Bitcoin miners dump $13B BTC in December – Cause for concern?

• Miners sold over $13B BTC in the first half of December. 
• Per Puell Multiple, BTC wasn’t overvalued or in a red zone yet. 

Bitcoin [BTC] miners have intensified selling since the cryptocurrency crossed the $100K milestone. In December alone, miners sold 140K BTC, worth $13.72B.

Per Santiment data, the dumping spree has shrunk the miner balance from over 2M to 1.95M coins as of this writing. 

Source: Santiment

BTC steady above $100K

Despite the aggressive sell-off, the king coin remained resilient above $100K.

However, the miner sell-off appeared relatively less intense when gauged through miner outflow. The metric tracks all miner wallets and their transfers to exchanges. 

On the 12th of November, BTC saw the highest daily miner sell-off of 25K BTC. But the pressure has been on the decline, as shown by the retreating miner outflows. 

Source: CryptoQuant

Perhaps, the bulk of the sell-off might have happened over the OTC (Over The Counter) markets. 

That said, the overall December sell-off slightly overwhelmed the demand from ETFs. In the past two weeks, BTC ETFs logged $4.9B inflows. Over the same period, MicroStrategy bought $3.6 billion worth of BTC. 

Excluding Mara Digital and other firms with BTC corporate treasuries, ETFs and MicroStrategy’s BTC demand hit $8.3B in the past two weeks. This was slightly less than the $13.72B supply from miners.  

So, should intense miner selling be a concern for your portfolio? We checked the Puell Multiple for insights. 

For the unfamiliar, Puell Multiple allows users to gauge BTC valuation and cycles from the perspective of miners. If the metric soars to the upper band, BTC’s value is deemed as unsustainably high. 

On the flipside, a low Puell Multiple reading suggests a relatively undervalued BTC. 

Source: BM Pro

In early 2024, the metric hit 2.4 and marked a local BTC top at $73.7K. At press time, the metric reading was 1.3 and had little room before cross 2 or the upper band. 

So, based on Puell Multiple and miners’ perspective, BTC wasn’t overvalued or elevated, but that could change if the metric soared above 2.  

In the meantime, BTC consolidated below $102K ahead of the Fed rate decision on the 18th of December.