Bitcoin miner MARA transferred 298 BTC to Cumberland, a move that could be related to the company’s new position in selling BTC.
MARA recently opened the door to selling Bitcoin
According to the analysis company CryptoQuant, the mining company MARA has just transferred from Bitcoin wallets. The transaction comes just nine days after the company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it has expanded its digital asset management strategy to include sales of BTC on its balance sheet.
Historically, a miner has held BTC by mining and purchasing additional tokens for their treasury. But last year it changed its strategy to allow the sale of tokens generated by its mining operations. The expansion from earlier this month is again based on this policy.
Given that the miner is now open to sell Bitcoin, the latest withdrawals from its reserves could be significant.
The data for the outflow transactions made by MARA | Source: CryptoQuant on X
As shown in the graph 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.
The change in MARA’s position comes as the company enters the AI data center space and amid a slowdown in the cryptocurrency sector. Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process, so all miners have to pay ongoing costs in the form of electricity bills. Whether or not miners can make a profit from their operations depends on the value of the tokens they mine, which tend to decline during market downturns.
Based on the MARA offers, CryptoQuant has calculated the average cost of BTC mining.
Looks like the figure has climbed up over the years | Source: CryptoQuant on X
It can be seen from the chart that the data from MARA offers that the average cost for Bitcoin mining is $70,027. The spot price of the cryptocurrency is currently hovering around this mark, so the company just broke even in its operations.
Other miners may operate at a lower cost depending on their hardware efficiency and power costs. “A very efficient operation (new equipment + low-cost power) can mine Bitcoin for ~$45k per BTC,” the analyst firm noted.
MARA is not the only bitcoin miner looking at the AI sector as a lucrative opportunity. Several major mining companies such as Bitfarms and Cango rely on high-performance computing (HPC) business.
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 from Dall-E, chart from TradingView.com
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