Core Scientific Sold Most of its Bitcoin Holdings in June
The publicly traded Bitcoin miner Core Scientific confirmed on Tuesday that it sold $167 million worth of Bitcoin in June alone. This selloff leaves the miner with just 1,959 Bitcoin remaining on its balance sheet, alongside $132 million in cash.
A Closer Look at the Miner Selloff
As revealed in the company’s monthly operational update, Core Scientific operates over 180,000 ASIC servers across Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and North Dakota. These servers cumulatively produce 17.9 exahashes per second (EH/s) – the inputs used to mine Bitcoin blocks. For context, Bitcoin’s average daily hash rate is approximately 197 EH/s at the time of writing.
Producing these hashes costs a lot of energy, however, which effectively represents an explicit cost for mining Bitcoin. As such, a miner’s net profitability can be severely impacted by its ability to source cheap electricity, the efficiency of its ASICs (mining machines), and Bitcoin’s price.
The latter variable has been miners’ greatest foe over the past two months. As Bitcoin’s price fell following Terra’s collapse and its contagious aftermath, miners have been significantly less profitable. In fact, data from Arcane Research shows that miners sold more than 100% of their Bitcoin profits in May, with deeper losses expected for June.
If Core Scientific is any indication, this expectation is proving true. In June, the mining firm sold exactly 7,202 Bitcoin for an average of $23,000 each, while only mining 1,106 Bitcoin in return. That’s a 651% selloff.
Proceeds from those Bitcoin sales were primarily used on ASIC servers, data center capacity, and “scheduled repayment of debt.”
In a statement, Core Scientific CEO Mike Levitt acknowledged that the mining industry is undergoing “enormous stress” amid weak markets and unprecedented interest and inflation rates.
“Our company has successfully endured downturns in the past, and we are confident in our ability to navigate the current market turmoil,” he said.
How Are Other Miners Faring?
The market has also left mining firms like Compass Mining and Bitfarms in financial trouble. Compass saw both its CEO and CFO abruptly step down last week amid “multiple setbacks and disappointments” combined with its $500,000 electricity debt. Meanwhile, Bitfarms sold 3000 Bitcoin in June, representing over 50% of its holdings.
Marathon Digital was even less fortunate. It recently saw 75% of its mining fleet rendered powerless due to a Montana storm, per an announcement last Tuesday.
