Bitcoin has shifted from Chinese dominance to a U.S.-China strategic contest, with both nations quietly accumulating BTC as a sovereign asset.

For most of bitcoin's first decade, China was its industrial home. Chinese manufacturers built the specialized mining hardware. Chinese mining pools coordinated the majority of global hashrate. Chinese exchanges handled the bulk of trading volume. By the late 2010s, an estimated 65–75% of the network's computing power operated on Chinese soil. Bitcoin had become a strategically significant asset under de facto Chinese control, and the CCP's blanket ban on mining and trading in mid-2021 was a belated attempt to bring that significance to heel.

Instead of containing bitcoin, the ban triggered what the industry calls "the Great Mining Migration" — an exodus of hardware and expertise into the United States, Kazakhstan, and other jurisdictions. By 2024, American miners controlled roughly 35–40% of global hashrate, making the U.S. the world's largest bitcoin mining nation.

Washington capitalized on this trend, welcoming bitcoin as both an economic opportunity and a strategic asset. In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and the U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, making the United States among the first major nations to designate bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. Over the past five years, the United States has become the world's largest state holder of bitcoin: according to Arkham Intelligence, the federal government holds approximately 328,000 BTC — roughly 1.6% of bitcoin's total fixed supply — accumulated through law enforcement seizures over the past decade.



...read more at btcpolicy.org