Bitcoin miners face challenges at $90,000, yet the “death spiral” calculations reach a firm limit.

The narrative surrounding Bitcoin’s “miners are dumping” is reassuring in the way that straightforward tales often are. Prices decline, miners face challenges, coins enter exchanges, and the market is influenced by a single, easily identifiable antagonist.

However, miners are not a monolithic entity, and selling pressure is not merely a sentiment. It involves calculations, agreements, and timelines. When pressure arises, what is crucial is not whether miners wish to sell, but whether they are compelled to do so, and how much they can sell without jeopardizing the operations they aim to sustain.

This is why the most effective way to conceptualize a miner “capitulation” is as a thought experiment. Picture yourself managing a mine in a market where the hashrate ribbon has entered inversion territory, and prices are trading below a rough, difficulty-based estimate for average all-in sustaining cost, approximately $90,000.

Simultaneously, total miner holdings are around 50,000 BTC: a significant amount, but not limitless.

Now you face a straightforward yet dramatic question. If prices remain below the average AISC line for an extended period, how many coins can you release over 30 to 90 days before lenders, power agreements, and your operational realities impose constraints?

AISC is a dynamic figure, not a static value

All-in sustaining cost, or AISC, is a term borrowed from mining and commodities, but it is valuable because it compels you to acknowledge that electricity is not the sole expense. AISC essentially determines whether you can continue operating. It’s not about “can you keep the machines running today,” but rather “can you maintain the operation’s health to ensure its existence next quarter.”

You can view Bitcoin miners’ AISC as comprising three layers, even though different research firms may define the boundaries differently.

The first layer is the most straightforward: direct operating cash expenses. Electricity is central to this, as the meter runs regardless of market sentiment. Additional costs include hosting fees (if you do not own your facility), repairs, pool fees, network operations, and the personnel who prevent the facility from becoming an expensive heater.

The second layer is often overlooked: sustaining capital expenditures (capex). This is not growth capex; sustaining capex refers to the funds spent to prevent your fleet from deteriorating. Fans fail, hashboards wear out, containers corrode, and, crucially, the network becomes more challenging. Even if your machines are functioning well, you risk losing market share if competitors upgrade while you do not.

This is where difficulty comes into play. Bitcoin adjusts mining difficulty to ensure blocks are produced roughly on schedule. When hashrate increases, difficulty rises, resulting in the same machine yielding fewer BTC for the same energy consumption.

Conversely, when hashrate decreases, difficulty may relax, allowing the remaining miners to earn slightly more. The AISC framework we are utilizing is explicitly linked to difficulty, providing a clear method to capture this dynamic without needing each miner’s private power agreement.

The third layer involves what transforms stress into compelled actions: corporate expenses and financing. A private operator may primarily focus on power and maintenance costs. In contrast, a public miner with debt must consider interest payments, covenants, liquidity reserves, and refinancing capabilities.

This is why AISC fluctuates over time, making debates centered on a single figure seem trivial. It changes with variations in difficulty and when the composition of the fleet shifts (older machines are replaced by newer ones).

It also adjusts when the power landscape changes, particularly for miners exposed to spot pricing, and when capital costs fluctuate, explaining why a miner may appear stable at one point in the cycle and vulnerable at another, despite maintaining the same hash output.

Thus, when prices drop below an average AISC estimate of around $90,000, it does not imply that the entire network is immediately in distress; rather, it indicates that the average situation is precarious. Some miners are stable, some are under pressure, and others are in critical condition. The stress is genuine, but the reactions vary, and this variability prevents the notion of a simultaneous mass sell-off from becoming the default scenario.

Another reason a mass sell-off is not the default outcome is that miners possess more options than merely selling their BTC: they can deactivate marginal machines, reduce operations for grid payments, adjust hedges, and renegotiate hosting agreements. Additionally, as previously noted by CryptoSlate, many have side ventures linked to AI data centers, which can mitigate a poor mining month.

This leads us to the essential question: when under stress, how much selling is structurally necessary?

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

Begin with the one flow that the protocol provides, whether you are pleased with it or not. Following the halving, new BTC issuance from the block subsidy is approximately 450 BTC daily, translating to about 13,500 BTC monthly.

If miners sold 100% of new issuance, that would represent the upper limit for flow selling. In reality, miners do not coordinate, and not all of them need to sell everything they mine. However, as a thought experiment, 450 BTC/day is the maximum new supply that can enter the market without affecting any existing inventory.

