VOLT Bureau - Markets & Crypto

Mined in America: The Senate Bill That Weaponizes Bitcoin Mining Against China and Reshapes the Strategic Reserve

The machines powering American Bitcoin mining - almost all of them built in China. Photo: Pexels

The United States controls 38% of the world's Bitcoin hash rate. It is, by most measures, the largest single-country mining operation on the planet. And 97% of the specialized hardware that makes it possible is manufactured by two companies headquartered in Shenzhen, China.

On March 30, 2026, Republican Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming introduced the Mined in America Act - a bill that attempts to fix that dependency by creating a federal certification program for domestic mining operations, phasing out foreign-adversary hardware, establishing domestic ASIC manufacturing support, and codifying President Trump's Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into statute. The bill arrived the same week that Bitcoin ETFs posted their first monthly inflows since October 2025, the Fear and Greed Index cratered to 8, and Google published a paper showing quantum computers might crack cryptocurrency encryption with 20x fewer resources than previously estimated.

It is the most comprehensive piece of Bitcoin mining legislation ever introduced in the United States Senate. And it lands at a moment when the market is sending contradictory signals at maximum volume: institutional money flowing in while retail sentiment hits levels not seen since the 2022 FTX collapse.

The 97% Problem: How China Owns America's Mining Infrastructure

Nearly all Bitcoin ASICs trace their origin to Chinese fabs. Photo: Pexels

The gap between American mining dominance and American hardware dependency is not a new observation. But it took a series of enforcement actions to move it from industry grumbling to Senate legislation.

In late 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection began seizing Chinese-manufactured mining rigs at ports of entry. The seizures were triggered by FCC compliance failures and firmware vulnerabilities that raised concerns about remote access capabilities. Some rigs were held for months before being released in early 2025, after Reuters reported that thousands of machines had been impounded.

The two companies at the center of this dependency are Bitmain and MicroBT, both Chinese, both dominant. Bitmain's Antminer line and MicroBT's Whatsminer series account for the overwhelming majority of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) deployed globally. There is no meaningful American competitor. Intel abandoned its Blockscale mining chip program in 2023. No other domestic manufacturer has scaled to production volumes.

Dennis Porter, CEO of Satoshi Action Fund, which endorsed the bill, framed the stakes: "America controls 38 percent of the world's Bitcoin hash rate, but 97 percent of the hardware powering it comes from China. That is not leadership, that is a liability."

The Energy Information Administration estimated in 2024 that cryptocurrency mining could account for up to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption across 137 identified facilities. That share has likely grown. Mining operations now sit at the intersection of grid management, energy policy, and national security - and they run on machines that could theoretically be compromised at the firmware level before they even clear customs.

The Mined in America Act attempts to address this by directing the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to support domestic mining hardware development. The bill does not authorize new spending. Instead, it plugs certified mining operations into existing Department of Energy and USDA programs for energy development, renewable integration, and rural infrastructure. The theory is that the manufacturing capability already exists in adjacent semiconductor supply chains - it just needs to be redirected.

That theory will be tested. Chinese-origin manufacturers have already begun establishing U.S. production footholds to navigate tariffs, raising the question of whether "American-made" hardware from a Chinese parent company satisfies the bill's intent. The legislation defines "foreign adversary" hardware but leaves some of the certification boundary conditions to Commerce Department rulemaking.

What the Mined in America Act Actually Does

The bill frames Bitcoin mining as industrial policy, not just crypto policy. Photo: Pexels

The bill operates on four interconnected tracks, each addressing a different piece of the mining ecosystem.

Track 1: Voluntary Certification. The Department of Commerce would create a "Mined in America" certification for mining facilities and pools that meet security and sourcing standards. Participation is voluntary - but the incentives for certification are substantial enough to make it a de facto requirement for any serious operator.

Track 2: Hardware Phase-Out. Certified operations must transition away from hardware linked to foreign adversaries over a phased timeline, with full compliance required by the end of the decade. That gives operators roughly four years to replace their Chinese-made ASICs - a timeline that tracks roughly with the useful life of current-generation machines, which typically become unprofitable within 3-4 years as difficulty rises.

Track 3: Manufacturing Support. NIST and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership would support domestic hardware development through existing programs. The bill also positions certified mining operations as eligible for Department of Energy financing, specifically for projects that absorb excess renewable energy, stabilize grid demand, or capture methane emissions from landfills and oil fields. This is the energy policy angle - mining as grid balancing tool, not just power consumer.

