Approximately 4-weeks ago global equities markets were in distress as investors finally realized that the coronavirus was not just an illness restricted to China, merely rather a global pandemic which could permanently damage economies across the world.

Crypto markets were not shielded from the commotion that led the South&P 500 and Dow to post some of the biggest losses since the 2008 global financial crisis and investors will think that on March 13 Bitcoin (BTC) price dropped more than 50% in the bridge of 24-hours.

To date, the volatility and fright within financial markets remain and the future forecast for equities markets is still gloomy but some investors are at to the lowest degree showtime to feel that the accented worst has passed.

As is customary in the crypto sector, when a catastrophic event occurs, analysts, traders, soothsayers, and crypto Twitter personalities peer through the grit and rubble in an attempt to piece together a clearer moving-picture show of 'what happened'.

Bitcoin investors will recall that a cascading waterfall of liquidations beyond multiple crypto exchanges offering margin trading and derivatives leads the cost of the digital asset to quickly collapse.

BitMEX Cumulative Long Liquidation Value. Source: Skew, Multicoin Capital

At BitMEX alone, $one.6 billion in leveraged long positions were liquidated and hundreds of millions of dollars were wiped from Bitcoin's market cap. Many investors, along with a hedge fund were virtually wiped out in the course of a 24-hour interval.

The narrative that the crash was the consequence of the correlation between Bitcoin and equities markets, along with liquidations on leveraged positions on crypto derivatives exchanges seems to have been accepted by the bulk of investors, but there is growing concern that Bitcoin's drib to $3,750 may have too negatively impacted miners.

Investors are curious every bit to whether the current prices are below miner'due south profitability margins and if the upcoming halving event volition incentivize or discourage miners every bit Bitcoin prices are already far below the projected price estimates for April 2022.

To gain further insight into this matter, Cointelegraph spoke with Joe Nemelka, a data annotator at blockchain analytics provider, CryptoQuant.

Cointelegraph: Are investors correct to be worried almost the state of Bitcoin miners after the March 13 collapse to $3,775? There are besides murmurs that miners could have played a role in catalyzing the 50% price drop. What are your thoughts on this?

Joe Nemelka: As miners are i of the biggest players in the ecosystem when they are selling more in relation to other players, it would indicate capitulation and some sort of incoming volatility.

This move could exist to the downside as miners selling off pushes through demand. It could also push the price up equally the last unprofitable miners leave and only assisting miners are left, thus drastically decreasing selling pressure.

Miner to Substitution Flow Percentage. Source: CryptoQuant

Every bit shown by the chart above, when this metric is depression, it indicates a plough in price. Nosotros run into this take place in Feb. 2022, Aug. 2022, Nov. 2022, Dec. 2022, April 2022, July 2022, October. 2022, and Feb. 2022. Each of these instances signaled a change in direction of the trend.

Miner to commutation flow percentage. Source: CryptoQuant

Another interesting insight is that miners percentage of exchange inflows hit an all-fourth dimension low (all time beingness since the start of our miner data in 2022) This was .02. It seems to mean that miners are, at to the lowest degree for the time existence still doing relatively ok when it comes to sustaining operations through this drop in price.

BTC flows from all miners into all exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant

This idea that miners are doing ok looks fifty-fifty more than true when looking at the raw miner outflows. Although they were high, they weren't significantly high compared to any previous period.

BTC inflows into all exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant

Comparison that to commutation inflows, we see that exchange inflows had record all-time highs, being most triple previous highs. This means that lots of Bitcoin, more than any time in the previous few years, went into exchanges.

The significance of this is that Bitcoin going into exchanges is a way to mensurate desire to sell and as we can see, desire to sell was relatively the highest nosotros have ever seen.

In crypto terms, i way to look at this would be that it seems the weak hands accept sold.

Thus, information technology seems that based on our data that the main miners, at least for at present, have significant enough cash reserves to maintain their operations until the halving, disallowment another pregnant drib in price.

CT: Does this take into account things like borrowed funds, operation costs, fiat and crypto loans? From your view, what is the interruption-even toll for miners?

JN: Well, that's a chip harder to pinpoint just I like to reference Charles Edwards' Bitcoin production toll information as it gives you lot a band that has pure electricity cost (the bottom) and electricity + overhead (the pinnacle).

BTC USD daily chart. Source: TradingView

I would put the break-fifty-fifty cost between $7,500 and $viii,000 for a typical mining outlet right at present.

The biggest things that will change this are, obviously, the halving and mining hardware. Every bit older, inefficient (S9, S11, similar models) go offline and newer miners take up more hashrate, it might ease the burden on miners.