Company: CIFRW
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001819989-25-000005
Chunk: 159

Company: Cipher Mining Inc.
Filing Date: 2025-02-25
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1A
Chunk 159
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 or our third-party custodians or service providers.

20

We operate in a highly competitive industry and we compete against companies that operate in less regulated environments as well as companies with greater financial and other resources, and our business, operating results, and financial condition may be adversely affected if we are unable to respond to our competitors effectively.

The cryptocurrency ecosystem is highly innovative, rapidly evolving, and characterized by competition, experimentation, changing customer needs, frequent introductions of new products and services, and subject to uncertain and evolving industry and regulatory requirements. In the future, we expect competition to further intensify with existing and new competitors, within and outside the United States, which may have various advantages over us, such as:

•greater mining capabilities;

•more timely introduction or adoption of new technologies;

•preferred relationships with suppliers of mining machines and other equipment;

•access to more competitively priced power;

•greater financial resources to make acquisitions;

•lower labor, compliance, risk mitigation and research and development costs;

•larger and more mature intellectual property portfolios;

•greater number of applicable licenses or similar authorizations;

•established core business models outside of the mining or trading of digital assets, allowing them to operate on lesser margins or at a loss;

•operations in certain jurisdictions with lower compliance costs and greater flexibility to explore new product offerings; and

•substantially greater financial, technical and other resources.

The developments in the digital assets industry, including several high-profile bankruptcies and escalation of regulatory oversight, could potentially lead to increase in the M&A activity in the industry among our competition and increasing consolidation. This could significantly alter the competitive landscape in which we operate and lead to increasing competition in cryptocurrency mining as well as access to capital and other opportunities. For further details on the risks related to our industry development, see “—The further development and acceptance of digital asset networks and other digital assets, which represent a new and rapidly changing industry, are subject to a variety of factors that are difficult to evaluate. The slowing or stopping of the development or acceptance of digital asset systems may adversely affect an investment in us.” and “—Risks Related to Cryptocurrency—We may temporarily store our bitcoin on digital asset trading platforms which could subject our bitcoin to the risk of loss or access, especially in light of previous failures of major market participants. Such failures may also result in a reduction in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and can adversely affect an investment in us.”

Additionally, regulatory actions, as well as any other political developments in the regions with active cryptocurrency trading