Track 4: Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Codification. The bill writes Trump's March 2025 executive order creating the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve into statute. This is the piece with the most far-reaching implications. An executive order can be rescinded by the next president. A statute requires congressional action to undo. The bill creates a framework for the Treasury Department to hold and accumulate Bitcoin through budget-neutral pathways: staking rewards and airdrops from other seized digital assets would be funneled into Bitcoin purchases.

And here is the mechanism that connects mining policy to reserve policy: certified domestic miners could sell newly mined Bitcoin directly to the U.S. government in exchange for a capital gains tax exemption. Miners get a guaranteed buyer and no tax bill. The government gets freshly mined Bitcoin at what amounts to a discounted price. The reserve grows without congressional appropriations.

"Digital asset mining is a big part of our economy. We should be doing it here in America." - Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

"The Mined in America Act brings this industry home through forward-thinking initiatives to secure our financial future." - Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)

Satoshi Action Fund endorsed the legislation immediately, calling it "a comprehensive framework that links energy policy, manufacturing, and digital asset strategy." The endorsement matters because the group has been one of the most effective lobbying operations in the Bitcoin mining space, with successful legislative campaigns in multiple states.

The ETF Reversal: $1.32 Billion in March After Five Months of Bleeding

ETF flows flipped positive in March - but the average investor is still underwater. Photo: Pexels

The Mined in America Act does not exist in a vacuum. It arrives during one of the most dissonant periods in Bitcoin market history, where the price action, sentiment indicators, institutional flows, and regulatory signals are all telling different stories simultaneously.

Start with the ETFs. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $1.32 billion in net inflows during March 2026, according to SoSoValue data. That broke a four-consecutive-month outflow streak stretching back to November 2025 and marked the first positive monthly flow figure since October 2025.

The numbers look encouraging until you zoom out. January posted $1.61 billion in redemptions. February added another $207 million in outflows. Even with March's recovery, Q1 2026 ended with roughly $500 million in net redemptions across the spot Bitcoin ETF complex. Total assets under management sit near $87.5 billion. Holdings declined from 1.38 million BTC at the October 2025 peak to 1.28 million before recovering to approximately 1.31 million BTC - a 7% decline from peak.

Trading volume softened in March, with monthly volumes near $79 billion compared to $93 billion in February. The inflows came not from aggressive buying but from a shift in sentiment at the margin - enough capital returning to offset the persistent trickle of redemptions.

The critical number: the estimated average cost basis for Bitcoin ETF investors sits near $84,000, according to multiple analyst estimates. Bitcoin is trading at $68,210 as of April 1. That means the average ETF holder is sitting on a roughly 19% unrealized loss. This is not a "buying the dip" narrative. This is an underwater position for the majority of institutional entrants.

Outside Bitcoin, other crypto ETFs diverged sharply. Ethereum ETFs posted $46 million in March outflows and $769 million in quarterly losses. XRP ETFs shed $31 million in March but held $43 million in positive quarterly flows. Solana ETFs continued outperforming, adding $213 million across Q1 with no single month of redemptions since their October 2025 launch.

Fear and Greed at 8: The Sentiment Crater

The Fear and Greed Index hasn't been this low since the FTX fallout. Photo: Pexels

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sits at 8 as of April 1, 2026. That is "Extreme Fear" territory - the kind of reading that historically precedes either capitulation events or violent reversals. The index has spent 46 consecutive days below 20, a streak that rivals the post-FTX collapse period in late 2022.

The backdrop explains the reading. Bitcoin fell more than 22% in Q1 2026, extending a 23% decline from Q4 2025. From its all-time high of $126,220, Bitcoin has dropped 46%. Ethereum lost nearly 60% from its peak to trough. The total crypto market capitalization sits near $2.42 trillion, down from over $3.5 trillion at the cycle top.

But the sentiment number and the flow data are telling opposite stories. While retail traders are capitulating - liquidating positions, closing accounts, walking away - institutional money is quietly accumulating. The March ETF inflows occurred against this backdrop of extreme fear. Someone is buying what retail is selling.

Bitcoin Magazine reported on March 27 that the index read 13. It dropped to 10 by March 29. By April 1, it hit 8. The trajectory is relentless. Yet the price has stabilized. Bitcoin has held above $66,000 since mid-March despite sentiment readings that historically correspond to prices falling further.

