PANews reported on February 13 that according to Bloomberg, several industry executives said that due to the increased scrutiny by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Bitmain Technology Co., Ltd. has recently experienced delays in shipping machines to U.S. customers. These delays happened when the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted Xiamen Sophgo Technologies Ltd., an AI subsidiary of Bitmain, in January this year, accusing the company of "acting at the request of Beijing to promote China's goal of local advanced chip production." This situation has caused a conflict between U.S. President Trump's two goals: one is to gain the upper hand over China in trade, and the other is to cultivate local cryptocurrency miners to ensure that Bitcoin is "Made in the USA."
Bitmain, which controls 90% of the market for computers used to mine bitcoin, was already affected by Trump’s tariffs in 2018. On Feb. 1, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on Chinese imports. “About three months ago, U.S. customs began randomly checking almost all air-shipped bitcoin mining machines,” said Nuo Xu, president of the China Digital Mining Association, who runs a mining farm in the U.S. Customs officials are checking the machines more closely, “asking brokers to show certificates of origin,” he added.
On December 9 last year, Bitmain announced the launch of a U.S. factory, but did not disclose the specific location. Luxor's Vera said: "I expect that any company that buys Bitmain machines will now be at risk, including listed companies."