Supply Chain Crisis Hits Bitcoin

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Is There Nothing Covid-19 Won’t Negatively Impact?

Nearly two years into the worldwide pandemic, it seems Covid-19 will not release its death grip on our health–and our economy. Now – it’s this supply chain crisis.

The supply chain crisis has impacted nearly every area of business, bitcoin mining companies included. In fact, the global business news publication Quartz has reported that coveted shipments of the Sony playstation-sized BTC mining computers have been delayed so long, tied up in ports, that some companies are turning to freight forwarders to get them onto commercial flights. Additional bottlenecks in customs processing, however, are now pushing some mining companies to charter private jets to bring their miners in.

BTC Mining Computers 101

Mining firms are also facing a conundrum of a different sort. Faced with significant lead times to get in new mining computers from Chinese manufacturers and equally long turnaround times that make it impractical to send defective ones back for repair, some are teaching themselves to make their own repairs in-house.

Case in point is Toronto, Canada-based Hut 8 Mining, which has now become an authorized repair facility for MicroBT. Hut 8 Mining is presently the only repair shop for the Chinese manufacturer in all of North America and Europe.

China Muddies the Waters

To make matters worse, China, which has had a feverish love-hate relationship with crypto for ages, brought the hammer down in May of this year, banning bitcoin and other crypto mining from the mainland.

Perhaps reading the writing on the wall, mining company BitDigital started early in the year moving their mining machines to friendlier countries like the U.S. and Canada. Unfortunately, many got caught up in the shipment logjams. According to Sam Tabar, the company’s chief strategy officer, they are yet awaiting hundreds of miners still languishing on New York docks.

And That’s Not the Only Problem this supply chain crisis has caused

The supply chain crisis has also caused the price of miners to skyrocket. How high? Try three times the price. According to Charlie Schumacher of the Las Vegas-based mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings, the nearly 130,000 miners the company purchased earlier this year for an average price of about $3,000 are selling today at $10,000 each. And getting those miners from the factory in Malaysia to their facilities in Texas and Montana are now taking about 30 days, double the time it was taking earlier in the year.

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