Here’s why ‘safe’ Bitcoin miners sold big right before the halving

• Miners sold their BTCs ahead of the halving
• Percentage of miners’ revenue derived from transaction fees rose too

Miners’ Bitcoin [BTC] holdings cratered to a 12-month low ahead of the now-completed halving event, according to IntoTheBlock. This could be a sign that the network’s miners sold off their coins before the halving actually happened. 

As Bitcoin goes into the halving, miners’ BTC holdings hit 12 year low. This indicates that miners have been net sellers leading up to the halving. pic.twitter.com/WNi74RkluG

— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) April 19, 2024

The surge in coin sell-offs from BTC miners before their rewards got slashed was gleaned from the spike observed in the coin’s Miner to Exchange Flow. 

The Miner to Exchange Flow metric measures the amount of BTC flowing from miners to exchanges. When this metric rallies, miners are selling more BTC than they are mining. This is often interpreted as a sign that miners are bearish on the price of Bitcoin.

According to CryptoQuant’s data, on 19 April, BTC miners sent 366 BTC valued at $23.45 million at current market prices to crypto-exchanges. This represented a 128% spike from the 126 BTC that was sent to exchanges by miners on 18 April.

At the time of writing, the amount of BTC held in affiliated miners’ wallets totalled 1.81 million BTC.

Miners are the “winners”

As Bitcoin network users rally to mint fungible tokens following the launch of the Runes Protocol, the fees paid by users to get transactions included in blocks have spiked significantly. Created by Bitcoin Ordinals creator Casey Rodmarmor, the Runes Protocol has been described as a more efficient way to create new tokens on the Bitcoin network.

According to data from Bitcoin block explorer mempool.space, the halving block, Block 840,000, received 40.7 BTC worth over $2.5 million in fees as users rallied to “etch” new tokens on the network.

Is your portfolio green? Check out the BTC Profit Calculator

Additionally, data from Messari revealed that due to the surge in transaction fees, the percentage of miner revenue derived from fees has risen correspondingly. With a reading of 15% at press time, this has climbed by 50% in the last 24 hours alone, according to the on-chain data provider.

At press time, BTC was valued at $64,262, on the back of a minor 3% price uptick in 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. 

However, during that period, daily trading volume declined by 8%. This divergence may hint at the possibility of a price retraction in the short term as exhaustion begins to set in.