Ethereum Miners Keep Buying ETH

Ethereum miners are seeing a net inflow following the merge, despite them no longer receiving any eth as a reward.

According to data by OKCoin’s OKLink, miners have been seeing a net inflow of between 100 to 500 eth a day, with 1,880 eth added to their addresses in the past week, worth $2.5 million.

This data covers “tokenized miner addresses, including Foundry USA, F2Pool, AntPool, Poolin, Binance, SlushPool, BTC.com, Huobi.pool, 1THash&58COIN, OKxPool, Luxor, ViaBTC, others,” OKLink says.

After an initial drop in their holdings of about 15,000 eth in the days around the Merge, they now seem to have stabilized.

All four major pools saw a sharp drop around September 15th, with Ethermine reducing their holdings from 17,000 to 5,000, continuing at a rate of about 300 eth.

Nanopool depleted their holdings of about 1,500 eth on September 15th. Hive has gone from about 16,000 eth to 7,000 eth, down by about 1,000 eth a week. While Flexpool is going more slowly after an initial drop from 6,000 to nearing 1500.

These four major pools now hold in combination 13,500 eth, or what used to be just one day of reward for their mining.

These eth however are sent to the actual miners. Some then send them on to exchanges, but some are holding.

The increase in inflows may indicate that what used to be miners are now just eth investors, and are increasing their position, or that many miners have turned into stakers.

Just how much the latter is the case may be clarified once rewards are unlocked, sometime perhaps this summer, when we can see just what addresses are receiving these rewards.

But anecdotally at least some miners have adapted by providing staking related services, although the initial drop may indicate at least some miners have left.

The unwind continues however as we near the first month since the Merge this Saturday. Many miners may have set monthly rewards for distribution, and so some may still be awaiting their September payout.

But, rather than a pack up and go, after the initial drop it appears miners have become holders or stakers, and they may even be buying now.

That may have contributed to a stabilization of eth’s price to around $1,300s, as well as to its ratio sort of sidewaying just below 0.07 BTC.