President Joe Biden issued a directive on Monday to locked down and buy the Wyoming crypto mine it constructed one mile from an Air Force base that controls intercontinental ballistic missiles with Taiwanese roots.
The president said in an executive order that the cryptomining service, which runs high-powered computers close to the FE Warren center in Cheyenne, “presents a national security risk to the United States” because its technology could be used for tracking and spy.
The Chinese-connected cryptocurrency mine was reported to the national Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States by The New York Times in October, according to a report from Microsoft, which runs a local data center supporting the Pentagon. Its warning could allow the Foreign to “pursue full-spectrum intelligence collection operations.” An investigation by the council identified threats to national security, according to the government’s purchase.
These risks were n’t provided in the order. However, according to Microsoft’s statement to the national committee, which was obtained by the Times last time,” We suggest that substantial danger vectors may be present in an industrial-level cryptomining activity, along with the presence of an unnamed number of Chinese nationals in direct proximity to Microsoft’s Data Center and one of three proper missile bases in the US.”
Today, the mine had immediately cease operations, and the owners had remove all their equipment within 90 days and sell or transfer the property within 120 days, according to the order, which cites the risks of the facility’s “foreign- supplied” mining equipment. Chinese firms produce the vast majority of the equipment used in American cryptomining operations.
Big warehouses or delivery containers with professional computers that work around the clock, executing trillions of calculations per second, looking for a set of numbers to generate new cryptocurrency, are housed in these operations. The most common is cryptocurrency, now worth more than$ 60, 000 apiece. Crypto mine consume an tremendous amount of electricity: At full power, the one in Cheyenne would draw as little electricity as 55, 000 properties.
Since the facilities were essentially prohibited in China in 2021, cryptocurrency mines owned by Chinese people have boomed in the US. Chinese crypto entrepreneurs are drawn to the United States for its relatively cheap electricity and well-developed legal system, despite the fact that some cryptomining has since resumed in China.
The Times found Chinese- owned or -operated bitcoin mines in at least 12 states, including Arkansas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming, that together use as much power as 1.5 million homes. Some are owned by individuals or businesses that have connections to the Communist Party or the Chinese government. According to the Times, the main location for the mines ‘ equipment was a Communist Party building on Hainan Island, where the company’s head office was until recently.
The bipartisan bill that prohibits the social media app TikTok in the United States unless its Chinese owner sells follows Biden’s signing of Biden’s order in late April.
Election officials have targeted Chinese-owned cryptomining operations twice in recent weeks.
This month, Arkansas ‘ Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed two laws restricting foreign ownership of cryptomining operations in the state. The State Department’s” International Traffic in Arms Regulations” are the rules that apply to foreigners who own cryptomines from China, Iran, Cuba, and other nations.
In recent years, there have been significant numbers of bitcoin mining operations in Arkansas. The Times reported in October that at least three mines in Arkansas were being operated by Chinese investors affiliated with the authoritarian government. According to a former employee with knowledge of the operations, “over 200 target mining sites” were searched in more than 10 states.
The laws that limit who owns cryptomining operations in Arkansas are intended to amend the so-called Right to Mine law from last year, which limited the scope of local government regulation and caused a furious backlash among those living close to the mines. Residents who claim that the constant whine from the thousands of fans cooling the computers have destroyed their lives and reduced property values are bringing a lawsuit against one of those operations, which has connections to Chinese nationals. The updated law requires cryptomines owned in any way by foreign nationals who are subject to the arms regulations to completely divest within a year in addition to new noise-making restrictions.
Biden’s order is directed at a Delaware-registered MineOne Partners Limited and related MineOne entities. The owners of MineOne, which included Chinese nationals, were required to be identified in a lawsuit brought by a Wyoming cryptocurrency company. A former Chinese pork producer that switched to cryptocurrency mining in 2022 formed a partnership with MineOne and built the mine that first started operating in 2023.
Li Jiaming, president of Bit Origin Ltd., was not immediately available to comment. In an interview last year, Li claimed that investors chose the location because the base or the data center were close by and that they had a contract with the nearby power company to supply its electricity.
