Bitcoin miners are suffering losses at $90,000, but the “death spiral” calculations face a tough limit.

The narrative about Bitcoin miners selling off their holdings is appealing, much like any straightforward tale. Prices fall, miners find themselves under pressure, coins hit exchanges, and the price gets manipulated by a single, identifiable antagonist.

However, miners are not a monolithic entity, and the selling pressure is not merely emotional. It encompasses mathematics, contracts, and deadlines. When pressure builds, the critical issue isn’t whether miners are inclined to sell but whether they must sell and how much they can offload without jeopardizing their operations.

This is why conceptualizing a miner “capitulation” is most useful as a thought experiment. Imagine running a mining operation today, in a market where the hashrate ribbon has inverted, and prices are trading below a rough estimated average all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of about $90,000.

Meanwhile, total miner holdings are approximately 50,000 BTC—significant but not limitless.

You now face a probing question: If prices linger below the average AISC line, how many coins can you afford to push out over 30 to 90 days before lenders, power contracts, and operational realities impose limits?

AISC is a dynamic metric, not a static figure

The term all-in sustaining cost, or AISC, borrowed from mining and commodities, is crucial as it forces consideration beyond just electric bills. Essentially, AISC determines whether your business can persist—not just “can you keep the machines operational today?” but “can you sustain the operation sufficiently to stay afloat next quarter?”

Bitcoin miners’ AISC can be viewed as having three distinct layers, although various research firms may delineate them differently.

The first layer consists of direct operating cash expenses. Electricity is central to this layer, as costs accrue regardless of market sentiment. Additional costs include hosting fees (if you lease space), repairs, pool fees, network operations, and personnel who ensure the facility doesn’t merely become an over-expensive space heater.

The second layer, often overlooked, includes sustaining capital expenditures (capex). This isn’t about expansion; rather, it’s maintaining your fleet. Components like fans fail, hashboards wear down, containers deteriorate, and the network becomes tougher to navigate. Even if your machines are functional, a lack of upgrades may prevent your share of rewards from keeping pace with the rest.

Here’s where difficulty comes into play. Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty to keep block production on schedule. When hashrate increases, difficulty rises, resulting in each machine yielding fewer BTC for the same energy consumption.

Conversely, when hashrate declines, difficulty may decrease, enabling remaining miners to grasp a slightly larger share. The AISC framing we’re discussing explicitly factors in difficulty, serving as a clean mechanism to analyze this moving target without requiring insights into every miner’s private power arrangements.

The third layer encompasses stress-driven costs: corporate expenses and financing. A private miner may prioritize power and maintenance, while a publicly traded miner with debt is concerned with interest payments, covenants, liquidity reserves, and refinancing options.

This is why AISC fluctuates over time, rendering static debates over a single number somewhat trivial. It evolves with changes in difficulty and fleet composition (older machines aging out and newer ones coming in).

AISC is also influenced by changes in power costs, particularly for miners dependent on spot prices, and fluctuates with capital costs. Hence, a miner might seem stable at one cycle point yet fragile at another, even with consistent hash output.

So when prices dip below an average AISC estimate of about $90,000, it doesn’t imply that the entire network is immediately underwater; it simply means that the prevailing conditions are precarious. Some miners may be comfortable, others may feel the squeeze, while some may be in survival mode. The stress is palpable, yet the reactions are inconsistent, and this inconsistency prevents a default outcome of simultaneous selling.

Moreover, there’s another reason why an outright sell-off isn’t a forgone conclusion. Miners have multiple strategies aside from simply liquidating their BTC: they can shut down underperforming machines, curb operations for grid payments, execute hedges, and renegotiate hosting contracts. Additionally, as previously reported by CryptoSlate, many have now diversified into AI data centers, providing a cushion against weak mining performance.

This brings us to the fundamental question: how much selling is essentially required when pressure builds?

The selling mathematics: what can be liquidated without jeopardizing the business

Let’s begin with the baseline flow dictated by the protocol, regardless of sentiment. Following the halving, new BTC issuance from the block reward is roughly 450 BTC per day, totaling about 13,500 BTC each month.

