Bitcoin miners are not willing to let go of their accumulated Bitcoin even with an increased hashrate and a recent sell-off. As the network’s hashrate is in its recovery phase, miners are still accumulating Bitcoin.
Glassnode, the on-chain analytics provider, reported on their Sept 20 Week on Chain Publication that miner BTC balances are going up. According to this report, over the past six and a half months alone, wallets associated with miners have stockpiled 14,000 BTC approximately worth $600M.
Further down, the report asserts that the 2020 and 2021 bull markets have witnessed miners holding on to larger portions of their rewards as compared to previous bull cycles. It is common for miners to let go of chunks of their rewards to help cover some expenses such as hardware and electricity bills.
Bitcoin miner unspent supply. Obtained from: Glassnode
This is a new trend in the BTC ecosystem especially when one sees continued miner accumulation even in the face of Bitcoin’s network hash rate recovering this past quarter.
In the midst of the speculation on the miner exodus witnessed in China, Glassnode published another report in June that touched on how low Bitcoin’s hashing power had slumped. It went down by 51% to a new low of 90 Exahashes.
Looking at the network’s seven-day moving average, network hashing power has recovered by 52% and is now at 137 Exahashes. This is an indicator of the exodus having come to an end and mining activities have resumed positively. It is a good trend but the market is still in its recovery phase as Bitcoin hash rate has not touched the all-time high of May where it tagged 184 Exahashes.
Despite all these positive indicators of a recovering market, one cannot help but see shares in publicly traded mining firms pulling back as the larger financial market retraces its steps. This comes amid concerns that Evergrande, a Chinese property titan may be on track towards defaulting on its $300 billion debts.
Riot Blockchain, announced its plans to acquire Whinstone US, Inc., in its aspirations to create a leading US-based corporate pillar to support the BTC mining ecosystem. Despite the plans to open a new data center and expand its hashing capacity, the firm suffered a 2.4% slide in stock prices at the start of trading on Sept 20.
Mining stocks are however on an upward trajectory, outperforming Bitcoin for the past week.
Image courtesy of pixabay
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