Riot sold 3,778 BTC in Q1: Is the era of miner hoarding coming to an end?

On April 2, 2026, Nasdaq-listed miner Riot Platforms released its Q1 operating update report, disclosing that it sold 3,778 bitcoins in the first three months of 2026, at an average selling price of $76,626 per coin, generating about $289.5 million in revenue. This figure in itself is not surprising—when compared with Riot’s record of zero bitcoin sales in Q1 2025, the significance is completely different.

But this is far from an isolated move by Riot alone. At the same time, MARA Holdings sold more than 15,000 bitcoins to raise about $1.1 billion; Genius Group liquidated all 84 bitcoins to repay debt; and the government of Bhutan continued to reduce its bitcoin holdings. A miner sell-off map spanning North America, Asia, and Europe is unfolding.

Starting with Riot’s Q1 sales, this article systematically lays out the full data picture of the current miner sell-off wave, the structural collapse of corporate demand for holding coins, and the industry logic behind miners’ transition to AI infrastructure, and it projects the evolution paths under different scenarios.

A panoramic view of miner sell-offs

In Q1 2026, Riot Platforms produced a total of 1,473 bitcoins, a slight decline of about 4% from 1,530 in the same period of 2025, with an average daily output of 16.4 bitcoins. Selling 3,778 BTC implies that its sales volume that quarter was about 2.6 times its production. The company’s bitcoin on-book holdings fell from about 19,223 bitcoins at the end of the prior quarter to 15,680, including 5,802 restricted bitcoins, representing a year-over-year decline of about 18%.

Source: Riot Platforms

The average sale price of $76,626 is the most noteworthy detail in this disclosure. As of April 3, 2026, the spot price of bitcoin is about $66,825. Riot’s average selling price is about 14.6% higher than the current spot market. This suggests that Riot sold in batches at different times during the first quarter, benefiting from bitcoin remaining at relatively higher price levels from January to March, rather than being forced to dump at market lows.

MARA Holdings’ case has a stronger scale effect than Riot’s. Between March 4 and March 25, MARA sold 15,133 bitcoins in a staged manner, averaging a discounted buyback of convertible notes due in 2030 and 2031, reducing its outstanding debt from $3.3 billion to $2.3 billion—a decline of about 30%—and it also saved about $88.1 million in interest expenses in one go. Its bitcoin holdings fell from about 53,822 bitcoins to 38,689, a reduction of 28%. Management has clearly stated that in 2026 it may still “sell bitcoins in phases” to meet operating expenditures and new business investment needs.

Bitcoin HODLism: from “miners’ creed” to a financial burden

Bitcoin miners’ “HODLism”—meaning holding long term after mining rather than selling immediately—has held a near-religious status in the industry’s history. Its core logic is: miners’ production costs (electricity, equipment depreciation) are priced in fiat currency, but their output is priced in bitcoins. If they firmly believe bitcoin’s long-term price will rise, delaying sales can lock in higher fiat gains. This strategy was validated on a large scale during the 2020–2021 bull market cycle.

But this creed is now systematically collapsing.

From the data perspective, publicly traded bitcoin miners have sold more than 15,000 BTC between October 2025 and February 2026, becoming the most intense vault-clearing wave in this cycle. Over the same period, the bitcoin network’s hashprice fell below $30/PH/s, and mining fee revenue dropped by about 70% from the earlier peak.

The pressure on profitability is even more straightforward. With the current bitcoin price around $66,825, and the industry-average estimated miner production cost between $89,000 and $91,000, a substantial proportion of miners are operating at a loss. The hashrate network is also under strain: the hash rate across the network fell from about 1.16 ZH/s at the start of this month to about 990 EH/s, a decline of roughly 15%. Mining difficulty dropped from about 13k to 1.45M on March 20, a decrease of about 8%.

Three consecutive negative difficulty adjustments—marking a trend that has not appeared since July 2022—further confirm the miners’ capitulation signal.

Against this backdrop, bitcoin is being redefined by miners’ “strategic reserve assets” logic into “operating cash.” As industry observers have pointed out, holding bitcoin for miners is no longer a strategic choice to accumulate for appreciation; it is a liquidity tool to pay electricity bills, repay debt, and maintain operating liquidity.

