Bitcoin Miners Accumulate 1.8 Million BTC – Trustnodes

Bitcoin miners have turned to selling again at the rate of about 3,300 bitcoin a month according to the blockchain analytics startup Glassnode.

Miners sold about 10,000 bitcoin since April, worth about $300 million at the current price and closer to half a billion at the price they likely sold, but their holdings are also telling a somewhat interesting story.

One of the weirdest chart we have seen is by Coinmetric which claims to track miners’ holdings all the way back to, well 2009.

As you can see we have a very straight line with this measure differentiating between 0 hop miners, who directly receive the block reward, and 1 hop miners, who receive it from a pool.

Orange is zero hop and as you can see there’s pretty much no movement at all since 2017. We start at 1.87 million, we end at 1.79. So an 80,000 bitcoin difference, worth about $2.4 billion. A lot, but just three months of mining.

Why this is keeping so straight is not too clear. Perhaps old addresses, with toshi himself, staying put with some lost because these weren’t worth much at one point while others are just long term holders.

The blue chart is more interesting. We have accumulation at 1.13 million bitcoin in August 2017. Price starts mooning and so miners go off selling, with no pause until March 2018 to 880k.

A local peak in June that year above one million gives way to the bear that on and on sells until 850k in June 2019.

So coming to the modern era. Up up up to 1.2 million until April 2020. Then very slow selling until October 2020 to 1.1 million. Down the next month-ish to sort of above one million until July 2021.

Then they go down with some speed to 800k in November. Add it up more speed and we get to 750k in March 2022. Currently 743,000 bitcoin.

Zoom out and 500,000 bitcoin has been sold since the halvening which happened to be around April 2020.

That’s worth $15 billion at the current price. They were sold at all sorts of prices, but over almost precisely two years.

The big question being obviously whether they’ve had enough as this is the lowest combined balance they hold, ever.

The trend you’d expect to be new and new all time lows since the proportion that goes to miners keeps reducing, but with pauses in between.

In the previous cycle they accumulated all the way to the price peak in September 2014 an all time high of 1.79 million.

They sold half of it relentlessly until January 2018 to 900,000. So there was no halving cycle as far as miners’ reserves were concerned.

There was in this cycle. Accumulate during the bear in 2019-2020 spring, then supply when the price was getting bull, and so no blow off top for you.

If they repeat, which they might have to as they’re close to running at a loss, then they should start net accumulating soon to supply in 2024.

One further interesting data here is that they sold off one million bitcoin in the last cycle, half a million in this one, so a quarter of a million now?

That shows the halving in action, although since they have significant reserves, its effects will be delayed more than thought by napkin maths. Hence another potential contributor to not crossing $100,000.

So miners seems to be getting more sophisticated and they’re playing counter-cyclical, or at least they did in this cycle. If they keep at it, then maybe the bear won’t be too bad.

Zoomed out even further however, they now have just $22 billion in these one hop addresses. That’s about two years of savings. They’ll get another circa $22 billion through mining in those two years, and so we’re at less than 10% of total supply.

They wouldn’t have too much of an effect therefore, but price setting supply is far lower as just 10% of all bitcoin, or circa one million BTC, is usually on the market at any one time by our estimate.

If we take their selling at 250,000 a year from 2020 to 2022, they accounted for 25% of the price setting. Sometime they sold at speed, so 30% and maybe even 40% at those times.

If we reverse it, then this $29k iron support may keep. There’s still the demand equation, but $25k might be the low if miners add to their savings.

And so repeat the cycle with a super saiyan probably a bit too soon. Perhaps in 2030 as the priority for now is to set and keep the floor.