Bitcoin Miners Sold $6.3B Tokens In May To Cover Costs

Bitcoin BTC/USD miners have been sending large amounts of mined tokens to exchanges as their profit margins decline.

What Happened: The crypto bear market has forced a number of miners into selling their coins, according to a report from Bloomberg on Sunday.

CoinMetrics data compiled by Compass Mining shows that miners sent 195,663 coins to exchanges in May. These coins would have been worth a cumulative $6.3 billion, according to Bloomberg’s estimates.

See Also: WHAT IS CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING?

"Miners may begin to sell hodl'd Bitcoin into the open market," said Compass Mining in a research note.

"At the very least they are feeling the pain after the last major dip in price. Couple this with a downwards difficulty adjustment – indicating miners powering off – and it seems miners may be hitting a wall in profitability."

Among those miners contemplating selling BTC last month were larger crypto mining firms like Riot Blockchain Inc RIOT, Core Scientific Inc CORZ and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc MARA.

In an earnings call last month, Core Scientific confirmed that it was lowering its outlook for 2022 and plans to sell some of its 10,000 self-mined BTC.

Riot sold nearly half of the BTC mined in April while Marathon said it was considering selling some BTC holdings to raise the $500 million that it requires for growth objectives.

See Also: How Do Bitcoin Miners Generate Cash Without Selling Crypto Holdings?

Price Action: Bitcoin is currently trading 55% below its all-time high at $30,950, as per data from Benzinga Pro.