TL;DR
- Miners sell Bitcoin reserves as halving approaches 2028.
- Energy costs and regulation squeeze mining profitability hard.
- Operators must diversify into power and data centers.
The next Bitcoin halving arrives in April 2028. When that happens, miners will receive only 1.5625 BTC per block, half of the current 3.125 BTC reward. But the problem goes beyond the drop in income. Electricity, hardware and compliance costs climbed higher than ever. The margin for error shrank drastically compared to the previous 2024 cycle.
In April 2024, Bitcoin traded around $63,000 when rewards fell from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Miners survived thanks to a strong price and relatively stable energy costs. Today the situation changed. Hashrate reached record levels, energy prices rose due to geopolitical shocks, and regulators from Washington to Europe impose formal rules for custody and licensed institutional platforms.
Miners sell reserves and transform into energy companies
Signs of adjustment appear on balance sheets. MARA Holdings sold more than 15,000 Bitcoin in March to reduce leverage. Riot Platforms liquidated over 3,700 BTC in the first quarter. Cango sold 2,000 BTC to pay down Bitcoin-backed debt. Bitdeer reported Bitcoin holdings at zero as of February 20. These sales do not reflect panic. They reflect a new reality: miners can no longer rely solely on token appreciation.
Juliet Ye, head of communications at Cango, describes an environment “that looks almost nothing like 2024.” The efficiency gap widened and forces real decisions around fleet upgrades. Miners shift from short-term power contracts to long-term agreements across multiple regions. “There is less room in the middle now,” Ye says. “Operators with scale and diversification will be fine. Those without will find the next halving very difficult.”
Mark Zalan, CEO of GoMining, adds that “capital discipline now matters more than hashrate maximalism.” Each new equipment investment must clear tougher return thresholds. The industry left behind the era where mining more was always the right answer.
Alejandro de la Torre, CEO of DMND, offers a complementary view. For him, the underlying dynamics repeat cycle after cycle. Mining hotspots reach their peak and then realign. No region keeps dominance for long. That opens the door to more decentralization, with mid-size miners expanding into new energy partnerships.
Block rewards no longer drive everything. Zalan predicts stronger operators will resemble power and data center businesses. They will earn additional revenue through curtailment, grid services and heat reuse. Cango already builds facilities that can toggle between mining and AI workloads. “The facilities that will matter in five years are the ones that can do more than one thing,” Ye says.
Regulation, once viewed mainly as an overhang, now forms part of the investment case. Zalan points to more specific rules on custody and banking access in the United States, alongside the European Union’s MiCA regime and new ETFs, derivatives and settlement rails out of Hong Kong. “Capital moves faster when those rules are clear and usable,” he argues.
Zalan believes the market has not fully priced the next halving. Scarcity will meet a “much stronger ecosystem around Bitcoin by the time 2028 arrives.” Ye sees investors already re‑rating miners that lock in high‑performance compute contracts. Those operators trade at “more than double the revenue multiple of pure‑play miners.” De la Torre says supporting large established operators is “no longer the only logical path.”
If the 2024 cycle rewarded miners that simply rode Bitcoin’s price strength, the run into 2028 will favor operators who manage debt, lock in long‑term power and build infrastructure that earns beyond block subsidies. Profitability no longer measures only in terahashes per second. It measures in power contracts, grid agreements and industrial conversion capacity. Miners who fail to understand this equation likely will not see the sixth halving.
