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Well before China decided to kick out all of its bitcoin miners, they were already leaving in droves, and new data from Cambridge University shows they were likely headed to the United States.

The U.S. has fast become the new darling of the bitcoin mining world. It is the second-biggest mining destination on the planet, accounting for nearly 17% of all the world’s bitcoin miners as of April 2021. That’s a 151% increase from September 2020. 

“For the last 18 months, we’ve had a serious growth of mining infrastructure in the U.S.,” said Darin Feinstein, founder of Blockcap and Core Scientific. “We’ve noticed a massive uptick in mining operations looking to relocate to North America, mostly in the U.S.”

This dataset doesn’t include the mass mining exodus out of China, which led to half the world’s miners dropping offline, and experts tell CNBC that the U.S. share of the mining market is likely even bigger than the numbers indicate.

According to the newly-released Cambridge data, just before the Chinese mining ban began, the country accounted for 46% of the world’s total hashrate, an industry term used to describe the collective computing power of the bitcoin network. That’s a sharp decline from 75.5% in September 2019, and the percentage is likely much lower given the exodus underway now. 

“500,000 formerly Chinese miner rigs are looking for homes in the U.S,” said Marathon Digital’s Fred Thiel. “If they are deployed, it would mean North America would have closer to 40% of global hashrate by the end of 2022.”

The new mining mecca

America’s rising dominance is a simple case of luck meeting preparation. The U.S. has quietly been building up its hosting capacity for years.

Before bitcoin miners actually started coming to America, companies across the country made a gamble that eventually, if adequate infrastructure were in place, they would set up shop in the U.S. 

That gamble appears to be paying off.

When bitcoin crashed in late 2017 and the wider market entered a multi-year crypto winter, there wasn’t much demand for big bitcoin farms. U.S. mining operators saw their opening and jumped at the chance to deploy cheap money to build up the mining ecosystem in the States. 

“The large, publicly traded miners were able to raise capital to go make big purchases,” said Mike Colyer, CEO of digital currency company Foundry, which helped bring over $300 million of mining equipment into North America.

Companies like North American crypto mining operator Core Scientific kept building out hosting space all through the crypto winter, so that they had the capacity to plug in new gear, according to Colyer. 

“A majority of the new equipment manufactured from May 2020 through December 2020 was shipped to the U.S. and Canada,” he said.

Alex Brammer of Luxor Mining, a cryptocurrency pool built for advanced miners, points out that maturing capital markets and financial instruments around the mining industry also played a big role in the industry’s quick ascent in the U.S. Brammer says that many of these American operators were able to start rapidly expanding once they secured financing by leveraging a multi-year track record of profitability and existing capital as collateral.

Covid also played a role.

Though the global pandemic shut down large swaths of the economy, the ensuing stimulus payments that proved a boon for U.S. mining companies.

“All the money printing during the pandemic meant that more capital needed to be deployed,” explained bitcoin mining engineer Brandon Arvanaghi. 

“People were looking for places to park their cash. The appetite for large-scale investments had never been bigger. A lot of that likely found its way into bitcoin mining operations in places outside of China,” continued Arvanaghi.

Making it in America

The seeds of the U.S. migration started back in early 2020, according to Colyer. Prior to Beijing’s sudden crackdown, China’s mining dominance had already begun to slip. 

Part of the appeal is that the U.S. ticks a lot of the boxes for these migrant miners.

“If you’re looking to relocate hundreds of millions of dollars of miners out of China, you want to make sure you have geographic, political, and jurisdictional stability. You also want to make sure there are private property right protections for the assets that you are relocating,” said Feinstein.

It also helps that the U.S. is also home to some of the cheapest sources of energy on the planet, many of which tend to be renewable. Because miners at scale compete in a low-margin industry, where their only variable cost is typically energy, they are incentivized to migrate to the world’s cheapest sources of power.

Thiel expects most new miners relocating to North America to be powered by renewables, or gas that is offset by renewable energy credits.

While Castle Island Ventures founding partner, Nic Carter, points out that U.S. mining isn’t wholly renewable, he does say that miners here are much better about selecting renewables and buying offsets. 

“The migration is definitely a net positive overall,” he said. “Hashrate moving to the U.S., Canada, and Russia will mean much lower carbon intensity.”

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Tech stocks set for big losing week as AI names get rocked after Nvidia earnings

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Tech stocks set for big losing week as AI names get rocked after Nvidia earnings

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, has a Q&A session at a press conference during the APEC CEO summit on October 31, 2025 in Gyeongju, South Korea.

Woohae Cho | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Even Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang couldn’t save the tech and artificial intelligence trade this week.

