Bitcoin miners are hiding their coins from higher prices, with direct transfers from miners to exchanges dropping nearly 40% since mid-March.
Data from on-chain analytics provider Glassnode shows that miners’ BTC balances have been increasing since the end of March, following a large outflow in January and consistently reduced sales in February and earlier in March.
Rafael Schultze-Kraft, Glassnode CTO, notes that several statistics point to the recent accumulation of miners – including flows of miner addresses, unused BTC stock and net change in miner position.
Glassnode’s data shows that unspent stock – BTC never transferred from the (miner’s) original receiving address – is starting to rise after a sharp drop in January, when 15,000 previously dormant coins were first moved from mining addresses.
As of February, about 5,000 newly minted BTC have been added to Bitcoin’s unspent supply, adding up to the total 1,765 million Bitcoin.
Direct transfers from miner wallets to exchanges have also fallen significantly in recent weeks, from a 30-day moving average of nearly 450 BTC in mid-March to 275 BTC today.
Schultze-Kraft described Bitcoin mining as ‘great fundamentals’, noticing a new all-time high for the daily hash rate of 178 exahashes per second on April 6 and new record highs for the difficulty of Bitcoin mining.
He also shared data showing that miners’ earnings met 300% in about a year to new all-time highs of over $ 50 million, to currently be at a seven-day moving average of nearly $ 60 million.
“Miners currently have little to no incentive to make money,” he concluded, to add “Sell or capitulate [is] not in sight. “
The apparent prosperity of Bitcoin miners can be seen in the stock performance of the publicly traded mining companies in North America, with a recent analysis showing that the shares of the four largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies rose 5,000% in 12 months, while the spot- BTC prices increased by 900. % Over the same period.