US President Joe Biden signed an order banning the associated cryptocurrency mining company
US President Joe Biden has signed an order barring a China-linked cryptocurrency mining company from continuing to use land near a nuclear missile base in Wyoming.
The order, issued by the White House on May 13, forces MineOne Cloud Computing Investment and its partners to divest properties that operate as a cryptocurrency mining facility near Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Biden cited national security concerns in ordering the company’s ownership rights to be revoked.
“There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that MineOne Partners Limited, a British Virgin Islands company ultimately owned by Chinese nationals (…) may take actions that threaten to impair the national security of the United States.”
MineOne acquired the property in June 2022 and then made improvements for use in cryptocurrency mining near the Air Force base. The order stated that the military facility is a strategic missile base and home to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The Company and its affiliates are also required to remove all equipment on the Site installed after the improvements. The order also prohibits entities linked to China from any further access to the site, which is less than a mile from the base.
The company has 120 days from the date of the order to sell the property and may not transfer it to third parties.
Red flags have been raised regarding this particular location in the past by tech giant Microsoft which has a data center nearby.
The site could allow the Chinese “to pursue large-scale intelligence collection operations,” the Microsoft team wrote in an August 2022 report to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), according to a 2023 New York Times investigation.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who also serves as chair of the committee, said the order forcing MineOne to sell the land “highlights the critical role CFIUS plays in ensuring that foreign investment does not undermine our national security.”
MineOne raised more than $20 million for its debut fund within a month in 2021. Since it launched the fund in October 2021, it has been “actively subscribed” by U.S. institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals, according to an announcement made at the time. .
Cointelegraph reached out to MineOne for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Related: China has a Trojan in US Bitcoin mining infrastructure
The Biden administration had previously ordered a crackdown on the US bitcoin mining industry, citing China as an example to follow as part of its ongoing war on cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency mining was severely restricted by China’s ruling regime in 2021, leading to a mass exodus of mining operations, many of which ended up across the pond in the United States.
The latest White House order comes just one day before the Biden administration is set to sharply increase tariffs on several Chinese imports, including electric vehicles.
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