The chip giant’s talismanic leader trumpeted “off the charts” chip sales and dismissed talk of an “AI bubble,” and for a while, the tide lifted all boats.

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said during an earnings call this week. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”

The buzz from the blowout report quickly reversed, sending the AI winners deeply into the red — and few beneficiaries were left unscathed.

Every member of the Magnificent 7, except for Alphabet, was tracking for a losing week, with Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft staring down the biggest losses.

Amazon and Microsoft have led the group’s drop lower, falling about 6% this week. Meanwhile, Alphabet has gained nearly 8%. The search giant is also the only megacap of the group on pace for November gains thanks to a boost from the launch of Gemini 3.

Oracle, which is another major Nvidia customer, slumped about 10%. The chipmaker also supplies major model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic.

Read more CNBC tech news

Chip stocks have also declined amid the broader tech market turmoil. Advanced Micro Devices and Micron were on pace for 17% losses. Marvell Technology has slumped about 10%. Quantum computing stocks Rigetti, IonQ and D-Wave have dropped at least 10%

CoreWeave, which buys and rents out Nvidia’s chips in data centers, initially soared on the chipmaker’s earnings report, but swiftly reversed course. The company’s stock is looking at an 8% blow this week.

AI fever was cooling in the runup to Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday, and investors looked to the print to alleviate fears that the AI bubble was on shaky ground. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the stock has helped power the market to new all-time highs.

But concerns have mounted in recent weeks as tech stocks hit stretched valuations.

Major investors, including Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio told CNBC Thursday that the market is definitely in a bubble.

Much of the worries have stemmed from a boom in capital expenditures spending to support AI, with few signs of a payoff in view for many of the players.

Investor Michael Burry recently accused some of the biggest cloud and infrastructure providers of understating depreciation expenses and estimating a longer life cycle for their chips, calling it “one of the more common frauds of the modern era.”

Earlier this month, Burry revealed bets against Nvidia and Palantir.

Shares of the software analytics company, which supplies AI tools to the government and businesses, are down 11% this week. The stock has shed nearly a quarter of its value this month.

WATCH: Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio: We are definitely in a bubble, but that doesn’t mean you should sell

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio: We are definitely in a bubble, but that doesn't mean you should sell

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Amazon cut thousands of engineers in its record layoffs, despite saying it needs to innovate faster

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Amazon cut thousands of engineers in its record layoffs, despite saying it needs to innovate faster

The Amazon Puget Sound Headquarters is pictured on Oct. 28, 2025 in Seattle, Washington.

Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Amazon‘s 14,000-plus layoffs announced last month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers.

Documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington showed that nearly 40% of the more than 4,700 job cuts in those states were engineering roles. The data was reported by Amazon in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, filings to state agencies.

The figures represent a segment of the total layoffs announced in October. Not all data was immediately available because of differences in state WARN reporting requirements.

In announcing the steepest round of cuts in its 31-year history, Amazon joined a growing roster of tech companies that have slashed jobs this year even as cash piles have mounted and profits soared. In total, there have been almost 113,000 job cuts at 231 tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, continuing a trend that began in 2022 as businesses readjusted to life after the Covid pandemic.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multiyear mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into one that operates like what he calls “the world’s largest startup.” He’s looked to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by urging staffers to do more with less and cutting organizational bloat.

Amazon is expected to carry out further job reductions in January, CNBC previously reported.

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., speaks during an unveiling event in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The company said it’s also shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence. The technology is already poised to reshape Amazon’s white-collar workforce, with Jassy predicting in June that its corporate head count will shrink in the coming years alongside efficiency gains from AI.

Human resources chief Beth Galetti, in her memo announcing the layoffs, focused on the importance of innovating, which the company will now have to do with fewer people, specifically engineers.

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Galetti wrote. “We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”

Amazon said in a statement that AI is not the driver behind the vast majority of the job cuts, and that the bigger goal was to reduce bureaucracy and emphasize speed.

Jassy said on Amazon’s earnings call last month that the cuts were in response to a “culture” issue inside the company, spurred in part by an extended hiring spree that left it with “a lot more layers” and slower decision-making.

The layoffs impacted a mix of software engineer levels, but SDE II roles, or mid-level employees, were disproportionately affected, the WARN filings show.

The AI boom is making software development jobs harder to come by as companies adopt coding assistants or so-called vibe coding platforms from vendors like Cursor, OpenAI and Cognition. Amazon has released its own competitor called Kiro.

Read more CNBC tech news

‘Significant role reductions’

Amazon spends billions on AI arms race as it guts corporate ranks

Game designers, artists and producers made up more than a quarter of the total cuts in Irvine, and they were roughly 11% of staffers laid off at Amazon’s San Diego offices, according to filings.

