About 20% of the Bitcoin mining industry is operating at a loss right now. That single fact explains much of what has been unfolding across the sector in early 2026, as publicly traded miners race to sell off holdings just to keep the lights on.
Profits Squeezed To The Bone
Hashprice — the daily revenue a miner earns per unit of computing power — has been sliding since July 2025. It now sits at roughly $33 per petahash per second per day, according to data from Hashrate Index.
The breakeven point for many miners, particularly those running older machines, is around $35. That gap, small as it looks on paper, is pushing a large chunk of the industry into the red.
Major publicly traded miners — among them MARA, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer — collectively offloaded more than 32,000 BTC during the first three months of 2026, according to TheEnergyMag.
That figure eclipses everything those same companies sold across all four quarters of 2025. It also surpasses the previous quarterly record of roughly 20,000 BTC, set during Q2 2022 when the collapse of the Terra-Luna ecosystem sent markets into a tailspin.
Three compounding forces drove miners to that record: a rising network hashrate that has made competition fiercer, reduced block rewards following the most recent halving, and broader economic headwinds that have kept Bitcoin prices under pressure.
Miner Reserves Have Been Draining For Years
The selling in Q1 2026 did not come out of nowhere. Data from CryptoQuant shows that total Bitcoin held by miners across the board has been falling since 2023.
At the close of that year, miners collectively held more than 1.86 million BTC. That number has since dropped to approximately 1.8 million. The trend is slow but steady — and the first quarter’s record sales may have accelerated it further.
Asset manager CoinShares, in its Q1 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report, warned that more pain could be coming. Higher-cost operators should expect continued capitulation in the first half of this year, the firm said, unless Bitcoin’s price stages a meaningful recovery.
Think ₿igger. pic.twitter.com/L1yH3n0k7t
— Michael Saylor (@saylor) April 12, 2026
Treasury Buyers Step In As Miners Step Back
While miners sell, corporate buyers are moving in the opposite direction. Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury company by holdings, has continued adding to its position.
Co-founder Michael Saylor signaled earlier this week that another purchase was in the works, sharing the company’s BTC acquisition history chart — a move his followers have come to read as a near-certain signal of an imminent buy.
Featured image from MetaAI, chart from TradingView
