Wall Street likely behind Bitcoin dips — not crypto miners

Cryptocurrency miners aren’t keeping the price of Bitcoin down — it’s probably Wall Street fat cats dumping on the retail crowd.

Data from blockchain crew Glassnode (and shared by CoinDesk) shows Bitcoin miners are on track to send just 1,200 BTC ($46 million) to exchanges this week.

That’s way below the average since July 2020, and far under what’s required to move markets in any meaningful way.

As noted by CoinDesk’s Zack Voell, blaming crypto miners for Bitcoin failing to maintain a price above $40,000 is a common trope.

For scale, $9.7 billion worth of BTC has transacted on crypto exchanges in the past day — which means weekly transfers from miners to exchanges represent less than 1% of BTC traded on any given day.

On-chain data does point to a four-day period at the end of December, when around $567 million worth of Bitcoin flowed out of mining wallets (equal to around 1% of their total holdings).

It’s tempting to link Bitcoin’s correction of up to 29% in early January to those outflows.

But again, Glassnode’s data doesn’t support that theory. The firm reported exchanges received just 11% of that Bitcoin.

So, if not miners, who’s stifling BTC? CoinDesk rightly posited it could be the Wall Street types — who’ve spent months whipping the media into a frenzy by predicting it could hit anywhere from $146,000 to $1 million.