Hashrate Heroes, Rig Zeroes: Senators Drop 'Mined in America' Act to Break China's Grip on ASICs

America holds roughly 38% of global Bitcoin mining capacity, and the specialized hardware powering that position comes overwhelmingly from Chinese manufacturers. Senators Bill Cassidy and Cynthia Lummis introduced the Mined in America Act on March 30 to address that gap, proposing certification, domestic manufacturing support, and the codification of President Donald Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve to begin unwinding a foreign hardware dependence they frame as a national industrial vulnerability. It's the crypto equivalent of winning the marathon while wearing shoes made by your competitor—impressive, sure, but deeply uncomfortable once you think about it too hard.

Cassidy's office cites 97% of mining hardware coming from China. Hashrate Index's January 2026 update places US Bitcoin mining capacity at roughly 37%-38% of the global total, at around 400 exahashes per second. Both data points describe the same supply-chain gap: American mining operations running on machines supplied by Chinese manufacturers. The math is simple: US miners are essentially running a 38% market share business on 97% foreign equipment. That's not a supply chain, that's a dependency kink.

That combination of leading the world in an activity while relying on adversary-linked manufacturers for the machines that enable it is the argument the bill puts into legislative form. Picture being the world's biggest coffee shop but all your cups come from a guy who also sells to your landlord—functionally fine until suddenly it's not. The senators are attempting to solve that "until" before it arrives.

The bill proposes a voluntary "Mined in America" certification administered by Commerce. Certified facilities would phase out mining hardware linked to foreign adversaries. NIST and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership would support domestic hardware manufacturing by drawing on existing federal energy and rural programs. Cassidy's office says the bill operates within current program authorities. It's voluntary, which means it'll either become a prestigious badge or a ghost town depending on whether miners actually care about certification branding more than hash rate per dollar.

The bill would also write the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into statute. Trump's March 2025 executive order created the reserve using forfeited government Bitcoin and specified that any additional acquisition strategies must be budget neutral, imposing no incremental taxpayer cost. Moving the reserve from executive action to law would give it legislative standing beyond a single administration and, for the first time, bind the hardware-sourcing argument to a federal balance sheet instrument. Nothing says "we're serious about this" like attaching it to the nation's balance sheet with duct tape and legislative intent.

Why Washington got here

Reuters reported that US authorities began seizing some Chinese-made mining equipment at ports in late 2024 on FCC and Customs enforcement grounds, before releasing some of it in March 2025. Those seizures gave the hardware dependence argument concrete, documented weight. The port-level friction raised a question that the bill now codifies in law: if Chinese-origin mining gear can be caught by customs enforcement, what does that mean for an industry whose hardware stack now connects directly to Treasury reserve policy? Nothing focuses the mind like watching your ASICs sit in a customs holding pen while the hashrate bleeds.

For the bill's backers, the episode turned that question from theory into documented enforcement history. Nothing says "we have a problem" quite like the government physically seizing your mining rigs and making you explain to a customs officer why 47 containers of Bitmain machines are "critical infrastructure."

Mining economics made the supply chain exposure more consequential. A CoinShares report puts network hash price in the $30 to $35 per petahash per day range, with roughly 15% to 20% of the global fleet operating at a loss at those levels. Hardware supply disruptions land harder when the hash price environment already squeezes margins, with operators unable to quickly source replacement machines facing real operational exposure from a customs hold or tariff escalation. When you're already mining at break-even, the last thing you need is your supply chain pulling a surprise vanishing act.

The SEC released guidance on March 17 clarifying the treatment of protocol mining and other crypto activities. A July 2025 White House digital assets report directed Congress and regulators to support US digital asset leadership. Washington now treats crypto infrastructure as an industrial-policy category, and the Mined in America Act arrives as the hardware-sourcing component of that reorientation. Crypto went from "weird internet money" to "industrial policy concern" in record time. Welcome to the establishment, kids.

The harder question the bill raises is what "American" hardware actually means. Reports noted that Chinese-origin manufacturers have already begun establishing US production footholds, in part to navigate tariffs, while US-based Auradine has been promoting its products and policy case for domestically designed ASICs. Assembly in America and design-plus-component-sourcing in America produce different supply chain outcomes, and the bill's certification framework will eventually have to define which one earns the label. "Made in America" has always been a fuzzy concept—ask any car manufacturer about engine blocks and transmission cases sometime. Now ASICs get to join the fun.

What this bill represents

The Mined in America Act drawing broad Republican support and the White House folding it into a combined reserve-protection and manufacturing plank represents the bull case: domestic