reserve,” which keeps track of the total amount of coins that the
miners as a whole are carrying in their wallets right now. Related
Reading: Bitcoin Derivatives Market Heating Up Again: Brace For
Impact? When the value of this indicator rises, it means the chain
validators are adding a net number of tokens to their combined
holdings. Such a trend can be a sign that this cohort is
accumulating, which can naturally be bullish for the asset’s price.
On the other hand, the metric observing a decline suggests the
miners are withdrawing coins from their addresses. The main reason
why this group makes such transactions is for selling-related
purposes, so this kind of trend can have a bearish impact on BTC.
Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Bitcoin miner
reserve over the past year: As displayed in the above graph, the
Bitcoin miner reserve has gone through a steady downtrend during
this window. There have been some brief periods of deviation, but
the overall trajectory has remained toward the downside.
Historically, the miners have had a presence as consistent sellers
on the network. The reason behind this is the fact that these chain
validators have constant running costs in the form of electricity
bills, which they pay off by selling their BTC rewards for fiat.
Generally, though, despite being regular sellers, miners don’t pose
too much of a threat to the price, as their selling tends to be of
a scale that can readily be absorbed by the market. That said, the
times that they do participate in a major selloff can be to watch
out for. During the start of this year, the Bitcoin miners held a
total of 1.99 million BTC in their reserve. Today, the same metric
stands at 1.90 million BTC, implying the miners have sold 90,000
BTC (about $9.3 billion at the current exchange rate) or 4.74% of
their holdings. Related Reading: Bitcoin Returns Above $100,000 As
Monthly Inflows Hit $80 Billion This is a notable amount on its
own, but when considering the context that this selling has come
over some length of time rather than inside a narrow window, the
selloff stops being too interesting. “Miners are offloading
steadily, but not in large amounts,” notes the analyst. “This
suggests they are likely selling to cover operational costs.” As
such, it’s possible that Bitcoin wouldn’t feel any major bearish
effects from this miner selloff. The miner reserve could still be
to keep an eye on in the near future, however, as any sharp changes
in the metric could potentially spell a new outcome for Bitcoin.
BTC Price Bitcoin set a new all-time high beyond the $106,000 mark
earlier in the day, but the coin appears to have seen a pullback
since then as it’s now trading around $104,000. Featured image from
Dall-E, IntoTheBlock.com, chart from TradingView.com
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