VanEck: Massive surrender of Bitcoin miners means the market is now at the bottom
Bitcoin’s computing power decreased by 4% monthly, and the wave of miner surrender spread; VanEck pointed out that historical data shows that this type of purge often lays the bottom for the next bull market.
(Preliminary summary: Bitcoin failed to break through 90,000 US dollars and fell back, Ethereum held on to 3,000 US dollars, and the U.S. stock market was all higher on Christmas)
(Background supplement: MicroStrategy announced a suspension of buying Bitcoin last week: ATM raised US$740 million to replenish cash reserves, debt and dividends are the most urgent needs?)
Contents of this article
Bitcoin in the winter of 2025 (Bitcoin) mines are on the verge of shutting down. Prices are down 30% from an October high of $126,080, hovering around $88,400, with the sound of high-efficiency fans in data centers in Texas and Kazakhstan noticeably muted. The silence, however, is not unheard on Wall Street. Matt Sigel, director of research at investment institution VanEck, believes that it is this "miner surrender" scenario that often marks the point when the market bottoms out.
Hashing power decline and cost pressure: the digital thermometer of the cold wave
According to the VanEck report, as of December 15, the Bitcoin network’s computing power has dropped by 4% monthly, which is the most dramatic decline since the halving in April 2024. The main reasons include the closure of about 1.3 GW of production capacity in China and the shift of about 10% of computing power to more profitable AI computing. Costs have also tightened simultaneously. Analysis pointed out that the break-even electricity price of the mainstream mining machine Bitmain S19 XP has dropped from US$0.12 per kilowatt hour to US$0.077, a drop of 36%. Many mines face losses as soon as they are turned on and are forced to shut down or sell equipment.
Historical backtesting: Bad news turns positive over time
VanEck analysts Matt Sigel and Patrick Bush tracked data since 2014 and found that when computing power shows negative growth within 30 days, 65% of returns will turn positive in the next 90 days; if negative growth continues for 90 days, the probability of returns turning positive in the next 180 days rises to 77%, with an average increase of 72%. Matt Sigel pointed out:
"When low-efficiency miners exit and the computing power decreases, the mining difficulty will be subsequently reduced, which will allow the profits of surviving miners to recover, reduce market selling pressure, and set a bottom for prices."
Reorganization of chips at the low point of the fear index
The market sentiment indicator fell to 16, which is considered "extreme fear." The short-term holder output profit margin (SOPR) has fallen below 1.0, indicating that speculative chips are mostly leaving the market with losses. Meanwhile, the technical indicator Hash Ribbon is showing a crossover, which has overlapped with price lows multiple times in the past. The actions of companies and sovereign institutions are very different from those of retail investors: they have recently increased their holdings of 42,000 BTC, and 13 countries including Argentina, Japan, and Bhutan still support mining, and the chips are shifting from high-cost miners to long-term funds.
Macro noise and risk boundaries
Zooming into the macro level, the Trump administration remains friendly to crypto assets, but global liquidity is still constrained by the possibility of the Bank of Japan raising interest rates. Some analysts such as TradingShot warn that Bitcoin may not rule out a drop to $50,000 in the short term. The market may fluctuate between $80,000 and $95,000, but the historical pattern of miners capitulating with a high winning rate has not been broken. When the least efficient production capacity is shut down and part of the computing power is transferred to AI, the network foundation left behind will be more resilient. For long-term investors, the silence of the mines may not be just a cold winter, but a silent signal that the seeds of a new cycle are beginning to germinate.
As the sound of the fans gradually stops, this wave of purges brings opportunities for cost revaluation and capacity upgrades for the Bitcoin system. If the rhythm of history rings again, the surrender of miners may not be the final chapter, but the prelude to the next bull market.
