Some members of Bitcoin (BTC) The mining sector are in the habit of routinely underestimating mining shipments with the US customs and border protection (CBP) to reduce customs, several people who are familiar with practice, Coindesk, told.

Now that Donald Trump administration is raising tariffs on most items brought from around the world, these attempts to avoid paying import duties become more relevant than ever before.

“[Industry members] have usually ways around [tariffs] By declaring lower value on packages, ”Jill Ford, the founder of Bitford Digital, told a company that specializes in purchasing equipment for miners, to Coindesk in an interview.” It’s risky and I don’t suggest it, but that’s really what they do to bring them in. “

Bitcoin mining has bloomed in the United States in recent years, especially since China – when the episent of Bitcoin’s mining – banned practice in 2021 and created an industry immigration to jurisdictions like Texas. But the $ 30 billion application-specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) market is dominated by Bitmain and Microbt, two Chinese companies that manufacture most of these Bitcoin miners in Southeast Asian facilities.

Companies like Bitford tend to act as an intermediary between producers and miners, although they can also acquire Asics in the secondary market. The largest of these brokers supply all kinds of hardware and power infrastructure that miners may need.

The Trump Administration’s new trade policy, which was revealed on April 2, threatened to impose significant tariffs for Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. A week later, the White House announced a 90-day moratorium on some of these tariffs to negotiate new trade agreements. The resulting uncertainty has caused chaos for Bitcoin mine workers located in the United States, which now has to struggle with the opportunity to pay huge taxes on their ASIC shipments.

Even before the tariffs were ever conceived, miners regularly under -reported the value of their shipments to US customs, Ford and other sources said.

“It’s fraud. It’s definitely illegal. But many people rolled the dice and did it, and I don’t condon it,” Ford said. “If my client wants to do that, it’s on them … We ask, ‘What will you declare your package like? What amount?’ And if they are like, ‘just declare it as $ 300,’ that’s what we want to do.

Tightening of controls

In Ford’s narrative it used to be relatively easy to underestimate ASIC -Submissions – CBP would rarely check. But things began to change around November 2024, after Trump won the election, Ford said, while another source with an expertise in shipments spoken with Coindesk on condition of anonymity said CBP’s recent investigation into whether imported mining was broken chip -related sanctions may have led the agency to take a deeper look at the mining.

“Before a mining that was worth $ 3,000, we would declare it was worth $ 300. It would just move on. Now it’s like they are looking up on the internet to see what the value really is,” Ford said. “There really is no way around it. I mean, you can under declare it by 20% or 30% but not as we used to do.”

The size of the shipment means something. Importing one or two machines will usually escape control, Ford said, but that’s when miners bring in bulk machines that CBP looks more closely. Hundreds of thousands of minerigs are imported to the United States every year.

However, CBP seems to be stricter in some states than in others because these controls have not been tightened uniform across the country, according to Ford.

“I have a client in Oregon who has no problem under deterrent packages and brings them right in but I have another client in Kentucky who [had] 100 machines worth $ 9,000 per Pcs. Stuk in Customs, ”said Ford.

“What eventually happened in Kentucky is that we had to return to the goods back to Hong Kong, and now we are like, ‘Well, where do we send it through to get it in?’ And I was like ‘we should probably just go through CBP in Oregon or California,’ because it’s just a nightmare to try to bring it into Kentucky.

Import is also affected with which carrier is used. DHL is easier to get through than UPS in Kentucky, while UPS tends to be less strict on the west coast than the east coast, Ford said – and that’s common knowledge among her suppliers.

The discrepancy in enforcement is probably temporary, the shipping expert told Coindesk. In their opinion, CBP probably decided to take a closer look at the mining’s imports, but the enforcement of the new directive is simply implemented at a varying velocity from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

CBP did not answer a request for comment.

In a subsequent e -mail to Coindesk, Ford seemed to qualify his comments and change the guilt away from operations based in the US

“Just to be aware that it was not a miner-driven practice. For years, many Chinese mining suppliers routinely declared the value of shipments-Ofte declared machines to the lowest possible value. This was not a scheme driven by miners, but a widespread, supplier-controlled practice that became the norm due to a slack hand enforcement. Business and largely were ignored by regulators she wrote.

“We have always recommended to declare shipments properly – even when it has meant losing business to competitors. Now, with tighter enforcement, several partners are aware of why this approach matters,” she wrote.

Bitford is a relatively new company in the Bitcoin minescene. Ford, who pleaded guilty to banking fraud and taxes for money laundering in connection with a covid -related loan, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and had to pay $ 250,000 in refund; She came out last August and launched Bitford in October. The company has earned over $ 20 million in sales since then (not everyone was from imported machines).

“I went to jail because I supported a covid loan,” she said, adding that she was “orange-piling” fellow prisoners while she was behind bars.

From a legal perspective

Shipments to the United States are assigned their value by an importer of the mail, which means that a device entrusted to move the cargo through the customs officer told a trade lawyer requesting anonymity to speak honestly about the case to Coindesk.

The importer of the mail may be one of three units: the supplier, the broker or the final client. All three of these scenarios are relatively common.

CBP is responsible for auditing and can potentially fine or demand back tasks from importers who have miscarriage the value of their shipments. The Ministry of Justice (DOJ) also has a device accused of enforcing False Claims Act (FCA) and going for parties who have deceived the US government.

Penalties on the civilian side can be as much as three times the injuries sustained by the US government, while on the criminal side they may include imprisonment, even if it is a rare event.

Until recently, sanctions were usually seen as a kind of cost of doing business, said the trading lawyer, but with the Trump administration’s increased vigilance on the subject of duty, that may not be the case.

The effect of tariffs

The combination of customs uncertainty and CBP’s increased vigilance forces some mining to rethink their plans. Ford said that approx. 50% of her clients still threw up front while others hit the pause button. One of her clients, she said, holds a container coming from China in the hope of not having to pay exorbitant tariffs on his shipment.

Tariffs will “likely cause a material slowly, if not stopped in new projects and force projects currently implemented, to probably be reduced, or stopped to re -evaluate capital needs and costs,” Taras Colik, co -founder and CEO of mining of hardware provider Synteq, told Coindesk.

“Other jurisdictions that had previously seen higher costs [will] Become sought-after goals for new infrastructure and CAPEX implementation, “he added.” In particular, Canada is likely to be a charity for the implementation of the global customs regime introduced by the White House. “

Update (April 22, 15:10 UTC): The article was updated to remove an offer.