A historic BTC sale by miners preceded the price spike in May.

Despite Bitcoin reaching a fresh all-time high of $109,000 this Wednesday, miners faced tough conditions in April, selling more BTC than they produced, reports TheMinerMag.

According to the latest data, public mining companies offloaded 115% of their Bitcoin output last month — a clear sign of miners dipping into their reserves to manage operational costs amid persistent market pressures. This marks the highest sell-through ratio since the end of the 2022 crypto bear market.

While Bitcoin’s price climbed to new heights, the hashprice — a key metric representing miners’ revenue per petahash per second (PH/s) — lingered near $55, significantly below the $63/PH/s seen during Bitcoin’s December rally above $100,000. Factors such as rising network difficulty and subdued transaction fees continue to compress miner earnings.

Leading miners are nevertheless expanding their operations. CleanSpark (CLSK) pushed its hashrate beyond 40 exahashes per second (EH/s), and IREN (IREN), which recently overtook Riot Platforms (RIOT) to become the third largest public miner by realized hashrate, boosted its capacity by 25%, targeting 50 EH/s by June. Cango (CANG) also aims to add 18 EH/s by July.

Investment bank Jefferies notes that MARA Holdings (MARA) retains the largest installed hashrate at 57.3 EH/s. IREN reported the highest uptime at about 97%, closely followed by HIVE Digital Technologies (HIVE) at 96%.

A new financing approach is gaining traction: several miners have signed deals with Bitmain allowing them to pay for mining equipment in Bitcoin, with options to repurchase the coins later at predetermined prices, providing a hedge against further price gains.

Although mining stocks struggled earlier in the year, April saw some recovery — with select companies surging more than 60%. Yet, most miners remain down for the year except for CleanSpark and MARA Holdings, which have posted positive returns in 2025.