The U.S. presidential election is coming soon, and Trump has repeatedly promised to make Bitcoin manufactured in the United States and expressed his support for the Bitcoin mining industry. However, Harris has yet to directly comment on Bitcoin or blockchain technology, which has caused U.S. mining companies to face uncertainty and even consider accelerating the transfer of operations overseas to deal with potential risks.
He Jinli’s team has not expressed its stance on Bitcoin mining companies yet
A spokesperson for US-listed Bitcoin mining giant Marathon Digital (MARA) told Cointelegraph that they are trying to engage with both parties before the 2024 election, but have mainly only received positive responses from outside the Democratic Party.
Fred Thiel, chief executive of Marathon Digital, said representatives from the Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr. campaigns “engaged with the industry early” to build rapport and later built a platform that was generally supportive of mining companies.
However, Thiel mentioned that he and other industry members have proactively contacted members of the Harris team many times to express their willingness to discuss the importance of Bitcoin, but have not received any response so far, which made Thiel disappointed and said:
I wonder if this means that Harris’s team is not interested in Bitcoin miners participating in the discussion, and thus presumably they are not interested in Bitcoin mining in the United States.
We have definitely tried to reach out and hope to join the discussion...if you are interested in discussing it, you know how to find us.
Marathon Digital CEO: Moving business overseas should be accelerated
Harris is expected to announce her economic policy on August 16. Thiel does not expect Bitcoin to be mentioned in the policy. If it is mentioned, it will be a good sign. He further stated:
It would be crazy for me to support a candidate who is harmful to my industry because then I would be unable to fulfill my fiduciary responsibility as the CEO of a company. Doing so would hurt my shareholders.
The presidential campaign is intensifying. According to the latest data from Polymarket , Harris Harris' support rate in the 2024 presidential election has soared from 33% in the early days to a record high of 54% at the time of writing, 10% ahead of Trump. Thiel said the possibility of Democratic candidates gaining ground in the 2024 race leaves BTC miners with an uncertain future. He said:
The actions of Harris' team so far don't indicate that they are friendly to Bitcoin, which makes me think that we should probably really speed up moving our operations overseas.
Put it this way, all of my strategic planning for 2025 right now is looking outside the United States.
Mining companies have raised over US$3.8 billion since the halving
On the other hand, as mining companies face the challenge of cash flow crunch after the Bitcoin halving, many mining companies are actively raising funds to tide over this difficult period.
According to statistics from BlocksBridge Consulting, in the second quarter of 2024, 9 of the 13 US listed mining companies raised a total of US$1.25 billion in funds through stock issuance, including Bitdeer, Bitfarms, Cipher, CleanSpark, Core, HIVE, Marathon , Riot and Terawulf.
Add to this the over $1.6 billion raised after the halving in the first quarter, the $458 million raised by Iris Energy in the second quarter, and an additional $530 million raised so far in the third quarter, bringing the total raised by listed mining companies since the halving. amounted to over US$3.8 billion.
In addition to raising capital, mining companies are also seeking to diversify their revenue sources to remain competitive. For example, Core Scientific has signed a 12-year agreement with artificial intelligence cloud provider CoreWaeve to host its Nvidia GPUs. The deal is expected to bring total revenue to Core of $6.7 billion.
