I believe this was posted yesterday... but in my opinion it didn't get enough attention.
Perhaps the best way (or only way) in which tariffs are good for Bitcoin is the making of Chinese-made mining equipment and supplies much more expensive to bring to the United States.
It doesn't raise the cost of Chinese-produced mining equipment per se... but it becomes vastly more expensive to import into the United States because of the tariffs, giving mining locations and facilities OUTSIDE OF the United States an ENORMOUS advantage.
- This means less control over hashrate by the US government, less influence over hashrate (and therefore transactions) by the US government or regulators and the probable "scattering" of hashrate to outside of the United States.
For example, a 10,000 Dollar purchase of mining equipment from China (ASICS mostly made in China) now costs 56% more so... 15600$.
100,000 Dollars of equipment, small for a large facility, is now 156000 to acquire the same exact equipment and import to the United States.
To maintain, upgrade, and operate a facility like this... how much more would it cost?
Combined with the historically-low hashprice (the reward, per hash paid in Fiat for mining) makes this the most competitive mining environment ever especially in the United States.
Hashrate is currently at all time highs
Block times are absolutely screaming with a ~5% increase in difficulty (blocks are "getting faster'")
and fees are near multi-year lows.
Hence the hashprice is ultra-low
According to the article:
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively. “It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance. “If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
And that's key: we don't want the US to be the "global mining leader" - we want to reduce Foundry's scope, reach and outrageous hashrate concentration.
Having so much hash centralized to the US... vulnerable to regulators and government is extremely dangerous and successive blocks by Foundry are likely the "greatest threat" posed to Bitcoin's security and trust-model.
9 blocks in a row is fucking outrageous and our whole "community" should be clear this is not acceptable.
Like with so many things in the Trump administration... the irony is palpable. Trump wanted the Bitcoin "made in America".
The tariffs on China will do exactly the opposite and hopefully make mining far, far less profitable in US-vulnerable jurisdictions.
I'm not "a fan" of Russia or Kazakhstan's Human Rights records... but as far as possible from the US is A MUCH BETTER place for Bitcoin mining and ultimately Bitcoin's censorship resistance.
And if the tariffs help get mining OUT of the United States... it will do Bitcoin an enormous favor and for that we can be, ironically, thankful for Mr Trump's economics.