Bitcoin Miners Hint at Anticipating Profits in 2025 as MPI Dips and ETF Flows Turn Positive

Miner activity is an essential part of the Bitcoin ecosystem and as such, changes in its dynamics may offer critical market insights. Bitcoin miner data collected over the last few months may provide a rough idea of the prevailing sentiment and level of confidence.

Bitcoin miner activity is a key cog in the broader cryptocurrency machinery, and as such, any shift in its dynamics could offer valuable insight into the state of the market.

Bitcoin miner data, as observed over the last few months, could give a rough estimate of the prevailing sentiment and level of confidence.

In fact, a recent miner analysis on CryptoQuant revealed that Bitcoin miner flows into exchanges have dipped notably since April 2024. This observation suggested that miners have been holding on to more BTC in the hopes of selling it at higher prices.

The same analysis revealed that the net unrealized profit and loss metric was still positive at press time. This seemed to be confirmation that Bitcoin miners are still sitting on unrealized profits, hence not contributing much to the sell pressure in the market.

Is the anticipation of profits still on for Bitcoin miners?

The aforementioned observation also seemed to align with the miner position index (MPI). A high MPI indicates that miners are moving more BTC, which usually translates to more sell pressure.

This indicator's last peak was on 12 November, just a few weeks before the price achieved its historic peak.

Source: CryptoQuant

The MPI peak signaled strong sell pressure from Bitcoin miners, but it has since dipped notably, and it closed December near its bottom range – A sign that miner outflows cooled down considerably.

Despite this, however, Bitcoin miner reserves have been declining and hovered close to 12-month lows, at the time of observation. For context, there were slightly over 1.838 million in Bitcoin miner reserves towards the beginning of 2024. That figure has since dipped to 1.807 million BTC.

Source: CryptoQuant

The declining miner reserves signaled that miners are still cashing out some profits, especially as the price soars higher. This is an expected outcome as miners still need to sell some of their coins to cover the cost of operations.

The MPI confirmed that the rate of sell pressure has been declining as the market pulled back. In other words, Bitcoin miners may be holding on to some of their coins in anticipation of higher prices in 2025.

Miner reserve upticks have been observed along the way, and the next major uptick could trigger another spike. Here, it's crucial to note that another key indicator to look out for is institutional demand. ETFs are usually at the forefront of signaling strong demand.

ETF flows were mostly negative in the second half of December and kicked off the first 2 days of 2025 in the negative. However, ETF flows on Friday turned back positive with a massive $908.1 million acquired. Sustained demand in the coming weeks could potentially pave the way for the price reclaiming the $100,000 price level.