This divergence - extreme fear on the sentiment gauge, price stability on the chart, institutional inflows on the flow data - is the defining feature of the current market. It suggests that the weak hands have already been shaken out and the remaining holders are either long-term committed or actively accumulating at these levels.

Historical context matters here. In November 2022, after the FTX collapse, the Fear and Greed Index hit 6. Bitcoin was trading at $15,800. Within 14 months, it had rallied past $70,000. In March 2020, during the COVID crash, the index hit 8. Bitcoin was at $4,800. Within 12 months, it was above $60,000. Extreme fear readings do not predict timing, but they reliably mark zones where risk/reward asymmetry favors buyers over sellers.

The question is whether this time follows the historical pattern or whether the macroeconomic overlay - war in the Middle East, sustained high interest rates, geopolitical fragmentation - breaks the cycle. Nobody knows. But the smart money, as measured by ETF flows, is betting on the pattern.

Google's Quantum Bombshell: 20x Fewer Qubits to Crack Bitcoin

Quantum computing is closing in on cryptographic targets faster than projected. Photo: Pexels

While the Senate debates mining policy and institutional money flows back into ETFs, Google dropped a paper that reframes the timeline for the most existential threat Bitcoin faces.

On March 29, Google's Quantum AI team published a whitepaper demonstrating that breaking the 256-bit elliptic curve cryptography (ECDLP-256) protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets could require fewer than 500,000 physical qubits - a 20-fold reduction from prior estimates that placed the requirement in the millions. The paper was published on the Google Research blog under the title "Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly."

The implications ripple in multiple directions. First, the resource reduction: previous estimates suggested that quantum attacks on Bitcoin's cryptography would require millions of physical qubits, placing the threat comfortably in the 2040s or beyond. The new estimate pulls that timeline significantly forward. Google has separately announced a 2029 target for migrating its own systems to post-quantum cryptography, which suggests the company's internal timeline for when quantum computers become cryptographically relevant is closer than most people think.

Second, the attack vector. The paper specifically highlights "on-spend attacks" - targeting transactions while they are still sitting in the mempool, before they are confirmed on the blockchain. Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade, designed to improve privacy and efficiency, may actually make certain transactions more vulnerable to quantum exploitation because Taproot addresses expose public keys earlier in the transaction lifecycle.

CoinDesk reported the story under the headline "Bitcoin cracked in 9 minutes," referring to the theoretical time a sufficiently powerful quantum computer would need to extract a private key from a public key during a pending transaction. That is an oversimplification - no quantum computer with 500,000 qubits exists today, and building one requires solving engineering problems that remain unsolved. Google's current Willow chip operates at roughly 100 qubits.

But the trajectory matters more than the current state. A 20x reduction in required resources means the problem is getting easier faster than the cryptographic community expected. And the Mined in America Act, for all its ambition, does not address this threat at all. You can build all the American-made ASICs you want - if the underlying cryptography breaks, the mining hardware is irrelevant.

Bitcoin's core developer community has been debating quantum-resistant signature schemes for years. Progress has been slow. A 2024 Bitcoin Improvement Proposal for integrating lattice-based signatures into the protocol stalled over concerns about transaction size inflation. The clock just got louder.

Bernstein Says Buy the Dip: Crypto Stocks 60% Off Their Highs

Bernstein maintains Outperform ratings despite slashing targets across crypto equities. Photo: Pexels

Wall Street is not waiting for the Senate to fix the mining supply chain. On March 30, Bernstein analyst Gautam Chhugani issued a research note cutting price targets on the three major crypto-linked equities while maintaining "Outperform" ratings on all of them.

Coinbase (COIN) got cut to $330 from $440. Robinhood (HOOD) to $130 from $160. Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR) to $67 from $72. As of Monday's close, COIN was trading at $165.50, HOOD at $67.10, and FIGR at $31.14. All three sit roughly 60% below their 2025 peaks.

The note frames the drawdown as a buying opportunity rather than a structural breakdown. Chhugani pointed to "strong multi-year growth tied to stablecoins, tokenization, and derivatives" as the fundamental case. The thesis: crypto equities have repriced for a weak Q1, but the structural drivers - institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, expanding use cases - remain intact.