If miners were to sell 100% of newly issued coins, that would represent a clear maximum for selling flow. In reality, miners don’t coordinate efforts, and not all require selling everything they mine. Yet, as a thought experiment, 450 BTC/day is the upper limit for new supply that could enter the market without tapping into existing inventory.

Now, let’s factor in inventory, which is what alarming headlines often emphasize. We’ll reference Glassnode’s estimate of approximately 50,000 BTC held by miners. While 50,000 BTC sounds substantial, examining it over time offers context. Distributing that over 60 days means 10% of the inventory, or 5,000 BTC, translates to about 83 BTC/day. Over 90 days, 30% is 15,000 BTC, equating to around 167 BTC/day.

This establishes the fundamental structure of miner distribution under stress: flow selling initiates the bulk of sales, while inventory selling contributes a smaller yet significant amount, unless the stress intensifies to the point that inventory selling becomes the primary strategy.

Let’s consider three price trajectories in this model: $90,000, $80,000, and $70,000, linking them to three middle-ground scenarios that reflect how miners may act as margins tighten.

In a baseline situation, miners might sell 50% of new issuance while avoiding touching inventory. This results in 225 BTC/day. Over 60 days, that equates to 13,500 BTC of issuance total times 50%, which is 6,750 BTC. Over 90 days, it would yield 10,125 BTC.
In a conservative stress scenario, miners could sell 100% of issuance and 10% of inventory across 60 days. This translates to 450 BTC/day from new issuance, plus 83 BTC/day from inventory, leading to around 533 BTC/day total.

In a severe stress scenario, miners could sell 100% of new issuance and 30% of inventory over 90 days. That results in 450 BTC plus 167 BTC, summing to about 617 BTC/day.

These figures present the boundaries addressing a focused query: what does the market permit?

To gauge the market’s response, we can use a familiar comparison: ETF flow days measured in BTC-equivalent. ETF outflows represent roughly 2.5% of BTC-denominated AUM, approximately $4.5 billion, and have previously been described by CryptoSlate as more technical than sentiment-driven. This comparison is purely about scale.

At $90,000 per coin, a day with $100 million in outflows translates to about 1,111 BTC. At $80,000, it equates to 1,250 BTC. At $70,000, it’s nearly 1,429 BTC. Suddenly, miner figures appear less like a lurking threat and more akin to flows that the market routinely absorbs.

A significant miner distribution scenario, say 600 BTC/day, is about half of a $100 million ETF day at $90,000. Such a volume can still influence prices if dumped into thin markets, on fragile weekends, or clustered into unfavorable hours. Nevertheless, the narrative of miners overwhelming the market faces two barriers: issuance limits and the finite inventory miners are willing to liquidate.

Additionally, execution methods significantly influence outcomes more than one might assume. Many miner sales do not manifest as public market orders; they can occur via OTC desks, structured forward sales, or as part of broader treasury management strategies. While this may not eliminate selling pressure, it alters how it is perceived in the market. When people anticipate a sudden drop but observe a gradual sell-off, the impact on the market diminishes.

What could escalate this situation from a measured sell-off to chaos? It would require more than just prices dipping below AISC. The trigger happens when the financing aspect dominates decision-making. Should a miner find it necessary to uphold liquidity thresholds, meet collateral obligations, or confront a refinancing crisis amidst adverse market conditions, inventory selling shifts from optional to essential.

This is the sobering reality underlying the popular question. Even amidst pressure and an inverted ribbon, concrete limitations exist on what miners can sell in a month or quarter. For practical guidance, the thought experiment consistently points back to a few hundred BTC per day during mild stress, escalating to about 500 to 650 BTC daily during severe stress scenarios that involve inventory liquidation. The specifics hinge on energy contracts and debt necessities that can be factored in later.

If you’re attempting to decipher what truly influences price fluctuations, the conclusion is decidedly less thrilling than one might hope. The market often prioritizes the factors surrounding a seller rather than the narrative; attention is drawn to the tempo, venue, and existing liquidity. While miners can contribute to downward pressure in a weak market, assuming they have a limitless capability to undermine price does not withstand scrutiny when considering their financial statements.