Bloomberg: Bitmain has been under strict scrutiny and has recently experienced delays in shipping mining machines to US customers

On February 13th, according to Bloomberg, several industry executives said that due to increased scrutiny by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Bitmain Technologies Limited recently experienced delays in shipping machines to U.S. customers. These delays coincided with the U.S. Department of Commerce adding Bitmain's AI subsidiary Xiamen Sophgo Technologies Ltd. to a blacklist in January, accusing the company of "acting at the behest of Beijing to advance China's domestic chip production goals." This situation has created a conflict between two goals of U.S. President Trump: one being to gain the upper hand in trade with China, and the other being to cultivate domestic cryptocurrency miners to ensure that Bitcoin is "Made in America."

Bitmain holds a 90% market share in the market for Bitcoin mining machines, and the company was affected by Trump's tariffs in 2018. On February 1st, Trump announced an additional 10% tariff on imports from China. Nuo Xu, the chairman of the China Digital Mining Association, said: "About three months ago, U.S. customs began randomly inspecting almost all air shipments of Bitcoin mining machines." He operates mining farms in the U.S. Nuo Xu added that customs officials are now inspecting these machines more carefully and "also requesting brokers to provide certificates of origin."

On December 9th last year, Bitmain announced the launch of a U.S. factory, but did not disclose the specific location. Vera from Luxor said: "I expect any company purchasing Bitmain machines now to face risks, including publicly traded companies."