US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and efforts to ramp up on-shore Bitcoin mining will be a boon for US mining rig manufacturers, which currently only hold a small sliver of market share compared to their major Chinese counterparts.
The United States accounts for over 40% of the Bitcoin network’s global hashrate but still leans heavily on China-made mining rigs. China-based Bitmain reportedly holds as much as a 90% market share in the Bitcoin mining manufacturing market.
“Trump’s continued focus to support the US BTC mining industry highlights the urgent need to address US reliance on foreign technology,” Auradine’s chief strategy officer, Sanjay Gupta, told Cointelegraph in a recent interview.
US Bitcoin firms hit a major supply problem last year, with thousands of Bitcoin (BTC) miners held at ports of entry by the US Customs and Border Protection.
One of the firms affected believed it was due to a mistaken belief that the chips were illegally imported Chinese radio frequency devices. It took months before they started being released.
Gupta said that US-China trade tensions have also disrupted the flow of foreign Bitcoin miners.
“These trade tensions have increased supply chain disruptions with many hardware shipments facing delays and uncertainties,” Gupta said.
The US was already competing with China to win the high-end chip manufacturing market, but the recent trade tensions have only “intensified” these challenges for US-based crypto miners, he added.
China-based Bitmain is said to hold the majority of the Bitcoin mining manufacturing market. It expanded its production line into the US last December to improve supply chain efficiency.
Gupta said his firm could also stand well-positioned amid Trump’s plan to ramp up onshore manufacturing as a “dramatic increase in demand” for electricity would, in turn, “put a tremendous deal of pressure on the electric grid” — making it more important for Bitcoin miners to operate off-grid.
Auradine recently announced the launch of its new Teraflux AH3880 hydro-cooled Bitcoin miner, competing with the likes of Bitmain, MicroBT and Canaan.
Asked whether a further uptick in Bitcoin mining activity in the US could hurt Bitcoin decentralization, Gupta said that securing the Bitcoin network with more energy-efficient solutions in the US would be a “net positive” for Bitcoin but said there could be risks if the increase outpaces technology in sustainability and decentralization.
Over 95% of the network’s hash power already comes from the US and China alone, according to the Hashrate Index.