Bitcoin miners are scrambling to frontrun Trump’s infamous global tariffs, which are poised to increase prices on everything from ASIC miners, to electrical gear, and network infrastructure come April 9.
“It’s a complete scramble,” Vera said on last week’s Mining Pod news roundup. “From the ASIC trading front and brokerage, miners have not been very proactive here. They have not necessarily frontrun orders and gotten them into the U.S…they’re operating in a less than a week period here to make sure all shipments that are coming out of SE Asia are picked up and getting delivered.”
“Top firms are chartering flights at 2-4x the usual rate, anywhere from $2-3.5 million per flight…”
Vera mentioned that ASIC prices could increase anywhere between 22-36% as a result of the tariffs. ASIC prices have trended slightly downward over the past year, according to data from Hashrate Index’s ASIC Price Index. A new-gen model, like the S21, currently runs miners roughly $3,400.
Companies are working overtime to pull forward ASIC orders before the tariffs take effect on April 9. Top firms are chartering flights at 2-4x the usual rate, anywhere from $2-3.5 million per flight according to estimates provided to Blockspace by Synteq Digital CEO Taras Kulyk and Luxor COO Ethan Vera.
Vera said that he believes air freight rates will eclipse 4x the usual fares as the deadline approaches. If miners had equipment contracted before April 5, they are exempt from the tariffs, Vera said, and any shipments contracted between April 5-9 will be subject to a reduced fee of 10%.
The tariffs will hamper efforts to deploy hashrate in the U.S., the dominant market currently with an estimated 35-40% share of Bitcoin’s hashrate. As it stands, it’s likely that the tariffs will noticeably slow bitcoin’s hashrate growth this year versus prior expectations.
Blockspace estimates that U.S. bitcoin miners imported over $2.3 billion worth of ASIC miners last year and over $860 million in Q1.
The Trump administration announced reciprocal tariffs last week on more than 180 countries in a daring policy move that has rocked international markets. For miners, the most pertinent tariffs are on Malaysia (24%), Thailand (36%), Indonesia (32%), China (104%), and Taiwan (32%). Leading ASIC manufacturers Bitmain, MicroBT, Canaan, Bitdeer, and Auradine fabricate ASIC miners, the beating heart of the bitcoin mining network, in the first three nations. Taiwan’s TSMC supplies the semiconductor chips that undergird the majority of these mining machines, but semiconductors are currently exempt from the reciprocal tariff schedule.
Notably, Bitmain and MicroBT, which collectively corner 90%+ of the ASIC miner market, moved their ASIC manufacturing capacity outside of China to these other countries in response to Trump’s China tariffs in his first term. MicroBT opened a U.S. assembly plant in 2023, and Kulyk said that Bitmain opened its first U.S. assembly line in January. Still, these plants represent a fraction of either manufacturer’s total production.
“Blockspace estimates that U.S. bitcoin miners imported over $2.3 billion worth of ASIC miners last year and over $860 million in Q1.”
Kulyk said that “US production will have a material discount” compared to imported hardware. But they will still suffer from tariffs on raw material like aluminum, electronic components for control boards and the like, and of course, so ASICs produced in America will still be more expensive.
Vera highlighted that Chinese electrical components are slated for a 50% or more tariff (and could even be subject to as much as 104% based on an updated rate from the Trump administration). This will affect everything from ASIC miner prices to electrical infrastructure at the mines themselves.
As the tariffs increase the cost of imported ASIC miners and other mining equipment, then all else being equal, any on-shore facilities will increase in value, as well. Even so, U.S. miners looking to expand might find acquisitions an easier route than importing equipment. Accordingly, Kulyk expects the tariffs will furnish merger and acquisition deals, explaining that “suddenly these miners that have older gear that seem like zombies actually look like interesting acquisition opportunities.”
“A big blow” for the American bitcoin mining sector
Kulyk said that he expects to see tariffs reflected in ASIC prices by the end of this week, adding that currently “no one is buying” on the secondary market as they wait to see where the chips fall.
In the medium term, the tariffs are indisputably a “big blow” to the U.S. bitcoin mining sector, Vera expressed, one that is “certainly going to stagnate growth in the industry if these tariffs continue.”
“If you’re paying 36% more for a machine than your competitor in Canada or Russia, it’s going to be hard to compete with international miners,” Vera said.
Kulyk assented to this view, saying that, “suddenly building north of the wall [in Canada] is gonna look a lot more interesting.”
Canada, from an economic perspective, will actually be a much more interesting place to do business. Corporate taxes are slated to be reduced. Capital gains taxes slated to be reduced. There’s a lot of wind in the sale of Canadian economic growth, especially on the data center side,” he said. For one, Mark Carney, the frontrunner in Canada’s Prime Minister election, has espoused support to bolstering Canada’s data center and energy industries. Still, many Canadian provinces, by Ontario and Quebec with their state-run power authorities, have moratoriums on new power applications to bitcoin miners, so questions remain whether or not these headwinds will persist.
In addition to Canada, Kulyk believes that Northern Europe could still be plumbed for hashrate expansion, while Vera said that miners might find a few gigawatts of opportunity in South America and Africa too.
But room for growth is limited if miners can’t tap the U.S., which has led global hashrate growth since China’s 2021 bitcoin mining ban. Vera believes that the tariffs’ impact on bitcoin mining will be of a similar scale as the China mining ban, with the implications that hashrate growth will likely slow and that hashrate distribution will shuffle away from the U.S. to other countries. The tariffs could also materially lower the cost of ASICs in other markets, since international miners won’t be competing with the biggest buyers, U.S. miners, for allocation.
“In terms of the scale of geopolitical impact, it’s probably relevant to think about this as being on par with the China ban,” Vera said. “The benefiters are going to be international miners, who are most likely going to be accessing machines at a much cheaper cost now because they are not competing with as much demand from the U.S.”
“You could make the case that network hashrate will continue its rise…but the U.S. has been a large part of its growth as an energy superpower…there’s not that much power to go around,” Vera concluded.
