Bitcoin Miners Sold 5,700 BTC During July, New Report Finds
According to a report from the Hash Rate Index, Bitcoin miners continued to sell off their supply during July. These entities have been adversely affected by the decline in the price of BTC, and an increase in operating costs resulting in financial stress for their operations.
So far, the report claims that Bitcoin miners have produced 3,470 BTC against 5,767 BTC sold. This behavior has contributed to BTC’s price 2022 downside price action and will continue to exert pressure on the crypto market.
As shown below, the top public Bitcoin miners have sold their BTCs as production delays. Very few miners have managed to sell as much as they produce or not sell at all.
The report claims that Core Scientific has been the biggest seller with 1,970 BTC dumped into the market versus 1,200 BTC produced. BitFarms and Argo follow with 1600 BTC and around 900 BTC sold respectively.
The report claims that US-based Bitcoin miners have been particularly affected. Operations in this country have been affected by a “series of heat waves” that forced them to reduce their operations or stop them as a result of power curtailment, the deliberate reduction in power generation to reduce stress on the grid. The report said:
As the heat picked up in July, grids became stressed from underproduction of energy resources (such as wind power in Texas) and overdemand from AC use and other grid loads; many industrial-scale miners shut down during these periods to stabilize the grid by feeding electricity back to the power suppliers.
Why some Bitcoin miners earned more from power credits than from mining BTC
A deeper look at the current state of the BTC mining sector reveals that its operations may have been affected by other factors. In addition to heat waves, the report claims that miners can replace old equipment with new S19 XP and newer mining hardware.
As a consequence, old hardware is decommissioned as new hardware is either installed or moved to “new facilities or equipment plants with new racks or setups (such as immersion cooling)”.
As shown below, Riot recorded a total of $9.5 million from Power Credits as a result of their Power Limitation activities. This equates to 439 BTC if the price of Bitcoin is around $21,600, according to the report.
In contrast, the company produced 318 BTC worth $6.9 million. In total, Riot earned over $16 million from combining both operations. Limited has become a necessity for BTC miners in the US during July. The report said:
Other Bitcoin miners in Texas, such as Argo and Core Scientific, also cut back sharply during the month of July, but it is unclear if their power purchase agreement with ERCOT comes with the same power credit guarantees.
