9-4-2025 – Donald Trump’s freshly unveiled tariff proposals have cast a long shadow over the cryptocurrency realm, stirring unease among those who toil in the Bitcoin mining trade. Industry watchers are now sounding the alarm over a looming tremor that could rattle the sector’s foundations in the United States.
Jaran Mellerud, the sharp-eyed chief of Hashlabs Mining, has painted a stark picture in a recent dissection of the landscape. He warns that the appetite for Bitcoin mining rigs Stateside could wither as the cost of kit spirals upwards, driven by Trump’s trade levies. A modest $1,000 machine, he reckons, might soon fetch $1,240 once import duties bite—a jolt that could leave American miners reeling.
Yet where the U.S. stumbles, others may stride forward. As demand dries up across the Atlantic, manufacturers might redirect their stockpiles of surplus gear to eager markets overseas. Prices for these rigs, Mellerud muses, could tumble abroad even as they climb at home—a curious twist that might spark a golden era for mining outfits beyond America’s shores.
The ripples of this policy shift are already lapping at the global crypto stage. Bitcoin, which not long ago danced above the giddy heights of $100,000, has taken a bruising tumble to $76,881.52, according to CoinMarketCap’s latest tally. That’s a steep 8% slide in a week, with a further 3% shaved off in the past day alone. The broader crypto market hasn’t escaped unscathed either, its total value slipping to $2.44 trillion after a 3.02% daily dip.
Mining stocks, too, have felt the chill wind of uncertainty. Since February, the sector’s leading lights have watched over $12 billion evaporate from their collective worth, erasing the rosy gains of early 2024. Double-digit losses have become the grim norm for these firms, a stark signal of investor jitters.
The U.S. has reigned as the titan of Bitcoin mining since China’s 2021 clampdown, commanding some 36% of the world’s hashrate, per the Hashrate Index. But Trump’s tariff gambit, trumpeted on April 2 as a bid for “reciprocal” trade, threatens to dent that supremacy. Mellerud pulls no punches: even if these duties vanish in mere months, the damage to confidence could linger. “Who’d gamble big when the ground keeps shifting?” he asks, capturing the unease of an industry caught off guard.
Once, American miners saw Trump’s return as a beacon of steady rules. Now, that hope flickers. Meanwhile, the manufacturers—household names like Bitmain, MicroBT, and Canaan—face their own conundrum. Having decamped to Southeast Asia to dodge earlier tariffs on China, they now confront fresh levies in their adopted homes: 36% in Thailand, 32% in Indonesia, and 24% in Malaysia. It’s a bitter irony that could nudge them to slash prices and court new frontiers abroad, leaving the U.S. market to stew in its costly predicament.