Gate Research: Analysis of the Tariff Policy and Its Impact on the Bitcoin Mining Industry

Abstract

• In April 2025, the Trump administration announced the implementation of a “reciprocal tariff” policy, imposing a uniform 10% “minimum benchmark tariff” on all global trade partners. The policy triggered significant turbulence across global risk assets.
• Bitcoin, as a leading public blockchain using the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, relies heavily on physical mining hardware—equipment that is not included in the U.S. tariff exemption list. As a result, mining companies are under substantial cost pressure.

• Over the past month, mining rig manufacturers experienced the sharpest stock price declines, as they were hit on both the supply and demand sides by the tariff policy.
• Self-operated mining farms were mainly impacted on the supply side, with the process of selling mined Bitcoin to cryptocurrency exchanges largely unaffected by the tariffs.

• Cloud mining farms were the least affected, due to their business model of shifting equipment acquisition costs to customers through service fees, which significantly cushions the impact on platform profitability compared to traditional mining models.
• Despite the tariff policy’s negative impact on the U.S. Bitcoin mining industry, institutional players such as BlackRock’s IBIT (a spot Bitcoin ETF) and MicroStrategy (a Bitcoin-holding public company) maintain their dominant influence over market pricing.

• Bitcoin’s price alone is no longer the sole indicator. Instead, factors such as policy direction, geopolitical security, energy allocation, and manufacturing stability have become the true keys to the mining industry’s long-term viability.
  
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