The timing of the call matters. Q1 earnings for these companies will reflect the worst quarter for crypto markets since Q4 2022. Trading volumes are down. Transaction revenue is compressed. The Fear and Greed Index at 8 means retail engagement has cratered. Every metric that drives short-term revenue for Coinbase and Robinhood is pointing down.

But Bernstein's thesis is that the stocks have already priced in the bad quarter and then some. COIN at $165 implies a price-to-earnings ratio well below its five-year average. HOOD at $67 prices in minimal growth despite the company's expanding crypto derivatives and stablecoin offerings. FIGR at $31 trades at a steep discount to its real-world asset tokenization pipeline.

The contrarian case: if Bitcoin stabilizes above $65,000 and the regulatory environment continues to clarify (Mined in America Act, OCC banking guidance, SEC's March token classification update), the crypto equity complex is trading at a generational discount to its forward earning power. If Bitcoin breaks below $60,000 or geopolitical risk escalates further, the drawdown extends and the 60% decline becomes 70% or more.

Bernstein is betting on the former. The ETF flow data supports them. The sentiment data screams against them. This is what markets look like at inflection points - contradictory signals, high conviction on both sides, and a resolution that will make one group look prescient and the other look foolish.

The Bigger Picture: Q2 Opens With a Loaded Gun

April's catalyst calendar is the densest in months. Photo: Pexels

April 1, 2026 is not just the first day of Q2. It is the beginning of the most catalyst-dense quarter in crypto since the ETF approvals in January 2024.

Token unlocks are hitting immediately. Over $100 million in vested tokens are scheduled for release between March 30 and April 5 alone. Sui leads with a $47.5 million unlock on April 1. Celestia (TIA) is unlocking approximately 175.6 million tokens - 17.20% of total supply - in one of the largest single-release events of the year. Across the full month, 150 tokens are scheduled to unlock approximately $398 million in fresh supply.

That supply pressure meets a market already trading at extreme fear levels. Token unlocks are not inherently bearish - the receiving parties may hold, not sell - but in a low-liquidity, fear-driven environment, even modest selling pressure can cascade. SUI is down 68% from its all-time high. TIA is down 82%. The unlocking parties who received these tokens at lower valuations may be motivated sellers.

On the macro side, the calendar is stacked. The U.S. jobs report drops on April 4 (Good Friday). The Federal Reserve's next meeting is April 29-30, with markets pricing roughly 15% odds of a rate cut. The Iran war, now in its 33rd day, continues to dominate oil prices, with crude above $105 and Hormuz passage effectively restricted. Trump declared "victory" on March 31 and is planning a national address, but the Strait remains shut and oil tanker insurance rates are at record highs.

The Mined in America Act will go to committee. It has bipartisan framing - supply chain security, manufacturing jobs, energy policy - but the crypto-specific elements will face scrutiny from Democrats who view the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve as a gift to cryptocurrency holders at taxpayer risk. The capital gains tax exemption for miners selling to the government is the most likely target for opposition.

Australia passed a law this week requiring crypto exchanges and custodians to obtain financial services licenses, giving platforms six months to comply. The SEC's March 17 guidance classifying most crypto tokens as digital commodities continues to reshape the regulatory landscape. The FDIC, Fed, and OCC jointly issued FAQs on tokenized securities capital treatment, reaffirming that the capital framework is "technology-neutral."

JPMorgan launched its JPMD deposit token, providing a blueprint for how large banks can satisfy regulators while innovating in digital assets. The CLARITY Act stablecoin debate continues in Congress, with banks fighting crypto firms on both the legislative and regulatory fronts.

The Strategic Reserve Gambit: Mining as Monetary Policy

The bill would put Bitcoin on the Treasury's balance sheet by statute - not just executive order. Photo: Pexels

The most consequential element of the Mined in America Act is not the hardware policy. It is the reserve codification.

Trump's March 2025 executive order created the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve using forfeited government Bitcoin - coins seized in law enforcement operations against dark web markets, ransomware operators, and financial criminals. The reserve was specified as budget-neutral, meaning no taxpayer money would be used for additional acquisitions.

The Mined in America Act preserves that budget-neutrality constraint but adds two new acquisition channels. First, staking rewards and airdrops from other seized digital assets in the government's Digital Asset Stockpile would be converted to Bitcoin and added to the reserve. Second, certified domestic miners could sell freshly mined Bitcoin directly to the Treasury in exchange for a capital gains tax exemption.

