Riot Platforms Sells $44 Million in Bitcoin Amid Mining Industry Headwinds

Riot Platforms sold $38.8 million worth of Bitcoin in April, as the second-largest publicly traded Bitcoin miner by market capitalization moves to shore up liquidity amid tightening margins across the mining sector.The Castle Rock, Colo.–based firm offloaded 475 BTC last month at an average price of $81,731 per coin, according to its operations Riot mined 463 of those tokens in April, with the remaining 12 drawn from reserves. The company retained 19,211 BTC on its balance sheet, worth roughly $1.8 billion at current market prices.“During the month of April, we made the strategic decision to sell our monthly production of bitcoin to fund ongoing growth and operations,” Riot CEO Jason Les said. He added that the move reduces the company’s reliance on equity financing, limiting shareholder dilution.The sale comes amid mounting pressure on miners following Bitcoin’s fourth halving event in mid-April last year, which cut block rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. While such events are historically bullish for Bitcoin’s price, they have also rendered mining operations less profitable overnight. Riot’s Bitcoin production fell 13% month-over-month, even as its deployed hash rate remained flat.Rising networkAs of May 4, the average mining difficulty had climbed to 119 trillion hashes, a 35% increase year-over-year, according to Although Bitcoin has gained 47% over the past year and recently traded near $94,000, it remains below its January all-time high of $109,000. That modest retreat has been enough to strain operations that depend on sustained high prices to cover rising energy and infrastructure costs.On April 7, Bitcoin miners collectively sold 15,000 BTC—the Riot shares fell 5.84% on Monday to close at $7.90.Edited by Sebastian Sinclair