Record Bitcoin Sales by Public Miners in Q1 2026
According to data from TheEnergyMag, major publicly traded bitcoin miners including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot, Cango, Core Scientific (CORZ), and Bitdeer (BTDR) have sold over 32,000 BTC in the first quarter of 2026. This figure surpasses the total net sales across all four quarters of 2025 and eclipses the previous record of roughly 20,000 BTC sold in Q2 2022 during the Terra-Luna collapse. Notably, the dataset remains incomplete as Q1 financial reports have not yet been fully released, meaning the actual sales could be even higher.
Mining Economics Under Pressure: Hashprice at All-Time Lows
The massive sell-off comes as hashprice — a key metric measuring expected revenue per unit of hashrate — hovers around $30/PH/s, near its historical nadir. At this level, profit margins for miners are severely compressed or negative, especially for those operating older, less efficient rigs or paying high electricity costs. The current pressure stems from aggressive hashrate expansion following China's mining ban in 2021, combined with network difficulty now roughly 10 times higher than in that year and the 2024 halving that cut block rewards in half. In effect, mining profitability has declined by an order of magnitude.
Diverging Strategies: Distress Selling vs. Strategic Accumulation
The record liquidation does not tell a uniform story. While some operators are forced to sell to maintain liquidity, others are using the downturn to accumulate aggressively. American Bitcoin (ABTC), the independent mining arm of Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT), has built its reserves from zero to over 7,000 BTC as of early April, while boosting its proprietary hashrate to 28 EH/s. ABTC President and interim CFO Matt Prusak told TheEnergyMag that the company focuses on 'high-quality growth' and will not chase hashrate for its own sake. ABTC's all-in cost per bitcoin is approximately $55,000 (or about $25/PH/s), one of the lowest among public miners. The company purchased about 15 EH/s of Antminer S21 series miners from Bitmain in summer 2025 by pledging roughly 3,000 BTC as collateral (redeemable within 24 months) instead of paying cash — a deal structure that would have been impossible in previous market cycles. Although the pledged bitcoin has since fallen about 40% in value, Bitmain cannot liquidate the collateral unless ABTC declines to redeem. ABTC has also raised $350 million through at-the-market offerings to maintain capital flexibility.
Ultra-Low Power Costs: A Competitive Moat
New West Data, a Canadian oil producer, uses flare gas from its own wells to power bitcoin mining at an effective electricity cost below $0.02/kWh — roughly one-third of what major public miners pay. At this cost, even older-generation miners with efficiencies around 60 J/TH remain profitable at the current hashprice. The company tripled both its oil output and bitcoin hashrate in 2025, and expects another triple in 2026, now operating about 15 MW of hashrate entirely from onsite flare gas.
Operational Optimization via Software
Mining pool and services provider Luxor recently launched Commander, a fleet management tool that uses automated algorithms to assess hashrate and power markets every five minutes, dynamically adjusting power settings across the fleet. Internal benchmarks show profitability improvements of 8% to 14% compared to traditional curtailment strategies. Luxor's firmware solution, LuxorOS, now supports about 45 EH/s (roughly 5% of the global network). Public miner Soluna, which operates hosted and owned sites in Texas, reported that LuxorOS reduced recovery time from curtailment events by 50%, increasing uptime without additional operational spending.
Conclusion: A Fractured Industry
The bitcoin mining sector is no longer monolithic. The once-common model defined by hashrate growth is splintering into multiple survival and growth strategies shaped by electricity economics, balance sheet flexibility, and operational maturity. Miners with access to ultra-low-cost power, disciplined capital allocation, or smart software optimization are weathering the downturn and even expanding, while those with higher costs and less flexibility are being forced to liquidate holdings. This marks a new phase for bitcoin mining, one where quality and resilience matter more than brute hashrate.