Miner Capitulation: Cango Dumps $305M BTC Into Historic Difficulty Drop
NYSE-listed miner Cango sells 4,451 BTC to fund an AI pivot as network difficulty drops 11%, signaling peak industry capitulation.
DALLAS. The theory of miner capitulation turned into hard data this weekend. Cango Inc. (NYSE: CANG) confirmed it liquidated 4,451 Bitcoin (~$305 million) to pay down debt and fund an aggressive pivot to AI, marking one of the largest single-entity sell-offs of the current cycle.
The sale, executed directly into a market struggling to hold $68,000, coincides with a historic 11% downward difficulty adjustment, the steepest drop since China’s 2021 mining ban. The confluence of forced selling and network contraction signals the industry has entered a late-stage flush.
The $305M Pivot
Cango’s disposal of nearly 60% of its treasury is not a simple rebalancing; it is a full-scale retreat from pure-play mining. In a letter to shareholders, the company outlined its transition to “EcoHash Technology,” a new Dallas-based subsidiary focused on high-performance computing (HPC) and AI inference.
The rapidly growing AI era continues to face a ‘Power Gap’, a disconnect between rising compute demand and existing grid capacity.
Proceeds from the sale will settle Bitcoin-backed loans and finance the deployment of modular GPU nodes. Cango is betting its future on becoming an “Ecosystem Enabler” for AI, leaving the volatile economics of SHA-256 mining behind.
Capitulation by the Numbers
The macro data supports Cango’s exit thesis. Bitcoin mining difficulty plummeted 11.16% this week to 125.86 T, a lagging indicator that substantial hashrate (approx. 20%) has gone offline. Revenue per petahash (hashprice) has collapsed to ~$33, forcing inefficient operators to unplug or face bankruptcy.
On-chain reserves paint a bleaker picture. Miner balances have effectively drained to ~1.8 million BTC, the lowest level in the modern ASIC era. Over 6,300 BTC flowed out of miner wallets in the last 60 days alone, suggesting Cango is not an outlier, but the loudest signal in a silent trend of inventory depletion.
Market Impact
Bitcoin (BTC) traded heavily around $68,800 following the disclosure, absorbing the supply shock but failing to reclaim the psychological $70,000 level. While the difficulty drop offers a mechanical reprieve to surviving miners by increasing their BTC yield, the immediate liquidity drain from Cango, and the threat of copycat selling from other distressed miners, has capped near-term upside.