The company also told staffers it’s halting much of its work on big-budget, or triple A, game development, specifically around massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games, Boom wrote. Amazon has released MMOs including Crucible and New World. It was also developing an MMO based on “Lord of the Rings.”

Beyond its gaming division, Amazon also significantly cut back its visual search and shopping teams, according to multiple employee posts on LinkedIn. The unit is responsible for products like Amazon Lens and Lens Live, AI shopping tools that enable users to find products via their camera in real time or images saved to their device. The company rolled out Lens Live in September.

The team was primarily based in Palo Alto, California, and Amazon’s WARN filings indicate that software engineers, applied scientists and quality assurance engineers were heavily impacted across its offices there.

Amazon’s online ad business, one of its biggest profit centers, was downsized as well. More than 140 ad sales and marketing roles were eliminated across Amazon’s New York offices, accounting for about 20% of the roughly 760 positions cut, according to state documents viewed by CNBC.

WATCH: Box joining AWS marketplace in new partnership

AI's impact on reshaping the workforce

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The market’s surprising reversal, Gap’s viral ad, AI regulation and more in Morning Squawk

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The market's surprising reversal, Gap's viral ad, AI regulation and more in Morning Squawk

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Hero to zero

Stock investors didn’t end up getting the post-Nvidia earnings market bounce they hoped for. After opening yesterday’s trading session higher, stocks took a dramatic midday tumble, once again casting doubt on the artificial intelligence trade.

Here’s what to know:

  • Nvidia shares gave up their 5% post-earnings gain, ending the session down more than 3% despite the chipmaker’s blockbuster quarterly results and guidance. The AI darling’s stock is on track to finish the week down 5%.
  • The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung more than 1,100 between its session highs and lows. All three major averages closed solidly in the red, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ending the day down 2.15%.
  • Meanwhile, the CBOE Volatility Index — better known as Wall Street’s fear gauge — ended the session at a level not seen since April.
  • Bitcoin fell to lows going back to April, further illustrating the shift away from risk assets.
  • Before stocks’ midday reversal, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio told CNBC that “we are in that territory of a bubble,” but that you don’t need to sell stocks because of it.
  • The three major indexes are all on track to end the week in the red.
  • Follow live markets updates here.

2. Prediction market

A ‘Now Hiring’ sign is posted outside of a business on Oct. 3, 2025 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

The belated September jobs report was finally released yesterday, and the headline number was much hotter than economists expected with an increase of 119,000 jobs. On the other hand, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level since 2021.

The chance of a rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting remained low after the report, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. But the odds flipped this morning after New York Fed President John Williams said he sees “room for a further adjustment” in interest rates, reviving hopes of a December cut.

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3. Better than yours

Merchandise on display in a Gap store on November 21, 2024 in Miami Beach, Florida. 

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Gap‘s “Milkshake” ad brought all the shoppers to the store. The retailer’s viral “Better in Denim” campaign with girl group Katseye helped drive comparable sales up 5% in its third quarter, beating analyst expectations.

The Old Navy and Banana Republic parent also surpassed Wall Street’s estimates on both the top and bottom lines, sending shares rising 4.5% in overnight trading. Athleta was the notable outlier, with the athleisure brand’s sales falling 11%.

Gap’s report comes at the end of a busy week for retail earnings. As CNBC’s Melissa Repko reports, one key theme of this quarter’s results has been that value-oriented retailers are winning favor with shoppers across income brackets.

4. AI in D.C.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

The White House is putting together an executive order that would thwart states’ individual AI laws. A draft obtained by CNBC shows the order would focus on staging legal challenges and blocking federal funding for states to ensure their compliance.

The draft would work to the advantage of many AI industry leaders who have pushed back on a state-by-state approach to the technology’s regulation. A White House official told CNBC that any discussion around the draft is speculation until an official announcement.

Click here to read the full draft.

5. Flight fight

Courtesy: Archer Aviation

Joby Aviation is taking air taxi competitor Archer Aviation to court. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Joby accused Archer of using information stolen by a former employee to “one-up” a deal with a real estate developer.

Joby alleges that George Kivork, its former U.S. state and local policy lead, took files and information before jumping to the competitor in an act of “corporate espionage.” Archer called the case “baseless litigation” and said it’s “entirely without merit.”

The Daily Dividend

Here are our recommendations for stories to circle back to this weekend:

CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Tasmin Lockwood, Melissa Repko, Jeff Cox, Sarah Min, Emily Wilkins, Mary Catherine Wellons and Samantha Subin contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.

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