[NEWS] The miners are hoarding

[bbc.reporter]

The miners do not dump while we are also witnessing the exchanges print more stable coins which might not be backed by real fiat and pump.

The skeptical me thinks that the miners with help from exchanges are on an operation to save themselves hehehe. Their sustainability depends on bitcoin's price. However, is this plan sustainable?



Miners have sold less Bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days as the highly anticipated block reward halving approaches. This means that miners expect the price of Bitcoin to increase substantially over time after the halving occurs.

Over the past week, according to data from ByteTree, miners held about 1,067 Bitcoin. Ostensibly, miners hoarding Bitcoin seems positive — but it is not.

Normally, miners hoarding most of the Bitcoin they mine without selling it to cover expenses is not optimistic. But ByteTree’s research paper noted that this time miners may be expecting the upcoming halving to drive the price of Bitcoin up substantially.

Read in full https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-miners-expect-bitcoin-price-to-surpass-12k-after-reward-halving

[el kaka22]

Well, they are probably right in one part; the price will eventually go up. Even if we break over $10k and reach there in an easily way that the price doesn't drop, I know that eventually price will go up. I am not saying it will happen right after the halving, maybe it will take weeks, maybe it will take months but eventually the price goes up.

Moreover, if miners do not sell that means price will go up anyway, there is thousands of bitcoin not sold on the market which should increase the price. The real problem with this strategy is the fact that they will have too much bitcoin at their hands and how are they planning on selling it on the market when they decide to start selling again? I mean you can't really sell $30k bitcoin all at once right? So, they will need to find a way to do that.

[bbc.reporter]

@kaka22. It is not sustainable. The pump will stop when the miners begin to dump and the exchanges also begin to stop printing unaudited USDT. We experienced something similar on 2018 to 2019. This is not speculation anymore.

However, I speculate the regulators might be monitoring Bitfinex's moves closely again.

[pooya87]

Miners have sold less Bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days as the highly anticipated block reward halving approaches. This means that miners expect the price of Bitcoin to increase substantially over time after the halving occurs.

since i haven't seen any proof provided by the article apart from a quote from an investment group!!!!! (ie ByteTree) my assumption is that this news just like most other things cointelegraph publishes is pure nonsense.
in any case even if it were true, then it may not be a sign of miners "hoarding". it may only be a sign that they are currently experiencing difficulty selling their coins possibly because everyone who wanted to buy bought a ton of bitcoin while price was in the dip last week and now they are enjoying the ride. the panic buyers are also buying from exchanges not OTC which is where miners usually sell their coins.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, because miners are speculators too. Everyone, ask yourselves why the miners are increasing their hashing power to the network? They know why. Want a hint? Zoom out.

[exstasie]

Miners have sold less Bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days as the highly anticipated block reward halving approaches. This means that miners expect the price of Bitcoin to increase substantially over time after the halving occurs.

7 days worth of data doesn't mean shit. They are reading way too much into what amounts to ~1,000 BTC.

Nothing to see here, typical garbage from Cointelegraph.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I'm very interested to see how the Bitcoin mining industry will fare after the halving.

- They’ll get paid half the amount they currently do to mine a block
- Smaller mining farms might turn off their machines dependent on the price
- Less coins mined per day SHOULD eventually make the price BOOM so in the end everybody wins

[salamat700]

In my view, Bitcoin miners are also great speculators so as to get the most profit from their enterprise. I am sure they are anticipating a good increase of the BTC price before, during and immediately after the halving so they are preparing for that. Now, to the question of its sustainability, I think I agree that it is not sustainable as miners might be looking at things on the short-term basis. And I think that many people are also expecting that the price of BTC might be falling (as to how much that can be subject to debate) after the halving.

[exstasie]

I'm very interested to see how the Bitcoin mining industry will fare after the halving.

Supposedly lots of Chinese miners are highly leveraged. Some are speculating they will become increasingly uncompetitive after the halving, with North American miners picking up the slack.

https://decrypt.co/27777/bitcoin-halving-could-bring-way-more-mining-back-to-north-america

This miner thinks it's highly price dependent, as do I:

He elaborated that, if the Bitcoin price is high after the halving (around or above $8,000), then inefficient miners will have a reprieve, but if Bitcoin is trending towards $4,000, then he expects we could see “price wars” wherein larger farms come out on top over smaller ones, something that could risk centralizing mining in China further.

A negative feedback loop could eventually be on the table:

Miners quit
Hashrate drops
Price drops
More miners quit
Hashrate drops even more
Price drops lower
...

The classic halving FUD. Never seen this one before.

I don't think the market is that reactive to drops in the hash rate.

[pooya87]

Of course eventually it will find an equilibrium again, but at what hashrate and at what price?

price is whatever it is and it has nothing to do with what miners do. of course their fresh coins being injected in the market affects them but it is not big enough to create any pull in any directions. not to mention that hashrate follows the price not the other way around so your question should be the opposite, "what will the price be to affect how much hashrate grows?". considering the fact that adoption is still growing with an even faster speed the price has no other choice but to go up. and hashrate follows it after a while like it always does.

[STT]

Miners quit
Hashrate drops
Price drops

The hashrate will drop with less miners but its the difficulty which adjusts downwards with less miners and hardware being used, price can go either way in this scenario.     If miners hold back BTC its probably in some recognition of the trend since March, its best not to sell early in a trend but after a good deal of the price is regained from the prior falls.    I dont assume miners or anyone else is bullish over the whole year.

[niccolo_21]

A negative feedback loop could eventually be on the table:

Miners quit
Hashrate drops
Price drops
More miners quit
Hashrate drops even more
Price drops lower
...

