Some members of the Bitcoin mining industry (BTC) are used to regularly undervaluing mining platform expeditions with customs and the protection of American border (CBP) in order to reduce customs tasks, several people familiar with practice in Coindesk said.
Now that the Donald Trump administration is increasing prices on most goods from around the world, these attempts to avoid paying import costs become more relevant than ever.
“”[Industry members] generally have ways to get around [tariffs] By declaring a lower value on the plans, “said Jill Ford, founder of Bitford Digital, a company specializing in the purchase of equipment from minors, told Coindesk in an interview.” It’s risky, and I do not suggest, but that’s what they do to bring them. “
Bitcoin’s intermediary has prospered in the United States in recent years, especially since China – once the epicenter of Bitcoin mining activity – prohibited practice in 2021, creating an exodus of industry to courts like Texas. But the integrated circuit (ASIC) market specific to the application of $ 30 billion is dominated by Bitmain and Microbt, two Chinese companies that manufacture most of these bitcoin extraction machines in Southeast Asia installations.
Companies like Bitford tend to act as an intermediary between manufacturers and minors, although they can also acquire ASICs on the secondary market. The largest of these brokers provides all kinds of equipment and electrical infrastructure that minors may need.
The new trade policy of the Trump administration, unveiled on April 2, threatened to impose important rates for the countries of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. A week later, the White House announced a 90 -day moratorium on some of these prices to negotiate new commercial transactions. The resulting uncertainty caused chaos for bitcoin minors located in the United States, which must now fight the possibility of paying huge taxes on their ASIC expeditions.
However, even before the prices were designed, minors have regularly underlined the value of their shipments for American customs, Ford and other sources have indicated.
“It is fraud. It is definitely illegal. But many people have rolled the dice and did it, and I do not tolerate it,” said Ford. “If my client wants to do that, it’s on them … we ask:” What do you want to declare your package as? ” What amount? And if they are like, “declare it as $ 300”, that’s what we will do.
Tightening controls
In Ford’s account, it was relatively easy to undervalue ASIC expeditions – the CBP would rarely check. But things started to change around November 2024 after Trump won the elections, said Ford, while another source with an expertise in expeditions, which spoke to Coindesk provided of anonymity, said that the recent CBP survey on the question of whether imported mining platforms broke the penalty-related sanctions can have led the agency to examine the agency together.
“Before, a mining platform that may be worth $ 3,000, we would say that it was worth $ 300. It would just pass. Now, it’s as if they were looking for it to see what is the value,” said Ford. “There is really no way to get around this.
The size of the shipment is important. Importing one or two machines will generally escape a meticulous examination, said Ford, but it is when miners bring loose machines that CBP is more closely examined. Hundreds of thousands of mining platforms are imported into the United States each year.
However, the CBP seems to be more strict in certain states than in others, because these controls have not been uniformly tightened across the country, according to Ford.
“I have a client in Oregon who has no problem taking out packages and bringing them, but I have another customer in Kentucky who [had] 100 machines worth $ 9,000 each stuck in customs, “said Ford.
“What finally happened in Kentucky is that we had to bring the goods back to Hong Kong, and now we say to ourselves:” Well, where do we send it to do it? ” And I said to myself: “We should probably go through 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 pass than UPS in Kentucky, while UPS tends to be less strict on the west coast than on the East coast, said Ford – and it is a public notoriety among its suppliers.
The gap in the application is probably temporary, said the Expert of shipments in Coindesk. In their opinion, the CBP has probably decided to take a closer look at imports of mining platforms, but the application of the new directive is simply implemented at a variable speed of jurisdiction.
CBP did not respond to a comment request.
In a subsequent E-mail in Coindesk, Ford seemed to qualify his comments, moanning the blame from operations based in the United States
“To be clear, it was not a practice focused on minors. For years, many suppliers of Chinese mine have regularly underestimated the value of shipments – often declaring the machines with the lowest possible value. It was not a diagram motivated by minors, but a widespread and controlled course by suppliers, and widely ignored by lax regulators. ”.
“We have always recommended to declare the shipments correctly – even when it has mean losing business against competitors. Now, with a stricter application, more partners realize why this approach counts, ”she wrote.
Bitford is a relatively new company in the Bitcoin mining scene. Ford, who pleaded guilty of banking fraud and accusations of money laundering linked to a loan linked to the trash, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and had to pay $ 250,000 in return; She released in August from last year and launched Bitford in October. The company has produced more than $ 20 million in sales since then (which were not all from imported machines).
“I went to prison because I am going badly a covid loan,” she said, adding that she was “orange-pilling” comrades in bars.
From a legal point of view
Expeditions to the United States are assigned their value by an importer of files, which means that an entity responsible for moving cargo in customs, a trade lawyer told Anonymity to speak frankly about the issue.
The importer of the file can be one of the three entities: the supplier, the broker or the end customer. These three scenarios are relatively common.
The CBP is in charge of the audit and can potentially fine or require the return tasks of the importers who have poorly characterized the value of their shipments. The Ministry of Justice (DOJ) also has a unit responsible for enforcing the False Claims Act (FCA) and going after parties that have defrauded the United States government.
Sanctions on the civil side can be up to three times the damages suffered by the American government, while on the criminal side, they can include imprisonment, although this is a rare event.
Until recently, penalties were generally considered a kind of business cost, said the trade lawyer, but with the increased vigilance of the Trump administration on the theme of prices, this may no longer be the case.
The effect of prices
The combination of tariff uncertainty and increased vigilance of CBP requires certain mining operations to reconsider their plans. Ford said that around 50% of its customers were still going on, while others supported the break button. One of her clients, she said, keeps a container from China in the hope of not having to pay exorbitant prices on his shipment.
The prices “will probably cause a slowdown in the equipment, if not the judgment in new projects and will force the projects currently deployed to be probably reduced or interrupted to re-evaluate capital needs and costs,” said Coindesk Taras Kuras, co-founder and CEO of the Synteq Digital Mining Supplier, in Coindesk.
“Other jurisdictions that had previously looked at a higher cost [will] Become a desired objectives for new infrastructure and the deployment of CAPEX, “he added.” Canada, in particular, will probably be a benefactor to the implementation of the global tariff system that has been set up by the White House. »»
Update (April 22, 15:10 UTC): The article has been updated to delete a quote.
