Public miners dump record BTC and are pivoting to AI — is Bitcoin’s security backbone starting to hollow out?

Kripto piyasalarında dikkat çekici bir gelişme yaşandı. Publicly listed Bitcoin miners liquidated more than 32,000 Bitcoin during the first quarter of 2026, marking a record sell-off as the industry's largest operators redirect billions in capital toward artificial intelligence. This historic shift is unfolding precisely as the economics of Bitcoin validation reach a critical pressure point. With mining profitability hovering near cyclical lows, weighted production costs surging, and network hashrate showing persistent signs of strain, the infrastructure giants that defined the last crypto boom are fundamentally reengineering their business models.

Related Reading Latest Bitcoin data proves BTC miners need price to retake $80k to stop lure of $4B in AI revenue Yet top 10 public miners could earn $4. 3B from BTC vs up to $4. 1B in long-term AI contracts, reshaping Bitcoin’s security base.

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Apr 18, 2026 Liam 'Akiba' Wright Public BTC miners turn to the balance sheet The sheer magnitude of the first-quarter liquidation reflects the severity of the capital pivot. Public mining firms unloaded more Bitcoin in the first three months of 2026 than they did throughout 2025. To contextualize the scale of the sell-off, the Q1 offload easily surpassed the roughly 20,000 Bitcoin dumped by the industry during the chaotic Terra-Luna collapse in the second quarter of 2022.

According to on-chain data from CryptoQuant, miner reserves have steadily eroded throughout the cycle, with prominent operators now using their digital treasuries as vital liquidity engines rather than long-term strategic holdings. Bitcoin Miners' Reserves (Source: CryptoQuant) The firm noted that, since the start of the current cycle, miners have recorded a net sell of 61,000 BTC. This heavy selling activity is led by Marathon Digital, which offloaded over 13,000 BTC and has since dropped out of the top three Bitcoin holders.

Other BTC miners selling their holdings include Cango, which sold 2,000 Bitcoin for roughly $143 million to extinguish Bitcoin-backed debt obligations and clear its balance sheet. Core Scientific unloaded around 1,900 Bitcoin in January to raise $175 million, while Riot Platforms sold 4,026 BTC. Post-halving economics break the old model The engine driving this mass exodus of capital is a broken economic model, exacerbated by the April 2024 halving, which slashed block rewards from 6.

Piyasalara Etkisi

The programmatic 50% cut in block subsidies fundamentally repriced the revenue baseline for the entire sector, leaving operators highly vulnerable to market fluctuations. Since that reduction, BTC mining economics have been defined by unrelenting downward pressure. James Butterfill, head of research at digital asset manager CoinShares, noted that the weighted average cash cost to produce a single Bitcoin for public operators surged to nearly $80,000 in the final quarter of 2025.

Average Bitcoin Mining Cost per Miner (Source: CoinShares) Meanwhile, the revenue side of the equation continues to deteriorate. Hashprice, the metric tracking expected revenue per unit of computing power, plummeted to between $28 and $30 per petahash per second per day in Q1 2026, marking some of the lowest profitability levels on record. With transaction fees remaining structurally weak at less than 1% of total block rewards, miners are highly dependent on spot price appreciation.

However, with Bitcoin hovering around $77,000, substantially below its cycle peak of approximately $126,000 reached in October 2025, miners are caught in a vise. Ballooning debt burdens and massive electricity overheads are squeezing cash flow to the breaking point, forcing executives to look elsewhere for earnings. Why Wall Street is rewarding the AI pivot Faced with shrinking margins, pure-play operators are finding that boards of directors and institutional investors are aggressively rewarding a pivot toward AI and high-performance computing .

Blockchain ekosistemindeki bu gelişme, dijital varlık piyasalarını şekillendirmeye devam ediyor. Uzmanlar, konunun yakın vadeli etkilerini mercek altına alıyor.