The tax exemption mechanism deserves close examination. Under current law, a miner who produces one Bitcoin at a cost of $35,000 and sells it at $68,000 owes capital gains tax on the $33,000 profit. Under the Mined in America Act, a certified miner selling to the government would owe nothing. The effective discount to the government depends on the miner's marginal tax rate, but for a corporate mining operation paying 21% federal corporate tax, the exemption is worth roughly $6,930 per Bitcoin at current prices.

That means the government could acquire Bitcoin at an implicit 10% discount to market price, funded not by appropriations but by forgone tax revenue. Whether that constitutes "budget-neutral" spending will be a matter of intense debate. The Congressional Budget Office will almost certainly score the tax exemption as a revenue reduction, which means the bill could face budget reconciliation complications.

The broader strategic implications are significant. If the reserve is codified into statute, it survives administration changes. A future president cannot simply dissolve it with a new executive order. Liquidation would require an act of Congress. That gives Bitcoin a form of sovereign backing that no other cryptocurrency has - not through a price peg or a government guarantee, but through institutional lock-in. Once it is on the Treasury's balance sheet by law, removing it becomes politically expensive.

This is the bet the bill's sponsors are making: that enshrining Bitcoin as a strategic asset creates a ratchet effect. Each successive administration inherits the reserve, finds it politically difficult to liquidate, and eventually adds to it. The reserve grows by default, and the political cost of opposing it increases with each election cycle.

Whether that bet pays off depends on Bitcoin's long-term price trajectory, the evolution of quantum computing threats, and whether the American public accepts the idea of their government holding a volatile digital asset as a strategic reserve. Those are open questions. The Mined in America Act is placing the bet anyway.

What Happens Next

The bill's timeline stretches to the end of the decade - the execution will be measured in years. Photo: Pexels

The Mined in America Act will be referred to the Senate Banking Committee, where Lummis sits. Its path from there is uncertain. The bill has bipartisan appeal on paper - supply chain security, manufacturing reshoring, energy efficiency - but the Bitcoin-specific provisions will draw opposition from senators skeptical of cryptocurrency's role in federal policy.

The capital gains tax exemption for government sales is the most vulnerable provision. It effectively subsidizes a transfer of wealth from the tax base to Bitcoin miners, and it creates a preferential pathway that no other industry enjoys. Expect amendments targeting that mechanism.

The hardware phase-out timeline is ambitious but not unrealistic. Most mining ASICs have useful lives of 3-4 years before rising difficulty makes them unprofitable. The end-of-decade deadline gives operators one full hardware refresh cycle to comply. The bigger challenge is whether domestic manufacturing can scale fast enough to meet demand. The ASIC fabrication process requires access to advanced semiconductor nodes - the same nodes that are constrained by TSMC capacity and geopolitical tensions between Taiwan and mainland China.

There is an irony here that the bill's sponsors have not addressed: the push to build American mining hardware may itself depend on Taiwanese fabrication, adding another layer of foreign dependency even as the bill tries to remove the Chinese one. ASIC design can happen domestically. Fabrication at leading-edge nodes cannot - at least not yet, and not at the volumes required.

On the market side, the signals remain contradictory. BTC at $68,210 is stable but not strong. The Fear and Greed Index at 8 is historically extreme. ETF inflows of $1.32 billion in March suggest institutional conviction. Token unlocks totaling $398 million in April add supply pressure. Google's quantum paper raises long-term existential questions. Bernstein says crypto stocks are a generational buy. The Strait of Hormuz is still shut.

The market is processing all of this simultaneously, which is why it looks paralyzed. The price is not moving because the forces pushing it up and pulling it down are roughly equal in magnitude. That equilibrium will break. The question is which direction, and on what catalyst.

The Mined in America Act might be that catalyst - not because it will pass quickly, but because it represents a step change in how Washington thinks about Bitcoin. This is not regulation. It is not restriction. It is industrial policy. The United States government is proposing to treat Bitcoin mining the way it treats semiconductor manufacturing and critical mineral extraction: as strategic infrastructure that requires domestic sourcing and federal support.

That framing, regardless of the bill's legislative fate, is permanent. The Overton window for Bitcoin policy just shifted. Mining is no longer a fringe activity tolerated by regulators. It is being written into the same policy vocabulary as CHIPS Act beneficiaries and defense supply chain mandates.

The machines will get built. The question is where, by whom, and on whose terms. The Mined in America Act is the first serious attempt to make sure the answer is American.