Collapse in corporate bitcoin demand: from 69,000 coins to 1,000

Miner sell-offs are only one thread in the panorama. If the scope is expanded to all publicly listed companies that put bitcoin on their balance sheets, the structural pullback becomes even more apparent.

According to data released by CryptoQuant in March 2026, over the past 30 days, excluding Strategy, all bitcoin treasury companies combined purchased only about 1,000 bitcoins. Compared with the monthly peak of 69,000 bitcoins in August 2025, the decline is as high as 99%. In terms of purchase share, non-Strategy companies’ share shrank from 95% in October 2024 to about 2% currently.

Data source: CryptoQuant

Strategy’s bitcoin holdings now account for about 76% of the total holdings of all treasury companies, and its holdings account for about 3.8% of the total circulating supply of bitcoin. By comparison, in November 2025 this proportion was about 74%. Although Strategy is still continuously buying, the relative share of holdings by other companies continues to shrink.

In a report from July 2025, Galaxy Digital warned about this pattern: the corporate treasury model is essentially a form of liquidity derivative, and its sustainability depends on the stock trading price’s premium relative to underlying bitcoin holdings. Once the premium narrows, the flywheel reverses—price declines compress asset net values, squeeze the stock’s premium, and cause equity issuance to shift from accretive to dilutive. This scenario was almost fully realized from the second half of 2025 into early 2026.

Miner sell-offs: financial stress or strategic transition?

For Riot’s selling behavior, the market has two different interpretive frameworks. One attributes it to a passive choice driven by operating financial pressure; the other sees it as part of an active strategic transition.

On the financial pressure front, Riot’s bitcoin production in the first quarter fell about 4% year over year. Even though deployment of computing power increased from 33.7 EH/s to 42.5 EH/s—an increase of about 26%—the mismatch between computing power growth and production decline points to structural issues: rising network difficulty and declining unit output per unit of computing power. Riot’s electricity credit revenue in Q1 reached $21 million, up about 171% year over year, while overall electricity costs fell to about $0.03 per kilowatt-hour, down about 21% year over year. This indicates that Riot has certain advantages in operational efficiency.

On the strategic transition front, Riot’s selling amount is highly aligned with its capital expenditures for the first phase of the 112 MW AI data center in Corsicana. VanEck analyst Matthew Sigel said that this matching relationship is not a coincidence. In January 2026, Riot signed a 10-year data center lease agreement with AMD, with an initial capacity of 25 MW. Contract revenue is expected to be about $311 million, and it includes three 5-year renewal options; if all are exercised, the total value could reach about $1 billion. The agreement took effect in January 2026.

In a January announcement, Riot CEO Jason Les said: “By unlocking our substantial power portfolio for high-demand data center infrastructure, we are driving significant shareholder value.”

Worsening on-chain demand signals

The backdrop for miner sell-offs is a broader contraction in on-chain demand.

According to data published by CryptoQuant on April 1, 2026, bitcoin’s “apparent demand”—a metric measuring whether new demand exceeds or falls below the number of newly mined bitcoins—had dropped to about -63,000 coins by the end of March. This means that newly bought volume has continued to lag behind the transfer volume from old holders, and the market is in a distribution phase.

At the same time, the whale group with holdings between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC has shifted from accumulation to distribution. Over the past year, the total balance of this group has decreased by about 188,000 BTC, whereas in the same period in 2024 it increased by about 200,000 BTC net. CryptoQuant analysts noted that this trend accelerated in the fourth quarter of 2025, and historical data shows that persistent negative whale accumulation typically coincides with periods of price weakness.

Divergent landscape: parallel action by three forces

The current landscape of the enterprise-level bitcoin market can be summarized as three forces moving in parallel.

The first force is the collective sell-off by miners. Over the past six months, miners such as Riot, MARA, Cango, Bitdeer, and Core Scientific have continued to reduce their bitcoin holdings. Their driving factors include profitability pressure, debt management, and capital reallocation toward AI infrastructure. In terms of policy, MARA has clearly shifted direction; in March 2026 it updated its treasury policy, for the first time allowing discretionary sales.

