Businesses are absorbing Bitcoin 4x faster than it is mined — Report

Private businesses and publicly traded companies are buying Bitcoin at a rate nearly four times higher than miners are producing new coins, according to data from Bitcoin financial services firm River. This accelerated institutional demand could create supply pressure if exchange reserves keep falling.

River’s data shows that, on average in 2025, businesses purchased about 1,755 BTC per day. Exchange-traded funds and other investment vehicles added roughly 1,430 BTC per day, while governments acquired around 39 BTC per day.

By contrast, Bitcoin miners produce roughly 450 new BTC per day. That gap between institutional demand and miner supply has prompted analysts to warn of a potential supply shock if the trend continues and coins remain off exchanges as institutions hold them long term.

Bitcoin treasury companies were a major driver of demand: they purchased 159,107 BTC in the second quarter of 2025, bringing total corporate holdings to about 1.3 million BTC. Leading the pack is Strategy, Michael Saylor’s firm, which is the largest known corporate holder and reportedly holds more than 632,000 BTC.

Some observers have argued that massive, concentrated buying by treasury firms can have an outsized effect on available supply; one commentator described Strategy’s accumulation as effectively "synthetically halving" Bitcoin. Executives at Strategy say their purchases are executed over-the-counter and spread out to avoid moving spot markets, and they note that global trading volumes are large relative to individual multi-day buys.

With exchange reserves at multi-year lows and sustained institutional accumulation, market participants are debating how much upward price pressure a prolonged supply imbalance might create. Many analysts view dwindling exchange inventories combined with continued institutional demand as a potentially bullish catalyst for Bitcoin.