Public Bitcoin miners sold more BTC in the first quarter of 2026 than in all of 2025, as low margins forced many operators to liquidate reserves to cover operating costs.

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The surge in sales comes even though Bitcoin’s price remains above the previous cycle peak, underscoring how rising difficulty and lower block rewards have squeezed profitability across the sector.

Record BTC Sales as Hashprice Slumps

Publicly traded miners including Marathon, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer sold more than 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026, based on preliminary disclosures and data compiled by TheEnergyMag.

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This already exceeds total net sales for all of 2025 and surpasses the roughly 20,000 BTC miners sold in Q2 2022 during the Terra-Luna-driven market turmoil. Just over a year ago, the same group ended 2024 by adding nearly 17,600 BTC to their balance sheets, pushing combined reserves above 100,000 BTC.

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The driver of the reversal is mining economics, not spot price. Hashprice, expected mining revenue per unit of computing power, has hovered in the low 30 dollars per PH/s/day, near record lows. At those levels, margins are thin or negative for operators with older machines or higher power costs, making BTC sales the fastest way to fund operations and meet debt obligations in a tougher financing environment.

The industry, however, is not moving in one direction. Some firms now sell aggressively to maintain liquidity , while others continue to accumulate. American Bitcoin Corp.

ABTC, the proprietary mining arm of Hut 8, has built reserves of more than 7,000 BTC since early 2025 while ramping its proprietary hashrate to about 28 EH/s. The company reports an all-in cash cost near 55,000 dollars per bitcoin, giving it room to hold production rather than sell into weakness.

Miners Split Between Sellers and Accumulators

Elsewhere, private operators with ultra-low-cost power, such as those using flared natural gas, continue to mine profitably even at current hashprice levels. At the same time, miners are increasingly turning to software tools and fleet optimization to squeeze more efficiency from existing hardware, rather than relying solely on large-scale expansions.

In one classic case, Bitdeer shifted from holding Bitcoin on its balance sheet to using it primarily as a source of liquidity. In January, the Singapore-based miner produced 668 BTC, a 430% year‑on‑year increase, and pushed its self‑mining hash rate to 63.2 EH/s, with total proprietary hash rate at 65.1 EH/s.

Around the same time, other miners have followed the same path, with Riot Platforms selling about 200 million dollars’ worth of Bitcoin to finance its day-to-day operations and support its expansion into artificial intelligence.