The second force is the broad exit by corporate treasuries. The monthly bitcoin purchase volume of non-Strategy listed companies has crashed from the 69,000-coin peak to 1,000. This drop not only reflects changes in market conditions, but also reveals the model’s structural fragility—most companies that entered at high levels are now stuck in paper losses and are forced to pause, or even reverse, their accumulation strategy.

The third force is a small group of continued buyers represented by Strategy. In the first quarter, Strategy bought about 44,377 bitcoins, accounting for about 94% of total enterprise purchases in that month. Japanese listed company Metaplanet bought 5,075 bitcoins in the same period, spending about $398 million, raising total holdings to 40,177 bitcoins and becoming the world’s third-largest listed corporate holder of bitcoin. Metaplanet’s average cost basis for its holdings is currently about $97,593, implying an unrealized paper loss of about 32% versus the current price of about $66,825.

Projecting evolution under multiple scenarios

Based on the analyses above, the industry impact of the end of miner sell-offs and HODLism can be projected through the following three scenarios.

Scenario 1: Continued distribution (baseline path)

If the bitcoin price stays in the $65,000 to $75,000 range, miners’ profitability pressure will not ease significantly. An industry-average production-cost premium of about 20% to 25% implies that many miners will continue operating at a loss. In this scenario, miner sell-offs will not stop in the short term, but the intensity of selling may show pulse-like characteristics with bitcoin price fluctuations—each 5% to 10% drop could trigger a new round of sell-offs. Demand at the corporate treasury level will remain low, and Strategy’s concentrated purchases will be insufficient to fully offset sell-off pressure coming from miners and whales.

Scenario 2: Faster hashpower reshuffling (industry reorganization path)

A more extreme price scenario—if bitcoin falls below $60,000—would trigger larger-scale miner flushing. Historical experience from continuous negative difficulty adjustments suggests that the least efficient miners will exit first, and hashpower will concentrate among leading miners. For miners like Riot and MARA, which combine advantages in power resources with AI transition capability, this could instead become an opportunity for low-cost industry consolidation. Riot holds nearly 2 gigawatts of a power portfolio—an asset type that the average super-large data center operator typically needs to wait 36 to 48 months to get approved. Hashpower reshuffling could accelerate the transition of miners from a single model of “mining-HODLing” to a composite model of “mining-selling-diversified revenue.”

Scenario 3: External catalysts (demand-side rebound path)

The essence of miner sell-offs is a supply-side action; a recovery in demand is still the key variable determining the market’s direction. With current on-chain apparent demand at -63,000 coins, it indicates that the demand side has not yet formed effective support. However, when looking at the behavior of long-term holders, indicators such as the Miner Position Index have already entered historical low regions. If the macro environment improves (for example, geopolitical conflicts ease, and monetary policy shifts), together with sustained net inflows from spot bitcoin ETFs, the demand-side recovery may complete before the supply-side adjustment finishes, causing sell-off pressure to be absorbed at the price discovery level rather than amplified.

Conclusion

In Q1 2026, Riot Platforms sold 3,778 bitcoins. On the surface, it looks like a quarterly financial operation by a miner. But when placed within the broader macro picture—MARA selling 15,000 coins, Empery Digital liquidating 370 coins, Genius Group liquidating 84 coins, Bhutan continuing to reduce holdings, and corporate treasury demand collapsing by 99%—a clear trend emerges: the era of miners’ “HODLism” is coming to an end.

This is not doubt by miners about bitcoin’s long-term value; it is an inevitable product of the industry entering a new stage. When mining profitability compresses below production costs, when AI data centers can operate with an 80%+ operating profit margin, and when the corporate treasury model’s fragility at high entry levels is proven, selling is no longer a passive choice—it becomes a necessary step for active transition.

Amid multiple trends—bitcoin block rewards continuing to halve, rising rigidity in hashpower costs, and a surge in AI infrastructure demand—the shift of miners from “HODLers” to “energy infrastructure operators” is only just beginning. In the corporate treasury space, with Strategy’s extreme concentration of holdings, whether it is bitcoin’s “steady anchor” or a concentrated risk worth monitoring may ultimately depend on how these new structural forces reshape the industry’s supply-demand balance.