{"id":125002,"date":"2025-03-13T14:15:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=125002"},"modified":"2025-03-13T14:15:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:15:33","slug":"us-canada-tariff-flip-flops-have-bitcoin-miners-on-their-toes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=125002","title":{"rendered":"US-Canada tariff flip-flops have Bitcoin miners on their toes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsBitcoin miners are adapting their business strategies as the continued trade war between the US and Canada makes energy prices and policies all the more uncertain.
\nUS President Donald Trump threatened to double his tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%, leading the government of the province of Ontario to walk back its own plan to increase the cost of power exports to the US.
\nOntario Premier Doug Ford had promised to further increase the surcharge or even \u201cshut off the electricity completely,\u201d given further provocation. However, he appears to have softened his stance, at least for now.\u00a0
\nThe trade war may have reached a lull, but some crypto firms are looking ahead at possible policy changes in order to protect their growth.\u00a0
\nBitcoin miners expect changes in energy markets
\nBen Ganon, the CEO of Canadian Bitcoin mining firm Bitfarms, told Bloomberg on March 11 that the recent energy price hikes, had they gone through, were unlikely to affect his firm\u2019s business.\u00a0
\nBitfarms\u2019 operations are mostly in Quebec and British Columbia, both of which boast significant hydroelectric capacity in relation to the total provincial energy mix. Ontario, by comparison, is \u201cnot as robust of an energy market. And over the last several years, they\u2019ve really taken a big push on cutting back on baseload capacity.\u201d
\nBut even though Bitfarms\u2019 energy situation may look solid for the time being, Ganon said that the tariffs \u201chave implications for what policy and regulatory frameworks are going to look like in the future.\u201d
\nHe said that his firm wants to see \u201cgreater access to electricity markets\u201d as well as fewer regulations on setting up a new business or new power applications.\u00a0
\nEnergy policy has been a contentious area of debate in Canadian politics, with critics accusing the Liberal government \u2014 now led by Prime Minister Mark Carney \u2014 of harming the Canadian economy with their strategies to lower emissions.\u00a0
\nRelated: What Canada\u2019s new Liberal PM Mark Carney means for crypto
\nGanon said: \u201cThe opportunities that are present in the United States are also present in Canada. And I think that this will all resolve itself and end up in a much more deregulated and smooth and efficient market because for years it\u2019s been tied up in regulatory red tape.\u201d
\nHow would a Bitcoin miner benefit from tariffs?
\nTariffs on goods such as steel, aluminum, and other industrial products \u2014 intended to encourage domestic production in the US\u2014 also impact Bitcoin miners, with some effects being unexpectedly beneficial.
\nWhile Ganon noted that miners can\u2019t control the Bitcoin price, they can control their electricity costs. \u201cOne of the ways that we can do that is we can look for pockets of energy that are underutilized, that used to power heavy industry, which has been outsourced to other countries over the last 20 or 30 years.\u201d
\nAccording to Ganon, Bitfarms has operations in Pennsylvania \u2014 a \u201cRust Belt\u201d state heavily affected by the outsourcing of American steel and metals industries. His firm\u2019s assets could soon be in high demand if the US manufacturing industry were to come back from the dead.
\nGanon said that Bitcoin miners have been investing heavily in energy infrastructure that \u201cused to power aluminum smelters and steel refineries and all the stuff which was outsourced.\u201d
\n\u201cNow Bitcoin miners have these assets. And as the pendulum swings back to America, those assets are now in high demand.\u201d
\nChina tariffs squeeze Bitcoin mining hardware
\nCanadian miners like Bitfarms may be unconcerned for now, but Trump\u2019s tariffs on China have already begun to squeeze American crypto miners, who import hardware from China-based firms like Bitmain.
\nAccording to Bloomberg, shipments of Bitcoin mining hardware from China to the US were experiencing significant delays as of February 2025. The delays reportedly were the result of the US blacklisting Bitmain\u2019s AI affiliate Xiamen Sophgo Technologies.\u00a0
\nHeavy customs fees for inspections of Bitmain-affiliated hardware have cost US miners up to $500,000, according to Vishnu Mackenchery, director of global logistics and services at Compass Mining Inc. New tariffs could make new imports of next-gen miners to the US \u201ccompletely cost-prohibitive,\u201d according to Synteq Digital CEO Taras Kulyk.
\nChina-based mining hardware producers like Bitmain could set up operations in other countries to avoid US sanctions. During Trump\u2019s first term, when he imposed a 25% tax duty on a number of consumer electronic goods from China, many mining hardware producers moved to Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand to avoid tariffs.
\nBitmain even announced it would launch a US production line in December 2024 to \u201cprovide faster response times and more efficient services to the North American customers.\u201d Bloomberg noted that the firm did not provide the exact location of its US line.\u00a0
\nRelated: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says US should bring BTC onshore
\nTrump\u2019s economic policies continue to be a mixed bag for the crypto industry. Wild fluctuations in trade policy and last-minute reversals have made the market difficult to predict. Elsewhere, the European Union has promised to impose counter-tariffs on the US, further threatening asset valuations.\u00a0
\nBitcoin price chart Sept. 1, 2024 to March 13, 2025. Source: TradingViewMarcin Kazmierczak, co-founder and chief operating officer of blockchain oracle solution firm RedStone, told Cointelegraph this could see Bitcoin sink to $75,000, a level not seen since November 2024.\u00a0
\nMagazine: Mystery celeb memecoin scam factory, HK firm dumps Bitcoin: Asia ExpressRead More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsBitcoin miners are adapting their business strategies as the continued trade war between the US and Canada makes energy prices and policies all the more uncertain. US President… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125002"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}