Decline in Bitcoin Miner Reserves After April Halving Event: Report

Key Points:

• Bitcoin miner reserves dropped to a three-year low following the April halving.
• Miners have been selling tokens to fund operating costs due to reduced rewards.
• Public mining companies increased their Bitcoin holdings by 60% since January 2023.

Bitcoin miner reserves dropped to a three-year low after April’s halving. Miners now hold about 1,510,300 tokens, worth $86 billion. Increased fees briefly cushioned losses, but selling continues.

According to Bloomberg, the amount of Bitcoin held in reserve by companies that profit from validating transactions on the blockchain has dropped to a three-year low following the April software code adjustment that reduced their revenue.

Bitcoin Miner Reserves Hit Three-Year Low

According to crypto researcher Kaiko, as of August 3, miners held about 1,510,300 Bitcoin tokens. The figure thereof shows a drop of 2.4% from a record held in December 2020, at current prices, that comes to approximately 86 billion dollars and roughly 8% of the entire circulating Bitcoin supply.

Miners have been selling tokens since late 2023, well before the recent “halving” in April. They frequently help fund operating costs because firms receive fewer new tokens as rewards following the latest four software upgrades.

The halving slashed the chief source of revenue for crypto-mining companies like CleanSpark and Riot Platforms. The pre-programmed update slashed rewards for validating blockchain data, also known as mining.

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Impact of Halving on Crypto Miners

Increased network fees following the event briefly cushioned the revenue losses for miners, but that was short-lived. As per Kaiko, average fees have since fallen to $2 from a post-halving high of $143.

While the general trend has been selling, public mining companies increased their Bitcoin holdings by 60% to 54,000 tokens since January 2023. Marathon Digital Holdings recently purchased $100 million in Bitcoin.

Additionally, Core Scientific lost $804 million in the second quarter, primarily because it wrote down the value of its holdings in accordance with market prices.