These miners cut their Hodl streak and went out to sell their BTC, why?

So far from May, eight mining companies of Bitcoin (BTC) that are quoted in the stock market have published their April production updates. Together, they liquidated approximately the equivalent of 70% of Bitcoin extracted during that month, The highest sale ratio since January 2024according to The Miner Mag.

This change marks a turn regarding accumulation strategies that predominated last year, when many of these companies chose to retain most of their minted bitcoins.

A change in the liquidation strategy

In April, several public mining companies chose to sell a significant proportion of their production, breaking with the accumulation tendency that had characterized previous months. Among them, and according to The Miner Mag, Cipher (CIFR) stood out with a liquidation/production ratio greater than 200%, An indicator measures the amount of Bitcoin sold in relation to the Bitcoin Minado in a given period.

That ratio above 200% means that Cipher not only sold the equivalent of the entire bitcoin that he extracted, but also It liquidated additional reservationsaccumulated in previous months. For its part, Bitfarms (Bitf) registered a 150% settlement/production ratioindicating that he also sold more bitcoin than he undermined, although to a lesser extent than Cipher.

This behavior can respond to liquidity needs, financial commitments or the obligation to cover its current expenses for a month in which the price of BTC did not help.

And, in April, the price of the currency created by Nakamoto oscillated mostly Between 89,000 and $ 74,000levels similar to March, but notoriously lower than February and January, causing the miners to have to sell more BTC to cover their usual costs.

In addition, on April 22, Bitcoin began climbing up to almost $ 94,000, staying between that brand and $ 96,000 until the end of that month. Perhaps, these miners could have taken advantage of that envy that took the price of BTC, also promoting sales in the last days of April.

At the close of this article, BTC quotes about $ 103,000, which suggests that, despite the sales of these public miners, BTC demand remains highmonopolizing all that new circulating offer and preventing the price from falling.

Other mining giants are added to sale

Two of the largest public mining companies for market capitalization, according to hashrate Index data, also changed their approach in April: Riot Platforms (Riot) and Cleanspark (CLSK). Both companies, recognized for having some of the lowest Bitcoin production costs in the world, as Cryptonoticia indicated, had maintained almost total accumulation strategies in previous months.

However, in April, Riot Platforms broke this streak when selling the equivalent to more than 100% of its production, which implies that, like Cipher and Biffarms, it liquidated the entire Bitcoin undermined in that month and part of its reserves. Cleanspark, on the other hand, sold about 65% of the equivalent of its production, a significant proportion considering its retention history.

According to The Miner Mag, both companies also recently resorted to financial instruments supported by Bitcoin, as guaranteed loans with their reservations. These operations could suggest that Riot and Cleanspark are looking to balance the need for liquidity to finance expansions or cover operating costs, while taking advantage of their holdings in a bullish rebound.

The combination of direct sales and loans backed by Bitcoin indicates greater strategic flexibility in the management of their assets with respect to Cipher and Bitfarms that, perhaps, sold more for having more tight profit margins.

It is also true that, given the low cost of production by Bitcoin currency that these companies access in relation to their spot market value, even selling a greater amount of their holdings, avoid being losses.

Exceptions to the trend

Not all public mining companies followed the sales current. Mara Digital Holdings (Mara), Cango (Cang) and Bitfufu (FUFU) They retained all of their bitcoin mined in April.

In the case of Mara, this decision is aligned with its long -term accumulation strategy, known as “Hodl”, which led to it currently being the Second public company with greater reservations in BTC: 48,237 BTC, which is equivalent to almost 5,000 million dollars.

To finance its without selling Bitcoin, Mara resorted to the capital market, presenting in March an offer of shares for 2,000 million dollars, according to The Miner Mag. This maneuver reinforces its commitment to maintain its intact reserves, betting on a future appreciation of the price of Bitcoin.

Additionally, Mara was the public contribution mining that extracted the most BTC during the month of April, with 705 coinsas can be seen in the following image:

Cango, on the other hand, presents a more complex case. The company, which is going through a transition after disconnecting from its original automotive financing business, signed a loan agreement with Antalpha, using your bitcoin mined as a guarantee To pay Bitmain accommodation services, said The Miner Mag. Since Antalpha is proposing to acquire Cango, this operation can be interpreted as an internal transaction within the Bitmain ecosystem, where the Bitcoin undermined by Cango ends, in effect, in the hands of its matrix.

Bitfufu, on the other hand, increased his holdings in 61 BTC, a modest increase attributed to both mining and income from cloud mining clients.

Difficulty and hashrate: the context behind sales

At the beginning of April 2025, Cryptonotics notified that for the first time in history the Bitcoin’s computing power or hashrate had reached the Zettahas area. This metric, which reflects the total computing power dedicated to the network, suggests that more miners, or existing ones, increased their processing capacity. That circumstance, accompanied by a rise of almost 7% in the difficulty of mining, caused an adverse context for the gains of the miners.

Thus, the difficulty, which measures how complex a block, remained high because the hashrate was also sustained at high levels. At the time of this wording, Bitcoin’s total computational power is 951 EH/s (exahasos per second), according to Mempool.Space.

A high hashrate implies greater competition, which can press gain margins of miners, especially those with high operating costs.

Thus, a high hashrate, a sustained difficulty and a BTC quoting under could have generated an environment for miners to liquidate their production and part of their reserves.