Bitcoin miner MARA transferred 298 BTC to Cumberland, a move that could be linked to the company’s new stance on BTC sales.
MARA recently opened the door to Bitcoin sales
According to on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, mining company MARA just made a transfer from its Bitcoin wallets. The transaction came just nine days after the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it had expanded its digital asset management strategy to enable sales of BTC held on its balance sheet.
Historically, the miner held onto the BTC they mined and purchased additional tokens for their treasury. Last year, however, it changed its strategy to allow the sale of tokens generated by its mining operations. The expansion earlier this month built on this policy.
Since the miner is now ready to sell Bitcoin, the last transaction out of its reserve could be large.
The data for the outflow transactions made by MARA | Source: CryptoQuant on X
As shown in the chart above, this transaction involved approximately 298 BTC (currently worth $21 million). According to CryptoQuant, the move was to Cumberland, a digital asset liquidity platform aimed at institutional entities.
MARA’s change in stance came as the company was making inroads into the AI data center space and amid a bearish slowdown in the cryptocurrency sector. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process, so all miners have to pay a constant operating cost in the form of electricity bills. Whether miners can make a profit on their operations depends on the value of the tokens they mine, which tends to fall during bear market phases.
Based on MARA deposits, CryptoQuant estimated the average cost of BTC mining.
Looks like the figure has climbed up over the years | Source: CryptoQuant on X
From the chart, it is visible that data from MARA’s filings puts the average cost of mining Bitcoin at $70,027. The cryptocurrency’s spot price is currently hovering around this mark, so the company would be just breaking even on its operations.
Other miners could operate at a lower cost, depending on the efficiency of their hardware and the cost of their energy. “Highly efficient operations (new hardware + low cost energy) can mine Bitcoin for around $45,000 per BTC,” the analytics firm noted.
MARA is not the only Bitcoin miner to see the AI sector as a lucrative opportunity. Several large mining companies like Bitfarms and Cango have moved into the high-performance computing (HPC) sector.
BTC Price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $70,700, down 3.5% over the past week.
The trend in the price of the coin over the last five days | Source: BTCUSDT on TradingView
Featured image of Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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