Bitdeer pivots amid onset of Trump’s tariff war
In response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s imposition of tariffs on foreign imports into the United States, Singapore-based and Nasdaq-listed Bitdeer has pivoted in an effort to handle this latest challenge.
In a discussion with Bloomberg, Jeff LaBerge, the company’s head of capital markets and strategic initiatives, said that rather than concentrating on sales and exporting crypto mining rigs, the company plans to utilize those rigs itself within its own mining operations.
LaBerge stated:
“Our plan going forward is to prioritize our self-mining.”
90-day window
The company is also planning to take advantage of a 90-day tariff suspension period that the Trump administration put in place earlier this month, to ship mining machines from Southeast Asia to the United States.
In tandem with this short-term push on U.S. exports, it is expected that miners will focus on buying hardware during this time. Jaran Mellerud, CEO of Hashlabs Mining, told Cointelegraph last week that in the short term, there is likely to be a spike in mining rig imports into the U.S. Some reports have suggested that U.S.-based mining firms have chartered flights in an effort to quickly import mining equipment and avoid tariffs of up to 104%.
Additional capital overheads for U.S. miners
Over the longer term, the crypto mining services company CEO believes that tariffs will hurt U.S.-based miners, increasing their capital costs to a greater extent than in the case of overseas-based mining operations.
Earlier this month Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer (CMO) at Bitcoin mining technology firm, Braiins, similarly claimed that Trump administration tariff policy would likely harm domestic mining companies, while benefiting those located in regions such as Russia and Kazakhstan.
In another effort to deal with the challenge of tariffs on its products entering the United States, Bitdeer anticipates that it will begin production of its mining equipment in the U.S. sometime during H2 2025.
Much has changed for the Singapore-based firm over the course of a short period of time. A month ago LaBerge told CoinDesk about its efforts to challenge the leading ASIC Bitcoin mining equipment manufacturers, Bitmain and MicroBT. He said that Bitdeer wants to become “the top player in the market,” while believing that it has the technology and know-how to do so.
Challenging market conditions
Even before this tariff war bubbled over recently, the environment for Bitcoin miners was already proving to be difficult. Miners had been selling off Bitcoin reserves in recent weeks, taking profits while anticipating lower Bitcoin prices in the near future.
American multinational financial services firm JPMorgan estimated recently that the market cap of the 14 U.S.-listed Bitcoin miners had fallen by 25% in March, writing off $6 billion in value in what was the third worst month for miners on record. Last month Bernstein analysts cut their 2025 price targets for a range of publicly-listed Bitcoin miners.
Miners have been adapting to their business environment by upgrading equipment, cutting costs and diversifying into AI data hosting.
