Report: Square’s CashApp and Grayscale Consumed Over 50% of Bitcoin Mined Q1 2020

Square’s Cash App and asset manager Grayscale consumed over 50% of newly issued Bitcoin (BTC) in Q1 2020, a new report shows.

Australian fund manager ListedReserve tweeted a calculation based on two gross measures: Grayscale’s inbound flows into its Bitcoin and Ethereum Trusts in Q1, which amount to $388.9 million, and Cash App’s $306 million revenue that came from Bitcoin sales during the same period. 

Those numbers were then divided by the total value of BTC mined in Q1 — $1.3 billion — based on the average BTC price of $8,068. 

The results showed that Grayscale and Cash App sold around 29% and 23% of the newly mined Bitcoin in the first three months of 2020, respectively. 

“The point is how they are increasingly consuming a larger portion of available supply,” a ListedReserve spokesperson explained in a comment for Cointelegraph, adding:

“So assume demand stays constant, they would be buying more Bitcoins in a quarter than are mined in a quarter which means other hodlers would have to be selling, which, of course, they do”.

Possible post-halving implications 

When asked what implications it might have on the industry, the ListedReserve representative replied:

“It’s incredible. Two U.S. entities are consuming over half of the new supply. So not including Coinbase/Binance/Bitfinex/OKCoin and every other exchange around the world most of the mined Bitcoins are accounted for. What is going to happen after the halvening when the new supply each quarter falls by half?”

An identical sentiment was shared by a prominent Bitcoin investor Alistair Milne, who tweeted:

“So, what happens in less than 5 days if two entities are already buying 52% of all #Bitcoin mined?”