Bitmain, Canaan, MicroBT flee tariffs with U.S. assembly

Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT — the three biggest Chinese bitcoin mining rig manufacturers — are now building their machines in the United States.

They’re doing it to get around new tariffs rolled out by Trump, whose second term in the Oval has been hammering Chinese tech imports. All three companies build more than 90% of the world’s mining rigs, and they’ve decided to move production across the Pacific rather than pay the price of staying in China.

Bitmain was the first to make a move. The company started assembling rigs inside the US last December, just weeks after Trump won the election. Canaan soon followed, launching test production inside the US to sidestep the 30% total import tax that Trump slapped on Chinese-made tech.

Speaking to Reuters, Leo Wang, Canaan’s vice president of corporate development and capital markets, said the new US project is “exploratory” because the trade policy is still unpredictable. MicroBT, ranked third globally, said in a statement that it’s now “actively implementing a localization strategy” in the US to avoid the financial hit.

Bitmain, Canaan and MicroBT chase US safety net as crypto tech faces security heat

The three firms aren’t moving just for fun. They’re trying to protect their global sales and keep their American customers. According to Reuters, Guang Yang, chief technology officer at Conflux Network, said, “The US-China trade war is triggering structural, not superficial, changes in bitcoin’s supply chains.” Guang also pointed out that for American businesses, “this goes beyond tariffs. It’s a strategic pivot toward ‘politically acceptable’ hardware sources.”

Right now, these three companies control the top of the global crypto food chain. They build the machines that mine bitcoin, which in turn rely on massive energy supplies, cloud infrastructure, and trading systems. Frost & Sullivan estimated that by the end of 2023, Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT were responsible for 95.4% of computing power sold worldwide. That’s a monopoly, and it’s got US firms rattled.

Sanjay Gupta, chief strategy officer at US-based crypto hardware firm Auradine, said this isn’t a small issue. “While over 30% of global bitcoin mining occurs in North America, more than 90% of mining hardware originates from China representing a major imbalance of geographic demand and supply,” he told Reuters. Sanjay also warned that “hundreds of thousands of them connected to the US electrical grid is a security risk.”

Leo Wang pushed back. He said the mining machines aren’t a danger. “They are useless if not applied to bitcoin mining,” he explained. But Leo admitted that the companies could still get hit with broader US crackdowns on Chinese high-tech exports. That’s already happening. Bitmain’s AI division, Sophgo, was blacklisted by the US government for national security concerns.

Trump’s crypto push runs into China’s hardware dominance

Back in 2021, China banned crypto entirely, claiming it was a threat to financial stability. At the time, the country controlled everything from rig production to mining and exchanges. Once Beijing made crypto illegal, most of the trading firms and mining businesses fled overseas. But Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT stayed relevant because they still made the hardware.

They stayed on top by building high-performance chips that worked better than anything Western firms could come up with. They also had the advantage of being the first ones to scale. Canaan later moved its headquarters from China to Singapore, though it still has operations in China. It also opened a pilot production line inside the US, where it made 40% of its total revenue last year. “The rationale is to try to reduce the cost for both us and our customers,” Leo said. With Trump adding more pressure, he said they have “to explore all alternatives.”

Trump has declared himself the “crypto president.” His son, Eric Trump, teamed up with Hut 8 to launch American Bitcoin, a miner that plans to build a national crypto reserve. But this whole “America-first” crypto dream is stuck with one problem — almost every mining rig still comes from China.

John Deaton, a US attorney who works on crypto law, said the situation could get dangerous. “If China restricts exports or manipulates supply, it could disrupt bitcoin’s network stability and affect US users and investors,” he said. The biggest US-based mining companies — MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, and Core Scientific — are all relying on imported Chinese hardware to power their farms.

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