Publicly traded Bitcoin miners sold more BTC in Q1 2026 than in all four quarters of 2025, signaling renewed pressure on the sector as mining economics tighten. The EnergyMag reports that operators including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific and Bitdeer liquidated collectively more than 32,000 BTC in the first quarter, a quarterly record that eclipses earlier bear-market selloffs.

The quarter’s total also stands out against a backdrop of slumping profitability, as hashprice — the metric that combines network security costs with miner revenue potential — drifts toward the low end of profitability for many operators. Hashrate Index data puts current hashprice at roughly $33 per PH/s per day, near the $35 per PH/s per day breakeven line for older mining equipment, underscoring ongoing margin pressure in the sector. The combination of falling hashprice and rising electricity costs has pushed some miners into unprofitable territory, with CoinShares noting about 20% of the mining industry operating below breakeven on a cash-cost basis.

Key takeaways

• Publicly traded miners liquidated more than 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026, a new quarterly record and greater than their combined sell-off in all of 2025.
• Hashprice sits around $33 per PH/s per day, near the breakeven threshold for many operators, placing pressure on margins, especially for older hardware.
• An estimated 20% of miners are unprofitable at current hashprice levels, highlighting a widening profitability gap in the sector.
• Bitcoin treasury holders and corporate buyers diverge from miner selling, with Strategy reportedly increasing BTC purchases as price dips; co-founder Michael Saylor signaled continued accumulation.

Record miner liquidations reshape the mining economics landscape

The quarterly sell-off by public miners marks a notable shift in 2026, with The EnergyMag citing more than 32,000 BTC moved off balance sheets in Q1. The figure eclipses the 20,000 BTC sold during Q2 2022 — a period aligned with the Terra-Luna collapse and a severe crypto bear market — and sets a new benchmark for how much BTC miners liquidate in a single period. The scale matters because it highlights the fragility of a business model still adjusting to lower revenue per mined coin and higher energy costs, even as competition intensifies with more efficiently operated rigs joining the hash network.

Analysts say the burst of selling reflects both tightening margins and a shift in capital needs. As miners seek to cover operating expenses, network growth through hashrate expansion presses the economics of marginal production. The EnergyMag’s report underscores that even with a rising hashrate, a larger portion of cash flow may be diverted to debt service, electricity, and equipment upkeep rather than long-hold treasury strategies.

Hashprice dynamics and the profitability squeeze

Hashprice has been a critical, forward-looking indicator for miners since it directly ties the cost of securing the Bitcoin network to revenue potential. Hashrate Index data shows hashprice hovering near $33 PH/s per day, a level that many operators equate with a break-even threshold of roughly $35 PH/s per day, depending on equipment vintage and energy costs. That proximity to break-even is enough to tilt decisions toward liquidation for underpowered rigs, and it helps explain why even modest price dips or energy hikes can trigger balance-sheet adjustments.

CoinShares’ Q1 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report echoes the stress the sector faces: at current hashprice levels, around one-fifth of the mining industry appears to be unprofitable. When combined with persistent competitive pressure — a rising hashrate means more competitors for the same block rewards — the calculus for staying operators becomes increasingly conservative. In practical terms, miners with higher operating costs or older hardware face the prospect of deeper consolidation as weaker players exit the field or pivot toward other lines of business.

Treasure dynamics diverge: miners sell, treasury buyers accumulate

While miners sold record amounts of BTC, a contrasting trend persists among Bitcoin treasury holders. CryptoQuant notes a long-running decline in the total BTC held by miners, a “Miner Reserve” metric that has drifted down from about 1.86 million BTC at the end of 2023 to roughly 1.8 million BTC at the time of publication. The dynamic highlights a fundamental tension: miners often liquidate holdings to fund operations, while independent treasury-holders and corporate buyers accumulate, reshaping the supply/demand balance across cycles.

In parallel, corporate buyers have continued to add BTC to their treasuries even as prices wobble. Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury company by profile, has been repeatedly described as a net buyer. Michael Saylor, Strategy’s co-founder, this week signaled further purchases as BTC pulled back from a local high near $73,000, posting on social media that investors should “think bigger” and pointing to Strategy’s long-running pattern of accumulating BTC over time. Such guidance reinforces the broad divergence between miners’ near-term liquidity needs and treasury buyers’ longer-term accumulation strategies.

CoinShares’s assessment adds nuance to the picture: even as wide-margin miners face ongoing cost pressures, the sector’s capital allocation remains a study in contrasts — with accelerating buying by treasuries on one side and sanguine but cash-constrained producers on the other. The broader implication is that while producer liquidations can temporarily depress price and sentiment, strategic buyers and reserve managers can act as counterweights, potentially stabilizing demand in downturns.

What comes next for miners and investors

Looking ahead, several factors will determine the trajectory of mining profitability and the sector’s health. The first is BTC’s price trajectory; a material recovery would widen the gap between current hashprice and breakeven, allowing marginal operators to stabilize or expand. The second is the pace of hashrate growth, which affects the competitive landscape and block rewards for all miners. Third, macro energy costs remain a meaningful driver of operating expenses, particularly for older facilities or regions with high electricity prices.

Industry researchers, including CoinShares, warned that if BTC fails to recover meaningfully in the near term, capitulation among higher-cost operators could accelerate in the first half of 2026. That possibility underscores the fragility of a sector that depends on a delicate balance of energy economics, equipment efficiency, and BTC price dynamics. Meanwhile, treasury buyers appear poised to press ahead with purchases should price volatility persist, a development that could create a counterweight to mining selloffs over time.