Now consider inventory, as that is what the alarming headlines refer to. We will use Glassnode’s estimate that miners hold around 50,000 BTC. While a 50,000 BTC reserve seems substantial, it becomes less so when viewed over time. Spread over 60 days, 10% of that inventory is 5,000 BTC, which equates to about 83 BTC/day. Over 90 days, 30% amounts to 15,000 BTC, or approximately 167 BTC/day.

This outlines the basic structure of miner forced distribution during a stress period: flow selling accounts for the majority, while inventory selling contributes a smaller yet still significant amount, unless the stress is severe enough that inventory becomes the primary resource.

Let’s examine three price scenarios within this model: $90,000, $80,000, and $70,000. We will associate them with three middle-ground conditions that reflect how miners behave when profit margins narrow.

In the base scenario, miners sell half of the issuance without touching inventory. That results in 225 BTC/day. Over 60 days, this totals 13,500 BTC of issuance, leading to 6,750 BTC. Over 90 days, it amounts to 10,125 BTC.
In a conservative stress scenario, miners sell 100% of issuance and also liquidate 10% of inventory over 60 days. This results in 450 BTC/day from issuance plus 83 BTC/day from inventory, totaling approximately 533 BTC/day.

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

Price (USD/BTC)	Horizon (days)	Issuance sold %	Treasury tap %	Issuance sold (BTC)	Treasury sold (BTC)	Total sold (BTC)	Avg BTC/day	Avg USD/day	ETF equiv @ $500M (BTC)	Miner vs ETF (BTC/day)
90,000	60	25%	10%	6,750	5,000	11,750	195.8	17,625,000	5,556	195.8 vs 5,556
90,000	60	25%	30%	6,750	15,000	21,750	362.5	32,625,000	5,556	362.5 vs 5,556
90,000	60	50%	10%	13,500	5,000	18,500	308.3	27,750,000	5,556	308.3 vs 5,556
90,000	60	50%	30%	13,500	15,000	28,500	475.0	42,750,000	5,556	475.0 vs 5,556
90,000	60	100%	10%	27,000	5,000	32,000	533.3	48,000,000	5,556	533.3 vs 5,556
90,000	60	100%	30%	27,000	15,000	42,000	700.0	63,000,000	5,556	700.0 vs 5,556
90,000	90	25%	10%	10,125	5,000	15,125	168.1	15,125,000	5,556	168.1 vs 5,556
90,000	90	25%	30%	10,125	15,000	25,125	279.2	25,125,000	5,556	279.2 vs 5,556
90,000	90	50%	10%	20,250	5,000	25,250	280.6	25,250,000	5,556	280.6 vs 5,556
90,000	90	50%	30%	20,250	15,000	35,250	391.7	35,250,000	5,556	391.7 vs 5,556
90,000	90	100%	10%	40,500	5,000	45,500	505.6	45,500,000	5,556	505.6 vs 5,556
90,000	90	100%	30%	40,500	15,000	55,500	616.7	55,500,000	5,556	616.7 vs 5,556
80,000	60	25%	10%	6,750	5,000	11,750	195.8	15,666,667	6,250	195.8 vs 6,250
80,000	60	25%	30%	6,750	15,000	21,750	362.5	29,000,000	6,250	362.5 vs 6,250
80,000	60	50%	10%	13,500	5,000	18,500	308.3	24,666,667	6,250	308.3 vs 6,250
80,000	60	50%	30%	13,500	15,000	28,500	475.0	38,000,000	6,250	475.0 vs 6,250
80,000	60	100%	10%	27,000	5,000	32,000	533.3	42,666,667	6,250	533.3 vs 6,250
80,000	60	100%	30%	27,000	15,000	42,000	700.0	56,000,000	6,250	700.0 vs 6,250
80,000	90	25%	10%	10,125	5,000	15,125	168.1	13,450,000	6,250	168.1 vs 6,250
80,000	90	25%	30%	10,125	15,000	25,125	279.2	22,333,333	6,250	279.2 vs 6,250
80,000	90	50%	10%	20,250	5,000	25,250	280.6	22,450,000	6,250	280.6 vs 6,250
80,000	90	50%	30%	20,250	15,000	35,250	391.7	31,333,333	6,250	391.7 vs 6,250
80,000	90	100%	10%	40,500	5,000	45,500	505.6	40,500,000	6,250	505.6 vs 6,250
80,000	90	100%	30%	40,500	15,000	55,500	616.7	49,333,333	6,250	616.7 vs 6,250
70,000	60	25%	10%	6,750	5,000	11,750	195.8	13,708,333	7,143	195.8 vs 7,143
70,000	60	25%	30%	6,750	15,000	21,750	362.5	25,375,000	7,143	362.5 vs 7,143
70,000	60	50%	10%	13,500	5,000	18,500	308.3	21,583