How Tariff Policies Reshape the Bitcoin Mining Landscape

In April 2025, the Trump administration launched a "reciprocal tariff" policy, imposing a 10% "minimum benchmark tariff" on global trade partners, triggering turmoil in global financial markets. Bitcoin mining, as a capital-intensive industry reliant on hardware equipment and multinational supply chains, became one of the most directly affected areas of the crypto economy.

This article will analyze the impact of tariff policies on Bitcoin mining from three dimensions: mining machine manufacturers, self-operated mining farms, and cloud computing mining farms.

1. Different degrees of impact of tariffs on various sectors of mining

Data shows that the stock prices of mining machine manufacturers have fallen the most, with Canaan Creative and Ebang International dropping by more than 17% and 11% respectively in the past month. Self-operated mining farms follow, with Core Scientific leading the decline by over 10%. Cloud computing mining farms have been relatively less impacted, with BitFufu only falling by 5.9%.

This differentiation stems from the varying degrees of impact from tariffs on each link.

1.1 Mining Machine Manufacturers: Dual Impact of Supply and Demand

The chip foundries upstream in the mining machine production face high tariff pressures, and costs may be passed on to downstream. At the same time, U.S. mining sites need to pay high tariffs when purchasing Chinese mining machines, which may lead to a shrinkage in orders.

Taking mainstream mining machines as an example, if tariffs cause prices to rise by 30%, the mining cost of a single Bitcoin for the S21 Pro and A15 Pro will increase to $80,105 and $88,717 respectively; if it rises by 70%, the cost will reach $95,756 and $105,938. This will significantly affect the demand for mining machines.

1.2 Self-operated mining farm: supply is limited, large mining farms have a smaller impact

Self-operated mining farms are mainly affected by the supply side. Large mining farms like Marathon have sufficient cash flow and often adopt a coin hoarding strategy, being less affected by Bitcoin price fluctuations.

Small mining farms often "mine and sell" due to limited funds, making them more susceptible to price fluctuations. Data shows that small mining farms like Cipher and Hive have recently seen a year-on-year decrease in their coin holdings, while Marathon and Riot have significantly increased their coin holdings.

In the long term, mining equipment needs to be continuously updated, and high tariffs will increase the operating costs of mining farms, challenging profitability.

1.3 Cloud Mining Farm: Risk Transfer, Minimum Impact

The cloud computing power mining farm is essentially a rental model, transferring costs to customers through service fees, without directly bearing the risk of coin price fluctuations. Its income is mainly driven by the total network computing power, which has recently increased rather than decreased, reaching a historical high.

Although the cost of mining machines has risen, the cloud hashing model can transfer some of the risks to customers, minimizing the impact.

2. Reshaping the Bitcoin Mining Landscape

Tariff policies may reshape the distribution of global computing power:

• The costs of US mining companies are rising, and their competitiveness is declining.
• Non-US companies gain relative cost advantages
• Global computing power may further disperse to low tariff regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
• The influence of American mining companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem may decline temporarily.

However, in the long run, institutional investors represented by IBIT and MicroStrategy still hold the pricing power of Bitcoin. As of April 2025, IBIT and MicroStrategy together hold nearly 1.1 million Bitcoins, with their proportion of the circulating supply continuously rising, enough to absorb the daily new supply.

Summary

The tariff policy of the Trump administration poses a dual challenge of upstream costs and geopolitical layout to the Bitcoin mining industry. Mining machine manufacturers bear the brunt, self-operated mining farms face rising costs, while cloud computing mining farms have relatively greater buffering capacity.

In the short term, rising mining costs may pose a marginal bearish risk to Bitcoin prices. However, in the medium to long term, the continued buying by institutional investors is expected to offset supply pressure and stabilize the market structure.

Bitcoin mining is at a critical juncture of policy reshaping and structural transition. In the future, factors such as policy trends, geopolitical security, energy scheduling, and manufacturing stability will become key to the survival of the mining industry. Global investors need to closely monitor the policy evolution and the industrial chain rebalancing brought about by the migration of computing power.

![The Impact of Tariff Policies on Bitcoin Mining: A Deep Dive into Cost and Supply Chain Disturbances](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-350e75e44a2049a0625220e30bae1956.webp01