Miner Selling Sees Bitcoin Reserve Tumble

Bitcoin miner reserves have dropped by roughly 61,000 $BTC since the start of the current cycle, falling from about 1.862 million BTC to 1.801 million BTC, according to CryptoQuant data published April 16. The slide confirms what public company filings have been signaling for months: the biggest U.S. miners are net sellers, and they have been for a while.

At today's price near $77,700, that 61,000 BTC works out to around $4.74 billion in supply that has moved from miner wallets into the open market or onto corporate balance sheets elsewhere.

Which miners are doing the selling?

CryptoQuant broke the numbers out by operator. Marathon Digital tops the list at 13,210 BTC sold, followed by Riot Platforms at 4,026 BTC and Core Scientific at 1,992 BTC. Combined, those three names account for 19,264 BTC, or roughly $1.50 billion at current prices.

That is only part of the picture. The Miner Mag reported publicly traded miners collectively sold more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026. That single quarter already tops net selling by public miners for all of 2025.

Bitdeer liquidated its treasury completely in February. Core Scientific has signaled plans to monetize most of its remaining stack through the rest of Q1. This is not one struggling firm. It is a sector-wide pattern.

Why are miners offloading coins now?

The short answer: they are pivoting to AI.

Riot, Marathon, and Core Scientific have all been reallocating capital toward artificial intelligence and high-performance computing data centers. The industrial playbook they built for Bitcoin mining maps almost directly onto what hyperscalers need for AI training and inference:

• Low-cost power contracts already locked in
• High-density server racks ready for retrofit
• Cooling infrastructure at an industrial scale
• Site permitting and grid access in place

The margins on HPC colocation are higher and more predictable than block rewards. But the pivot costs money, and BTC on the balance sheet is the cheapest source of capital. Selling it funds the buildout without diluting shareholders or adding debt. Core Scientific’s long-standing colocation partnership with CoreWeave is a prime example. Riot has announced its own HPC expansion. Marathon has talked openly about diversifying revenue beyond block rewards.

The economics of pure mining make the pivot easier to justify. After the April 2024 halving, hashrate and difficulty kept climbing while block rewards dropped. Hashprice, the industry's measure of revenue per unit of computing power, now sits at roughly $33 per petahash per second, according to Hashrate Index. It dropped below the $35 breakeven mark for older ASICs in July 2025 and has not recovered. CoinShares estimates around 20% of the network is mining at a loss.

Weaker operators are forced to sell production as it arrives. Stronger ones are choosing to sell to fund the pivot to AI infrastructure.

Is the selling being absorbed?

Yes, and one name is doing most of the work. Michael Saylor's Strategy (MSTR) bought 4,871 BTC in the first week of April for $330 million, then came back the following week with another 13,927 BTC for $1 billion. That is 18,798 BTC absorbed by a single corporate buyer in fourteen days, nearly a third of the entire miner reserve decline for the cycle.

Strategy now holds 780,897 BTC acquired for $59.02 billion at an average cost basis of $75,577. The most recent purchase was funded entirely through STRC preferred stock sales with no MSTR dilution. A CryptoQuant report flagged Strategy's 30-day accumulation at roughly 44,000 BTC through late March, putting the firm alongside spot ETFs as one of only two institutional channels soaking up supply at scale.

Not every mining operation is distributing. CryptoQuant flagged an uptick in AntPool-affiliated wallet balances, pointing to a split between U.S. public miners offloading and certain overseas pools quietly adding.

The result is a structural drawdown in miner-held supply, not a panic. Reserves have been grinding lower since late 2023, with the slope steepening after the halving. What changed in recent weeks is concentration. Q1 2026 was the heaviest quarter of public miner selling on record, and the data through mid-April suggests Q2 has opened in a similar shape.

What does it mean for the market?

Miner distribution at this scale used to be a reliable bearish signal. It is less reliable now. Public miners represent a smaller share of the total network hashrate than they did two cycles ago, and the coins they sell are being absorbed by ETFs, corporate treasuries, and long-term holders rather than retail.

That does not make the selling irrelevant. It does mean traders watching miner reserve charts for a price signal are looking at only one side of the flow equation. The question for the next few weeks is whether Saylor and the ETF desks keep matching miner distribution coin for coin, or if absorption finally runs out of room above $77,000.

For now, the reserves keep falling, and the price keeps climbing, through $77,000 as of publication.

Sources:

• CryptoQuant original post detailing the 61,000 $BTC reserve decline and individual miner selling figures
• Cointribune breakdown of hashprice, reserves, and CoinShares Q1 2026 data
• The Daily Hodl coverage of the STRC-funded Strategy buy
• CryptoQuant Miner Reserve chart live on-chain dashboard tracking aggregate miner holdings