Company: CIFRW
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001819989-25-000005
Chunk: 171

Company: Cipher Mining Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 171
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, this is subject to change. We cannot be certain how future changes in legislation, regulatory developments, or changes in CFTC interpretations and policy may impact the treatment of digital assets and the mining of digital assets. Any resulting requirements that apply to or relate to our mining activities or our transactions in bitcoin and digital assets may cause us to incur additional extraordinary, non-recurring expenses, thereby materially and adversely impacting an investment in our ordinary shares.

Changing environmental regulatory and legislative developments may materially adversely affect our brand, reputation, business, results of operations and financial position.

A number of governments or governmental bodies have introduced or are contemplating environmental and energy legislative and regulatory changes in response to the increasing focus on power consumption required to operate large-scale data centers. A changing legislative environment could create economic and regulatory uncertainty for our business because the industries in which we operate, bitcoin mining and HPC, with their high energy demand, could become targets for future environmental and energy regulations. See “—Risks Related to Our Business, Industry and Operations— “Bitcoin mining activities are energy-intensive, which may restrict the geographic locations of miners and have a negative environmental impact. Government regulators may potentially restrict the ability of electricity suppliers to provide electricity to mining operations, such as ours, increase taxes on the purchase of electricity used to mine bitcoin, or even fully or partially ban mining operations.”

The trend of increased environmental regulation is not linear and can fluctuate depending on the administration and jurisdiction, even within the same county. For example, although the Trump Administration initially withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in November 2020, the U.S. reentered the Paris Agreement in February 2021 under the Biden Administration, but the Trump Administration again withdrew from the Paris Agreement on January 20, 2025. Though we are closely following developments in this area and changes in the regulatory landscape in the United States, we cannot predict with precision or quantify how or when challenges may arise and ultimately impact our business.

Legislation and increased regulation regarding climate change could impose significant costs on us and our suppliers, including costs related to increased energy requirements, capital equipment, environmental monitoring and reporting, costs to purchase renewable energy credits or allowances, and other costs to comply with such regulations. Specifically, imposition of a tax or other regulatory fee in jurisdictions where we operate or on electricity that we purchase could result in substantially higher energy costs, and due to the significant amount of electrical power required to operate bitcoin mining machines, could in turn put our facilities at a competitive disadvantage. Any future climate change regulations could also negatively