Bitcoin balances on over-the-counter (OTC) desks hit a two-year high of 368,000 BTC in August, according to data from CryptoQuant, marking a 70% increase in balances over the last three months.
CryptoQuant analyst “EgyHash” noted that the substantial rise could imply miners are selling their coins, seeing as they often turn to OTC desks for better execution prices.
“Historically, increases in Bitcoin OTC desk balances have been associated with declines in Bitcoin prices,” said EgyHash.
Miners have started to feel the heat after the latest Bitcoin halving, which reduced the block reward by half, from 6.25 BTC per mined block to 3.125 BTC. According to research from Jaran Mellerud, co-founder of Hashlabs Mining, miners are still heavily dependent on the block subsidy.
He noted that miners are projected to earn $13.3 billion from subsidies and only $670 million from this year.
“By 2036, 99% of all bitcoin will have been mined, and the block subsidy will drop further to 0.39 bitcoin, which is lower than the average transaction fee per block in 2024,” said Mellerud.
While OTC balances are tracking higher, the amount of BTC on exchanges has waned slightly since the start of August. Onchain analyst Willy Woo observed that until then, inventory on exchanges had seen an influx of 100,000 BTC as Mt. Gox prepared to make distributions to creditors and the German Government sold billions of dollars-worth of bitcoin.
According to Woo, bitcoin’s price action “needs to get really boring” before this long period of consolidation comes to an end.
At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at around $61,000, gaining 2.18% over the last 24 hours.
