Some members of Bitcoin (BTC) mining have a habit of routinely underestimating the shipment of mining rigs with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in order to reduce customs, several people familiar with the practice told Coindesk.
As the Donald Trump administration raises tariffs on most goods brought in from around the world, these attempts to avoid paying import fees are more relevant than ever.
“(Industry Members) usually have a (customs) way by declaring the packaging less value,” Jill Ford, founder of Bitford Digital, a company specializing in sourcing equipment to miners, told Coindesk in an interview. “It’s dangerous and I’m not proposing it, but that’s really what they’re doing to bring them in.”
Bitcoin mining has flourished in the US in recent years. China, in particular (formerly the epicenter of Bitcoin’s mining activities), banned practices in 2021, creating an industry departure into jurisdictions like Texas. However, the $30 billion application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) market is dominated by two Chinese companies, Bitmain and Microbt, who manufacture the majority of these Bitcoin mining machines at facilities in Southeast Asia.
Companies like Bitford tend to act as intermediaries between manufacturers and miners, but they can also obtain ASICs in the secondary market. The biggest people in these brokers provide all kinds of hardware and power infrastructure that miners may need.
The Trump administration’s new trade policy, announced on April 2, threatened to impose substantial tariffs on Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. A week later, the White House announced a 90-day moratorium on some of these tariffs and negotiated a new trade deal. The resulting uncertainty has caused confusion for Bitcoin miners in the US. The US needs to tackle the possibility of paying huge taxes on ASIC freight.
However, even before tariffs were ever devised, miners regularly underreported the value of their cargo to US customs, Ford and other sources said.
“It’s a scam. It’s definitely illegal. But a lot of people did it by rolling the dice and then I wouldn’t tolerate it,” Ford said. “If my client wants to do it, it’s on top of them… We ask, “What do you want to declare your package? What amount?” And if they think, “I’ll just declare it 300 dollars,” that’s what we do.
Tightening of the control
In Ford’s statement, it was previously relatively easy to underestimate ASIC shipments. I rarely checked CBP. However, things began to change around November 2024 after Trump won the election, Ford said, but another source with cargo expertise spoke to Coindesk on condition of anonymity said that a recent investigation into whether CBP imported mining rigs are violating chip-related sanctions could mean that agents could have a deeper look into the entire mining sector.
“Previously, a mine rig worth $3,000 probably declares it worth $300. It’s just going through. Now it seems like they’re looking for it on the internet to see what it really is,” Ford said. “There’s actually no way around that. That means you can declare it 20% or 30%, but not as you could before.”
Shipping size is important. Importing one or two machines usually escapes scrutiny, Ford said, but when miners bring in a lot of machines for CBP to look into it in detail. Hundreds of thousands of mining rigs are imported into the United States each year.
However, CBP appears to be more severe in some states than in other states. This is because these controls are not evenly tightened across the country.
“I have clients in Oregon that are below the declaration and have no problem bringing it right, but in Kentucky, there were 100 machines worth $9,000 at customs,” Ford said.
“What happened in Kentucky was that we had to return the goods to Hong Kong. Now we were like, ‘Well, where are we going to ship?’ and I was like, ‘Maybe it should go through Oregon or California’s CBP.’
Imports are also affected by carrier use. DHLs are easier to pass through than UPS in Kentucky, but UPS tend to be less strict on the West Coast than on the East Coast.
The contradictions in enforcement are likely to be temporary, cargo experts told Coindesk. In their view, CBP may have decided to take a closer look at mining rig imports, but the enforcement of the new directive is being implemented at a variety of speeds, from jurisdictions to jurisdiction.
CBP did not respond to requests for comment.
In a subsequent email to Coindesk, Ford appears to be eligible for her comment and has shifted responsibility from the US-based business
“To be clear, it was not a mining-driven practice. For years, many Chinese mining suppliers routinely underreported the value of their cargo. They often declared machines as low as possible. This was not a scheme driven by miners, but declared normal things for LAX enforcement.
“We have always encouraged us to declare shipments properly, even if that meant losing business to our competitors.
Bitford is a relatively new company in the Bitcoin mining scene. Ford, who committed a crime with money laundering fees related to bank fraud and Covid-related loans, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and had to pay $250,000 in restitution. She came out last August and launched Bitford in October. The company has since made more than $20 million in sales (not all of which come from imported machines).
“I went to jail for making a mistake with Covid Lawn,” she said.
From a legal perspective
Cargo to the US is assigned value by the record importer. That is, the entity entrusted with moving the cargo to customs, a trade lawyer who requested anonymity to speak openly about the issue told Coindesk.
The importer of the record can be one of three entities: a supplier, a broker, or an end client. All three of these scenarios are relatively common.
CBP is responsible for audits and may fine or demand obligations on importers who mischaracterize the value of their shipments. The Department of Justice (DOJ) also has units accused of implementing the False Claims Act (FCA) and chasing parties who fraudulent the US government.
The penalty on the part of the citizen could be triple the damage suffered by the US government, but criminals could include imprisonment, which is a rare event.
Until recently, penalties were usually seen as a kind of cost to do business, trade lawyers said, but with the Trump administration increasing vigilance on the topic of tariffs, it may not be that way anymore.
The effects of tariffs
The combination of tariff uncertainty and increased CBP vigilance has forced some mining operations to rethink plans. Ford said others were pressing the pause button while around 50% of their clients were still moving forward. One of her clients is holding containers coming from China, she said, in the hopes that they will not have to pay exorbitant duties on his cargo.
“The tariffs may have stopped on new projects and have stopped currently being deployed or reassessed capital needs,” Taras Kulyk, co-founder and CEO of mining hardware provider Synteq Digital, told Coindesk.
“Other jurisdictions that previously required higher costs (will) have become the targets that are sought for new infrastructure and CAPEX deployment,” he added. “Canada in particular will likely be a benefactor to implementing the global tariff regime introduced by the White House.”
Update (April 22, 15:10 UTC): This article has been updated to remove quotes.