Readers should watch how the quarterly cadence of miner liquidations evolves in Q2 2026, and whether hashprice strengthens or weakens as new miners deploy more efficient rigs. Any shift in the balance between miner sales and treasury purchases will offer clues about how the sector negotiates the next major price cycle and whether new capacity can be absorbed without triggering further distress in the mining economy.

Sky, the decentralized finance protocol formerly known as MakerDAO, has announced the first native deployment of its native stablecoin, USDS, and its yield-bearing version, Savings USDS (sUSDS), on Avalanche.

The rollout runs on Skylink, the Sky ecosystem’s crosschain bridge protocol, built on LayerZero infrastructure. Unlike traditional bridge deployments, Skylink operates on a burn-and-mint framework that requires no bridge liquidity, accoriding to Sky’s X announcement.

Grove Finance initiated the bridge of Sky’s USDS and sUSDS to Avalanche via Skylink, becoming the first entity to transfer the assets directly from Ethereum mainnet to Avalanche. “This is the first native deployment of USDS and sUSDS on Avalanche,” Sky emphasized on X, clarifying:

“Every previous stablecoin expansion into a new network required third-party bridges, but Skylink removes that dependency entirely.”

Explaining the phased rollout, Sky wrote that the Avalanche bridge went live on April 13 with a daily transfer cap of 5 million in either direction, set by Sky governance. Limits are set to increase to their final capacity on April 27, with native USDS-to-sUSDS conversions directly on Avalanche expected later in Q2 2026, per Sky’s X thread.

Avalanche currently has just over $756 million in total value locked in DeFi, per DefiLlama data, making it the 12th-largest chain by DeFi TVL. Ethereum is the largest with over $58 billion.

In a separate collaboration between Grove and Sky, yesterday Grove announced it had received 25 million USDS from the Sky ecosystem as part of its Agent Network allocations. “Each allocation expands the Sky Agent Network’s capacity to generate diversified yield,” Sky wrote on X.

Sky is the rebranded version of MakerDAO, one of DeFi’s oldest and most influential protocols. As The Defiant reported in August 2024, the rebrand introduced USDS as a successor to DAI, the protocol’s long-running decentralized stablecoin, as part of the protocol’s sweeping “Endgame” overhaul.

The Avalanche news adds to a busy week for the network. Just yesterday, April 15, Bitwise launched its Avalanche ETF (BAVA) on NYSE Arca, offering investors regulated AVAX exposure with in-house staking.

This article was written with the assistance of AI workflows. All our stories are curated, edited and fact-checked by a human.

Key takeaways:

• Negative Bitcoin futures funding rates signal bear-market losses and forced liquidations rather than a shift in sentiment. 

• Institutional inflows into Bitcoin ETFs and corporate accumulation suggest that spot demand remains solid.

Bitcoin (BTC) sold off in early trading hours at the US stock market open, briefly losing the $75,000 level before rebounding. This unexpected price swing triggered $120 million in liquidations of leveraged long (buy) BTC futures positions. During this ordeal, the Bitcoin funding rate has remained negative, which could hint at further downside and a potential advantage to the bears. 

The negative funding rate has been the norm since Monday, indicating a lack of demand for bullish leverage. Negative rates mean shorts (sellers) are the ones paying to keep their positions open. Under neutral conditions, the indicator should range between 5% and 10% to compensate for the cost of capital and exchange risks. At first sight, a 20% rate indicates conviction, but that is not the whole story.

Liquidations back Bitcoin’s negative funding rate

The perpetual contract funding rates are calculated every 8 hours on most exchanges. Temporary spikes to 20%, either positive or negative, are not particularly concerning for most traders, as they amount to a 0.05% daily fee. In essence, even if the position has extremely high leverage, such as 20x, the cost is 1%. Unless this issue persists for much longer, it is hardly a burden.

Bitcoin bearish positions have been forcefully liquidated for $365 million since Monday, which has naturally eroded collateral on short positions. Traders could have opted to sit tight rather than rush to add margin, anticipating that funding rates would adjust on their own. Thus, the negative funding rate reflects losses from bears rather than conviction.

Bitcoin’s intraday moves have largely tracked the S&P 500 index for the past couple of weeks. The US stock market jumped to an all-time high on Thursday while Bitcoin remains distant from its $126,200 peak. Consecutive failures to re-establish the $76,000 level partially explain the lack of enthusiasm in BTC derivatives markets. Still, the latest round of US economic data is supportive for risk markets, including Bitcoin.

US industrial production decreased by 0.5% in March from the previous month, according to data released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday. Consumer durable goods were the negative highlight, with automotive production down 2.8%. In parallel, the continuing jobless claims increased 31,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.818 million during the week ended April 4.

While counterintuitive, the S&P 500 benefited from the increased economic recession, which forced the government to accelerate stimulus measures. The upward pressure on inflation, which has also been fueled by the surge in oil prices, reduces incentives to hold fixed-income investments.

Related: Bitcoin bull run ‘still too early’ to call as demand lags exiting capital–Analyst

The Bitcoin options market data provides no signs of excessive demand for downside price protection. The premium paid on put (sell) options on Deribit has lagged behind the equivalent call (buy) instruments over the past week. The $921 million in net inflows into US-listed Bitcoin spot ETFs over five days, along with continued accumulation from Strategy (MSTR US), boosted investors’ confidence. 

At the moment, Bitcoin’s negative funding rate does not raise alarms, especially since institutional investor demand remains strong in BTC’s spot markets.