The short version
- Bitcoin miners selling: Core Scientific sold 3,374 BTC this year and held just 32 on September 30, and it will shut its own mining in the fourth quarter.
- MARA moved 1,650 BTC, about $132.8 million, to Galaxy Digital, Copper and other platforms, after selling 23,093 BTC in the first half.
- Mining earns about $32 a day per petahash on our sum, with Bitcoin 25% below a year ago and difficulty near its record.
- Next: MARA’s third-quarter results on Monday, November 9, at 22:00 UTC, and the difficulty adjustment around November 13, expected about 3% lower.
Miners used to be the most stubborn Bitcoin holders in the market. Not anymore. Core Scientific stock fell 10.8% to $11.38 on Thursday and MARA dropped 14.4% to $5.88, on a day the Nasdaq 100 lost 6.36%, but the bigger story is Bitcoin miners selling their coins, and one of the biggest deciding to stop mining for good.
Core Scientific said on its third-quarter call that it will fully shut down its Bitcoin mining in the fourth quarter of 2026 and run only AI data centers from 2027:
Core Scientific, Once the Largest Bitcoin Miner, Plans to Fully Shut Down Bitcoin Mining by Q4 2026
Core Scientific, once the world's largest Bitcoin mining company, announced during its Q3 earnings call that it is accelerating the phase-out of its proprietary Bitcoin mining
Core Scientific’s Q3 in Four Numbers
The quarterly report filed on November 5 shows how far the switch has gone:
- Colocation revenue: $215.4 million, up nearly 60% from the second quarter and 93% of all revenue.
- Self-mining revenue: $12.3 million, 5% of revenue. A year ago mining was 71%.
- Cost of that mining: $19.8 million, with $10.5 million for power alone. Mining lost money.
- Bitcoin on hand: 32 BTC on September 30, down from 2,537 at the end of 2025.
That last line is the selling part. Core Scientific mined about 869 BTC in the first nine months of 2026 and sold 3,374 BTC for $286.8 million, “to fund planned capital expenditures.” It spent $985.1 million on construction in the third quarter alone.
The filing adds that hosting machines for outside miners ends by December 31, and that the company is not buying new mining equipment. Its customers now are CoreWeave and, from 2027, AMD, under a deal for up to 2.5 GW of capacity.
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Is MARA Selling Too?
Probably some of it. Lookonchain flagged 1,650 BTC, about $132.8 million, moving from MARA’s wallets to Galaxy Digital, Copper and other platforms over 12 hours, in a post at 03:52 UTC on Thursday (10:52 p.m. Wednesday in New York):
Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings (@MARA) appears to be dumping $BTC again.
Over the past 12 hours, #MARA transferred 1,650 $BTC ($132.8M) to Galaxy Digital, Copper, and other platforms.
arkm.com/explorer/entit…
A transfer to a trading desk or custodian is not a sale on its own. Coins can go out as loan collateral or to a new custodian. MARA has not filed anything on these coins yet.
The pattern is in its own paperwork, though. MARA’s second-quarter report says it sold about 23,093 BTC for $1.6 billion in the first half of 2026, after changing its rules to allow sales from the balance sheet, not only from fresh output.
MARA’s Bitcoin holdings of 35,577 include 9,270 BTC lent out or pledged. On August 4 it also put up 18,750 BTC as collateral for $600 million in loans from Coinbase and Two Prime, money earmarked partly for its Long Ridge power-plant deal. Regulators at FERC cleared that deal on Thursday, and MARA expects to close it in the coming weeks, so the cash bill is close.
SIDE TRAIL: Bitcoin Mining Stocks Lose Nearly Half in a Month as Oil Tops $116
Why Are Bitcoin Miners Selling Now?
Because mining pays less than it did a year ago. Bitcoin is about 25% below its price of November 6, 2025, while the network’s difficulty is close to its October 2025 record.
The latest numbers from mempool.space:
- Difficulty: 148.36 trillion after a 5.5% jump on October 29. The record is 155.97 trillion.
- Next adjustment: about 3% lower, around November 13.
- Hash rate: roughly 1,036 EH/s.
On those figures, one petahash a second of machines earns about $32 a day, block reward plus fees. Miners call that figure hashprice. That is our own sum, and it is thin. MARA paid $39,328 in power for every bitcoin its own sites mined in the first half, before staff, machines or interest.
So the trade is simple. Turn the power into AI rent, sell the coins to build it, or both.
Bitcoin Price: What Miner Selling Means
Bitcoin trades at $76,183 at the time of writing, down 4.44% in 24 hours. Thursday’s daily close was $76,088, the lowest since September 15.
Price sits under the 50-day moving average at $82,045 and above the 200-day at $73,241. The first support is $74,968, the mid-September low. Resistance is $81,479.
For scale, $132.8 million is about 0.3% of the $44.45 billion in Bitcoin traded over the past 24 hours, so one miner’s transfer does not move the market by itself. A steady drip from many miners in a weak tape is a different matter.
MARA reports its third-quarter results on Monday, November 9, with a call at 22:00 UTC (5:00 p.m. in New York). That is where the 1,650 BTC should get an answer.
Satoshi Flipper has more than 20 years of trading experience, starting in stocks before moving into crypto in 2017, and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. The edge is reading the economic data: rate decisions, inflation, jobs numbers, earnings and the US markets that move Bitcoin.
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