President Joe Biden has issued an order halting further operations of a China-linked cryptocurrency mining company on land near a nuclear missile base in Wyoming.
The White House published an order on May 13, 2024, compelling MineOne Cloud Computing Investment and its affiliates to divest their property near the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The company operated a cryptocurrency mining facility less than a mile from the base.
According to the order, the company, though a British Virgin Islands company, is ultimately majority-owned by Chinese nationals. It further noted that the company purchased the property in June 2022, but the transaction was not filed with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
President Biden cited national security concerns as the reason for revoking the firm’s property rights. The order noted that the company and its owners “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
“The proximity of the foreign-owned Real Estate to a strategic missile base and key element of America’s nuclear triad, and the presence of specialized and foreign-sourced equipment potentially capable of facilitating surveillance and espionage activities, presents a national security risk to the United States;…”
the order read.
Additionally, the company and its partners must remove all equipment installed on the site after the improvements. The order also bars any Chinese-linked entities from accessing the site.
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MineOne was given 120 days from the order date to sell the property and is prohibited from transferring it to third parties.
Tech giant Microsoft, which operates a nearby data centre, had previously raised concerns about the site. According to a 2023 New York Times investigation, the Microsoft team wrote in an August 2022 report to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) that the location could allow the Chinese to “pursue full-spectrum intelligence collection operations.”
As of the time of this report, MineOne has not responded to the order.
Meanwhile, MineOne might have attracted strong interest from U.S. institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. In October 2021, for its first fundraising, it raised over $20 million within a month. Since the fund’s launch, it has been “actively subscribed,” according to the announcement made at that time.
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