Miners Sell 32,000 BTC as Firms Fund AI Data Centers

Hut 8 reported first-quarter 2026 results and signed a $9.8 billion agreement to build AI data centers. CleanSpark and other publicly traded miners sold a record more than 32,000 BTC in the January–March quarter, according to CryptoQuant.

CryptoQuant’s data show public miners offloaded over 32,000 BTC in Q1 2026, a total larger than net sales for all of 2025. Marathon Digital Holdings sold 15,133 BTC in March for about $1.1 billion. Riot Platforms sold 3,778 BTC for roughly $289.5 million. Core Scientific moved about 1,900 BTC in January, valued near $175 million. CleanSpark increased its liquidations during the quarter, selling 159 of the 573 BTC it mined in January and 553 of 568 BTC mined in February.

Industry data cited by mining companies put AI compute revenue per megawatt from three to 25 times higher than Bitcoin mining on reported cases, with profit margins on AI workloads often reported in the 80% to 90% range. Mining economics have weakened: hashprice, a measure of miner revenue potential, is near historic lows in the low-$30-per-petahash-per-second range. Network difficulty is roughly ten times higher than in 2021, and the April 2024 halving cut block rewards in half.

Hut 8’s Q1 results and its $9.8 billion data-center agreement helped lift the company’s stock nearly 32% on May 6. The company also refinanced a Bitcoin-backed credit facility in early May. Bitdeer sold its entire treasury of more than 1,127 BTC earlier in 2026 to fund land purchases and expand high-performance computing capacity.

Despite the quarterly liquidations, public miners still hold substantial Bitcoin. Data from BitcoinTreasuries show 29 publicly traded mining companies control a combined 100,287 BTC, valued at about $8.19 billion at current prices. Marathon holds 38,689 BTC, Riot 15,680 BTC, Hut 8 13,696 BTC and CleanSpark 13,561 BTC.

Matt Sigel, head of research at VanEck, noted that Bitdeer, “like other miners, is actively selling everything they mine (and more) to fund the AI pivot.”

Market participants are watching whether the Q1 selling represents a single funding wave or the start of a longer trend that could continue through the rest of 2026 if mining margins remain compressed.