Large miners sell their BTC because they have to pay the bills in USD.
I see this said a lot. Is there any basis for it?
What USD bills do large Chinese miners have to pay?
Fine then CNY. The point is they pay bills in fiat not BTC.
As for what bills they pay that should be obvious. Companies producing Asics sink millions of fiat into development and production costs to pay whatever foundry produces the chips. Individual miners buy them in fiat most of the time as well. And of course there is always electricity. I've not heard of a single electric company taking payments in BTC yet. Not to mention rent payments wherever they're leasing warehouse space and of course internet costs. All of that paid in fiat not BTC.
I understand that the Chinese miners have bills to pay, just like the rest of us.
I am just querying the widespread assumption that as soon as they discover a block they immediately fiat it thru necessity. Bitcoin mining in China seems to be pretty much independent of the West, so why do we assume their costs are equivalent and price them in $?
Chips from Hong Kong, local labor prices for assembly, hydro power with very low real estate costs adjacent, no currency conversion, little shipping cost.
All adds up to very low overhead to pay.
Streng from Genesis Mining
said that mining one Bitcoin in Iceland cost them $60 in electricity and $128 in other fixed costs.
Iceland, despite its cheap power, is one of the most expensive places in Europe. How about if the Chinese pay domestically half that for power and 20% of staffing and other costs?
If their total costs are $60 a coin and they can control the market price because of their size, why should they dump as they mine?
That's very short term thinking and not a particularly Chinese attitude or a very sensible one.
If, in the real world, you had an highly productive, very low cost gold mine would you sell everything you dug up straight away? I don't think so.
All this is pure speculation of course, it's just that basing any theory about price on an unproven assumption about the Chinese is dangerous and misleading.