About 20% of Bitcoin The mining sector is currently operating at a loss. That one fact explains much of what has unfolded in the industry in early 2026, as publicly traded miners rush to sell their assets just to keep the lights on.
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Profits squeezed to the bone
Hashprice – the daily revenue a miner earns per unit of computing power – has been falling since July 2025. Now the price is about $33 per unit of computing power. petahash per second per day, according to data from the Hashrate Index.
The breakeven point for many miners, especially those using older machines, is around $35. This gap, however small it may seem on paper, is pushing much of the sector into the red.
Major publicly traded miners – including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer – collectively offloaded more than 32,000 BTC in the first three months of 2026, according to DeEnergieMag.
That figure eclipses everything those same companies sold in all four quarters of 2025. It also surpasses the previous quarterly record of around 20,000 BTC, set in the second quarter of 2022, when the collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystem sent markets into a tailspin.
Three compound forces brought miners to that record: a growing network hashrate That has intensified competition, reduced block rewards after the most recent halving, and broader economic headwinds that have kept Bitcoin prices under pressure.
Miners’ reserves have been running dry for years
The sales in the first quarter of 2026 did not come out of nowhere. Facts from CryptoQuant shows that the total number of Bitcoins held by miners across the board has fallen since 2023.
At the end of that year, miners collectively owned more than 1.86 million BTC. That number has since dropped to about 1.8 million. The trend is slow but steady – and the record sales of the first quarter may have accelerated it even further.
Asset manager CoinShares warned in its Bitcoin Mining Report for the first quarter of 2026 that more pain could be coming. Operators with higher costs should expect a continued capitulation in the first half of this year, the company said, unless Bitcoin’s price shows a meaningful recovery.
Think ₿nigger. pic.twitter.com/L1yH3n0k7t
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) April 12, 2026
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Buyers of government bonds are jumping in, while miners are pulling out
While miners are selling, corporate buyers are moving in the opposite direction. Strategythe largest Bitcoin Treasury company in terms of holdings, has continued to increase its position.
Co-founder Michael Saylor indicated a new purchase was in the works earlier this week, sharing the company’s BTC acquisition history chart — a move his followers have come to read as an almost certain signal of an impending purchase.
Featured image from MetaAI, chart from TradingView