Of course eventually it will find an equilibrium again, but at what hashrate and at what price?

what I could criticize here is: I don't see any correlation between hashrate drop and a price decrease.
it seems to me that the opposite happens: first the price decreases, than hashrate follows:



please explain, thanks

[hatshepsut93]

Miners quit
Hashrate drops
Price drops

Years of data show that the correlation between hashrate and price is not very strong, there's a lot of wiggle room, and it's mostly the price that influences the hashrate and not vice versa, so there's no feedback loops like you are describing. "Mining death spiral" is like the oldest FUD in Bitcoin, and it was debunked on practice many times.

[Juggy777]

Miners have sold less Bitcoin (BTC) over the past seven days as the highly anticipated block reward halving approaches. This means that miners expect the price of Bitcoin to increase substantially over time after the halving occurs.

since i haven't seen any proof provided by the article apart from a quote from an investment group!!!!! (ie ByteTree) my assumption is that this news just like most other things cointelegraph publishes is pure nonsense.
in any case even if it were true, then it may not be a sign of miners "hoarding". it may only be a sign that they are currently experiencing difficulty selling their coins possibly because everyone who wanted to buy bought a ton of bitcoin while price was in the dip last week and now they are enjoying the ride. the panic buyers are also buying from exchanges not OTC which is where miners usually sell their coins.

@pooya87 I’ll second that as I too don’t believe that miners were hoarding bitcoins, and since this information wasn’t reported anywhere else it makes me wonder if the author got his facts completely wrong. Also it’s pertinent to note that the bitcoin network was witnessing huge spikes in fees in the last few days (period quoted by the author), and maybe due to those high fees many people ended up postponing their transactions, and hence those miners were unable to mine and the author misunderstood it that they were hoarding bitcoins.

Sources:

https://decrypt.co/27495/bitcoin-fees-are-skyrocketing-high

https://cointelegraph.com/news/btc-miners-expect-bitcoin-price-to-surpass-12k-after-reward-halving

[bbc.reporter]

It appears everyone might be correct. The miners were not hoarding, exchanges not pumping with unaudited USDT. The pump might only be from traders on leverage who are using the halving as hype. The dump was those traders liquidated from their trades hehehehe. However, the conclusion is the same.

[stompix]

Years of data show that the correlation between hashrate and price is not very strong, there's a lot of wiggle room, and it's mostly the price that influences the hashrate and not vice versa, so there's no feedback loops like you are describing. "Mining death spiral" is like the oldest FUD in Bitcoin, and it was debunked on practice many times.

Simply comparing the price with hash rate is wrong because it doesn't take into consideration efficiency, A far more reliable graph would be that of the price and the hash rate based on an average th/w consumption.

Just look at the latest batch of miners, even with absolutely zero price increase, we would have had a jump in hash rate of 3x times with the change from the s9 to s19, the miners would have the same income, the same costs, the same profits but they would make 3 times more hashes. per second.
So an adjusted graph taking into account this evolution would picture a far more accurate view on this.

Anyhow, only 14hours to go, right now we're seeing 170 blocks in the last 24 hours, 26 more than expected so it's either that everyone is mining with whatever it has or new gear has finally hit its destination. If it's the second the drop will be far less than predicted.

Over the past week, according to data from ByteTree, miners held about 1,067 Bitcoin. Ostensibly, miners hoarding Bitcoin seems positive — but it is not.

Mining income in the last 24h was 2,125+59.04 BTC.
So, whatever this "study' has found it's a bit irrelevant 

[Smitty Werben Man Jensen]

Miners always sell Bitcoin at high prices, and that's a fact, because they also need money to pay for electricity consumption or living costs for their workers, now the price of Bitcoin has been stuck at the level of $ 8000, I'm sure there are no other miners who sell here

[buwaytress]

The only reason miners dump like this in the past was because price lagged behind for months. It'll likely end up the same way in this halving but if the unlikely happens and we see a new ATH (for example) in weeks, then oh, those miners gonna be dumping hard. Along with every other speculator who bought in for short them x2!

It's a sustainable plan because they all dumped at ATH 3 years ago and have been living on those profits since. Or the cost is not as high as we're led to think?

[FanEagle]

Even if they are hoarding in general, there is two things I think makes this not an all mining community thing. First one is, there are small miners who can't afford to not sell the coins they mine, sure some of it they can hold it but at the same time they weren't selling all of they mine anyway, they sold the costs to pay and after that they probably kept the rest, best case of scenario there were few who sold all of it and paid the costs and kept the rest in fiat who are hoarding right now but that can't be too big of a number.

The second one is that even the big ones can't sustain hoarding for too long, they probably hoarded already and they can continue to hoard for a while, but no miner that big has like millions of dollars from something else that makes millions to pay for the bills, so they probably still have to sell eventually.

[whyrqa]

Even if they are hoarding in general, there is two things I think makes this not an all mining community thing. First one is, there are small miners who can't afford to not sell the coins they mine, sure some of it they can hold it but at the same time they weren't selling all of they mine anyway, they sold the costs to pay and after that they probably kept the rest, best case of scenario there were few who sold all of it and paid the costs and kept the rest in fiat who are hoarding right now but that can't be too big of a number.

The second one is that even the big ones can't sustain hoarding for too long, they probably hoarded already and they can continue to hoard for a while, but no miner that big has like millions of dollars from something else that makes millions to pay for the bills, so they probably still have to sell eventually.

It also seems to me that small miners will not be able to continue their activities in the future after the held halving.  Their earnings have already decreased by almost 44%, which led to a decrease in the computing power of the network by 16%, which will continue to decline for some time.  Moreover, one must take into account the fact that miners who work on energy-consuming equipment that is already outdated today will not be able to continue their activities due to low incomes and in any case they will have to shut down.