Per a report from Hash Rate Index, Bitcoin miners continued to sell their supply during July. These entities have been negatively impacted by the decline in the price of BTC, and an increase in their operation cost which has resulted in financial stress for their operations.
So far, the report claims that Bitcoin miners have produced 3,470 BTC versus 5,767 BTC sold. This behavior has contributed to BTC’s price 2022 downside price action and will continue to exercise pressure in the crypto market.
As seen below, the top public Bitcoin miners have been selling their BTCs as production lags. Very few miners have been able 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 1,600 BTC and around 900 BTC sold, respectively.
The report claims that U.S.-based Bitcoin miners have been particularly affected. Operations in this country have been impacted by a “series of heatwaves” which forced them to reduce their operations or halt them as a result of power curtailment, the deliberate reduction in power output to mitigate stress on the grid. The report stated:
As the heat picked up in July, grids were stressed from underproduction of energy assets (like wind power in Texas) and overdemand from AC use and other grid-stressing inputs; many industrial-scale miners powered down during these periods to stabilize the grid by piping electricity back to power providers.
Why Some Bitcoin Miners Made More From Power Credits Than From Mining BTC
A deeper look into the current state of the BTC mining sector reveals that operations might have been affected by other factors. In addition to heatwaves, the report claims that miners might be swapping old equipment for new S19 XP and newer mining hardware.
As a consequence, old hardware is being decommissioned as new hardware is either installed or moved to “new facilities or outfitting facilities with new racks or setups (such as immersion cooling)”.
As seen below, Riot recorded a total of $9.5 million from power credits as a result of their energy curtailment activities. This is the equivalent of 439 BTC if the price of Bitcoin stands at around $21,600, according to the report.
In contrast, the company produced 318 BTC valued at $6,9 million. In total, Riot made over $16 million from combining both operations. Curtailed has become a necessity for BTC miners in the United States during July. The report stated:
Other Bitcoin miners in Texas, like Argo and Core Scientific, also curtailed heavily during the month of July, but it’s unclear whether or not their power purchasing agreement with ERCOT comes with the same power credit guarantees.
