Some members of the Bitcoin mining industry (BTC) are in custody of regularlyvaluing mining transmissions including US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to reduce customary duties, many people who are familiar with CoinDesk practice.
Now that the Donald Trump administration has raised tariffs on most goods brought from around the world, these attempts at avoiding paying import charges are becoming more relevant than ever before.
“(Members of the industry) usually have ways around (tariffs) by declaring lower value in packages,” said Jill Ford, the founder of Bitford Digital, a firm who specializes in taking equipment with miners, told CoinDesk in a interview. “That’s dangerous, and I don’t suggest it, but that’s what they really do to take them.”
Bitcoin mining has flourished in the US in recent years, especially from China – once the Bitcoin mining activity center – banned skill in 2021, creating an industry release to constituents such as Texas. But the $ 30 Billion Applications Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) Market is dominated by Bitmain and MicRont, two Chinese companies that make most of Bitcoin’s mining machines in Southeast Asian facilities.
Companies like Bitford tend to act as a middleman between manufacturers and miners, though they can also get Asics in the second market. The largest of these brokers provides all kinds of hardware infrastructure and power that miners may need.
Trump’s new trading policy, shown on April 2, threatened to impose significant tariffs for South -East Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. One week later, the White House announced a 90-day moratorium on some of these tariffs to negotiate with new trade deals. The resulting uncertainty caused chaos for Bitcoin miners located in the US, which now has to grapple with the possibility of paying huge taxes on their ASIC shipments.
But before the tariffs were born, the miners regularly reported the value of their shipments to the US Customs, Ford and others said.
“There are many creatures that play that game. We will never do and never,” Taras Kulyk, co-founder and CEO of Mining Hardware Provider Synteq Digital, said CoinDesk. “Some well -known brokers too,” he added, without giving any names.
“It was fraud. It was definitely illegal. But many people rolled over the dice and did it, and I didn’t condone it,” Ford said. “If my client wants to do that, it’s up to them … We’ll ask, ‘What do you want to express your package? What is the value?’ And if they were like, ‘just declare it as $ 300,’ then that’s what we will do.
Restrictions
In Ford’s statement, it has become easy to undervalue ASIC shipments – CBP rarely checks. But things began to change around November 2024 after Trump won the election, Ford said, while another resource with a expertise in shipments, who spoke to CoinDesk in the anonymous condition, said CBP’s Recent investigation If imported mining rigs destroy chip-related penalties can lead to the agency to view the mining sector as a whole.
“Before, a mining rig that could cost $ 3,000, we’ll announce that it’s worth $ 300. It’s just going to pass. Now it’s like they’re looking for it on the Internet to see what the value really is,” Ford said. “There really is no way around it. I mean, you can announce it 20% or 30%, but not as we used to do.”
The shipping size is important. Importing one or two machines usually escape the investigation, Ford said, but when the miners carry the machines in bulk that the CBP looks. Hundreds of thousands of mining rigs are imported in the US each year.
However, the CBP appears to be more difficult in some states than in others, as these controls are not strictly equal to the whole country, according to Ford.
“I have a client in Oregon with no problem under the expression of packages and bring them right, but I have another Kentucky client who (had) 100 machines worth $ 9,000 each stuck in custom,” Ford said.
“What was the last thing that happened in Kentucky we had to return the goods to Hong Kong, and now we’re like, ‘Well, where are we going to send it to get it in?’ And I was like, ‘Maybe we just went to CBP in Oregon or California,’ because it’s just a nightmare to try to bring it to Kentucky.
Imports are also affected by which the carrier is used. The DHL is easier to get than UPS in Kentucky, while UPS tends to be less tight on the west coast than on the east coast, Ford said – and that is a common knowledge of its suppliers.
The difference in implementation is likely to be temporary, the shipping expert said to CoinDesk. In their view, the CBP is likely to decide to look closely at the imports of mining rigs, but the implementation of the new directive is only implemented at a different speed from the scope to the scope.
CBP did not answer a request for comment.
In a subsequent email to CoinDesk, Ford appeared to qualify his comments, the transfer of blame from operations based in US
“To be clear that this is not a skill driven by the miner. For many years, many Chinese mining suppliers have regularly underreported the value of shipping-often declaring machines at the lowest possible amount. This is not a procedure driven by miners, but a widespread, supplier-control skill that has been the standard because of the implementation of the lax. In all the regulations ignored, “he wrote.
“We are always recommended to declare shipments properly – although meaning loss of business to competitors. Now, with lighter implementation, more partners realize why that approach is important,” he wrote.
Bitford is a relatively new business in the Bitcoin mining scene. Ford, who pledged to guilty of bank fraud and money laundering charges related to a covid -related loan, was punished by 20 months in prison and will have to pay $ 250,000 as a fee; He came out in August last year and launched Bitford in October. The company has made more than $ 20 million in sales since (not all from imported machines).
“I went to jail because I didn’t miss a covid loan,” he said, adding that he was “orange-selected” fellow prisoners while behind the bars.
From a legal point of view
Shipping to the US has appointed their value through a record import, which means a creature entrusted to move the shipment through Customs, a trading lawyer, who has asked an anonymous to speak openly about this matter, told CoinDesk.
Record import may be one of the three creatures: the supplier, the broker or the end-client. All three of these situations are quite common.
The CBP is in charge of the dedication, and may potentially fine or seek back duties from those who import the value of their shipments. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also has a unit charged with implementing the False Claims Act (FCA) and compliance with parties that the US government has damaged.
Civil penalties can be as much as three times the damage the US government has achieved, while in the criminal side they can include siege, even a rare occurrence.
Until recently, penalties have been commonly seen as a type of business cost of doing business, the trading attorney said, but with increasing Trump management on the subject of tariffs, this may not be the case.
The impact of tariffs
The combination of tariff uncertainty and the increasing CBP guard forces some mining operations to re -consider their plans. Ford said more than 50% of his clients are still forgotten, while others are hitting the pause button. One of his clients, he said, was holding a container that came from China in hopes of not having to pay too much tariffs on his shipment.
Tariffs are likely to cause a slow material, if not stop the new projects and force projects deployed currently are likely to be reduced, or stop to re-evaluate the needs of capital and cost, “Kulyk said.
“Other constituents who have previously seem to have a higher cost (mood) are seeking targets for new capex infrastructure and deployment,” he added. “Canada, in particular, is likely to be a benefactor in the implementation of the global tariff regime placed by the White House.”
