Miners affiliated with Bitcoin’s largest mining pool may be behind the recent drop

Bitcoin (BTC) fell to lows of $28,950 on Jan. 22 thanks to miners likely selling huge amounts of their holdings — but big buyers made sure that the dip was minimal.

According to data from on-chain monitoring resource CryptoQuant, the past few days saw vast outflows from mining pools, which in turn corresponded to BTC/USD shedding 20% in a week.

Daily outflows from miners associated with F2Pool hit 10,000 BTC

It's important to note that F2Pool is not a miner, but rather a service provider that Bitcoin miners use to coalesce their resources. Beginning on Jan. 15, outflows from these miners began to rise and by Jan. 17, daily outflows had reached 10,000 BTC ($313 million).  These continued for three days in a row before returning closer to normal levels.

Initially, CryptoQuant and Cointelegraph reported that F2Pool was responsible for the vast majority of outflows, but after learning that there was a slight misrepresentation in its data CryptoQuant issued a revision. 

For f2pool, their participants involved with other big clusters, that's why their outflow looks huge. We're trying to solve this kind of over-clustering problem.

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) February 2, 2021

Aside from the narrative of miner selling driving Bitcoin price down, theories including the controversy around Tether (USDT) and a recovering dollar were being touted as the root causes of the volatility. 

Meanwhile, Bitcoin exchange balances have stayed constant throughout January in contrast to the general downtrend that has been in place since summer 2019, data shows.

Sales come amid huge Grayscale buys

Should the coins from mining collectives associated with F2Pool have formed a large glut of new BTC supply for sale on the market, it is likely that one buyer, in particular, would have hoovered them up fairly quickly.

As Cointelegraph reported, asset management giant Grayscale has added conspicuous amounts to its assets under management this week, these potentially helping BTC/USD avoid a deeper dive.

The company's recently published Q4 2020 report, in which it says that institutions provided 93% of its inflows, compounds the idea that it is the main buyer of any spare BTC supply. 

CEO Michael Sonnenshein believes that 2021 will see increased interest from financial advisors in the Bitcoin space, along with a drop in associated investment risk.