Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

Bitdeer's Bitcoin holdings have reached zero.

As one of the leading mining companies, it had over 2400 BTC at its peak last November, and has since continuously increased its selling pace, until it completed liquidation by mid-February, and now maintains a rhythm of selling as much as it mines.

It is worth noting that the company's financial report shows that in the fourth quarter of 2025, it achieved revenue of 224.8 million US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 226%; net profit reached 70.5 million US dollars; total hash rate reached 71.0 EH/s, an increase of 229%, and mining efficiency improved significantly from 30.4 J/TH to 17.9 J/TH.

A company that is profitable and has a record hash rate has chosen to liquidate its Bitcoin reserves at this time. To understand this operation, it is necessary to return to a basic fact that has long been obscured by the market.

1. Holding coins is always a minority practice

Bitdeer has never been a coin-holding institution driven by faith.

In the early years, this company followed the most basic logic of mining companies – mine, sell, and exchange for cash. BTC was not an asset for it but a product.

It was not until the past two years that MicroStrategy's coin-holding model was greatly favored in the capital market, reshaping the valuation logic of mining companies, that Bitdeer followed industry trends and briefly switched to a coin-holding narrative.

This trend-following is not uncommon in the entire industry, but very few persist in it.

Blockchain research institution Messari's analyst Tom Dunleavy released a set of data showing that from January to November 2025, leading publicly traded mining companies including Core Scientific, Riot, Marathon, and Hut 8 collectively mined approximately 40,700 BTC and sold approximately 40,300 BTC, with a sale rate close to 99%.

In other words, these companies have never truly held coins.

This number reveals a basic survival rule of the industry: the essence of mining companies is energy arbitrage; Bitcoin is the medium through which they convert cheap electricity into income, rather than a long-term holding on the balance sheet.

Recently, the reason the market has believed the coin-holding story is partly because the continuous increase in BTC prices has obscured this reality — when assets appreciate, the decision to sell or not becomes a matter of stance; when the price drops below mining costs, selling coins turns from a matter of stance into a survival instinct.

Therefore, Bitdeer's liquidation this time, rather than a betrayal of faith, is more of a return to its true nature. This is also not a signal of being bearish on Bitcoin, as Wu Jihan himself has stated on social media that a zero holding does not mean it will always be so in the future.

However, this time the coins sold are not for operational cash but for funding the transformation. That brief period of holding coins was simply an interlude in the industry’s collective storytelling in cooperation with the capital market.

2. Triple pressure: How cold is the winter for mining companies

Understanding that holding coins is a minority practice allows for a clearer view of the current predicament of mining companies. What weighs on this industry is the triple simultaneous tightening dilemma.

First is the cost pressure after the halving.

The 2024 halving means block rewards will be halved, directly cutting the unit output of mining companies in half, while electricity costs, machine depreciation, and operational costs remain unchanged. The price of many machines has approached or even exceeded the current BTC price, meaning starting up means losses, while shutting down is wasting assets.

Dunleavy also pointed out that miners' continued sale of newly mined BTC itself constitutes structural downward pressure on prices. The lower the price, the more mining companies need to sell coins; the more they sell, the harder it is for prices to rebound, thus forming a self-reinforcing vicious cycle.

Secondly, the stark numbers in financial reports.

Looking at the 2025 annual reports of mining companies, nearly all show a structure of rising revenue and increasing losses.

MARA Holdings' total revenue increased from 656 million dollars to 907 million dollars, yet net losses soared to 1.31 billion dollars, while the same period last year saw a profit of 541 million dollars.

Hut 8's revenue increased from 162 million to 235 million, but it shifted from a profit of 331 million to a loss of 248 million. TeraWulf's revenue rose from 140 million to 169 million, but its fourth-quarter loss per share widened from 0.21 dollars to 1.66 dollars.

The phenomenon of increasing revenue without profit is appearing simultaneously across many leading companies, indicating that this is not a management issue, but a structural cyclical compression of the industry.

The fair value fluctuations of coin-holding assets directly affect the profit and loss statement, making the numbers on the books particularly unflattering. Yet, companies are still attempting to swap debt for transformation: Hut 8 launched a 1 billion dollar ATM financing plan and signed a credit agreement with Coinbase for up to 400 million; Cipher Digital has completed three financing deals totaling as much as 3.73 billion.

Finally, the changing macro environment.

Trump raised global tariffs, geopolitical uncertainties continued to rise, and risk assets generally came under pressure, with Bitcoin falling below 65,000 dollars.

Cryptocurrency analysis firm QCP pointed out that Bitcoin prices are significantly below the average mining cost, and prioritizing liquidity over coin-holding is no longer a strategic choice but a reality constraint.

Bitdeer liquidating, and Cango also starting to sell small amounts of BTC for operations, a series of actions together sketch out the contours of the industry's risk reduction.

3. Living to die: The gamble of transformation

With the simultaneous tightening of the triple pressures, mining companies have only one way out: transformation, using the infrastructure assets accumulated from Bitcoin mining to leverage a new source of income.

AI and high-performance computing have become the next cards for this industry collective to bet on.

The logic is not hard to understand. Mining companies hold many cheap electricity contracts and scalable data center land, both of which happen to be the most scarce resources for AI computing infrastructure. Switching from low-margin mining computing power to high-margin AI computing leasing seems like a profitable deal on paper.

Bitdeer is vigorously promoting its self-developed mining machine Sealminer, AI cloud services, and high-performance computing business; Cipher changed its brand from Mining to Digital, declaring its platform transformation; multiple companies are scrambling to secure long-term low-price electricity contracts to establish a structural moat on the energy cost side.

However, the pace of reality is far more conservative than the narrative.

Take TeraWulf as an example: the company's revenue from HPC in the fourth quarter was only 9.7 million dollars, accounting for less than 30% of the total revenue of 35.8 million dollars, and is a significant drop compared to the third quarter.

AI business customer acquisition, contract implementation, and ramping up capacity all take time, while debt pressure and equity dilution are immediate realities.

The outcome of this transformation gamble depends on whether the new business can actually scale up before debts are due.

Interestingly, just when BTC fell nearly 17% this month, many mining company stocks rose against the trend. For instance, TeraWulf increased by 31%, Cipher rose by 8%, Hut 8 increased by 6%, and Core Scientific was basically flat.

This decoupling reflects a re-evaluation by the capital markets — mining companies have long been among the most shorted sectors by hedge funds, and the upward momentum may partly come from short covering.

This indicates that the market is beginning to view these companies as potential carriers of AI computing infrastructure, rather than as amplifiers of Bitcoin price.

In the future, their judgment criteria may no longer be who holds how much BTC, but rather who secures the longest-term low-price electricity, who has the most potential for AI transformation of data center assets, and whose balance sheet can withstand the pain of transformation.

Conclusion

Mining companies have never been the most devout believers in Bitcoin; they are the most rational industry participants. When mining is profitable, they mine; when holding coins supports valuations, they choose to hold; when selling coins can provide the means for transformation, they will sell without hesitation. This is the basic logic of business.

The real question worth asking is the next one: when the story of the AI/HPC transformation has been fully priced in by the capital markets, what else can these companies present to support the next round of valuations? If by then the price of Bitcoin has rebounded, yet the transformation business has not matured, will those mining companies that liquidated today again start telling the story of coin-holding?

Cycles turn, narratives renew. But in every cold winter, surviving is always more important than faith.

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