Author: Jessica Klein, Wired Magazine
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Eric Trump (the second son of U.S. President Trump and Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization) attended the "Bitcoin 2025" conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 28, 2025.
In the early days of Trump's second term, Asher Genoot, CEO of infrastructure company Hut 8, and Michael Ho, Chief Strategy Officer, enjoyed thin-crust pizza with Eric Trump at the Trump Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida. Genoot recalled that they talked for hours and proposed a business plan that piqued Eric Trump's interest: forming a Bitcoin mining alliance.
The two initially met through mutual friends at the end of 2024: Genoot said he had shown Eric pictures of a "beautiful liquid-cooled data center" in Amarillo, Texas. Eric was quite interested and even shared his experiences growing up on construction sites with his father. According to Genoot, after that pizza night, they met almost every day. The end result was the establishment of American Bitcoin (ABTC) on April 1, with Hut 8 holding 80% of the shares (the company claims to "manage 1,020 megawatts of energy capacity across 15 locations in the U.S. and Canada"), while the Trump brothers (Eric and Donald Jr.) and their data center company, American Data Centers, held the remaining 20%. Eric serves as the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of American Bitcoin.
Matt Prusak, CEO of American Bitcoin (also the former CEO of Hut 8's affiliated Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital), stated that the Trump brothers brought "two things." First, they opened up capital markets through the Trump family's international business connections; second, in Prusak's words, was a more attractive "narrative value" stemming from the Trump family name.
Although Prusak said Eric "can reach numerous potential partners with a single phone call," both he and Genoot insisted that Eric's position did not grant them direct access to the President. They emphasized Eric's relationships with large family offices and institutions. "Institutions from Europe, Canada, and even the Middle East are interested in strategic cooperation with American Bitcoin," Prusak said.
In March, cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced a $2 billion investment from a fund backed by the Abu Dhabi government. Two months later, the stablecoin USD1 from the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial was selected as the trading settlement currency. On July 18, President Trump signed the GENIUS Act, establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The House of Representatives passed a cryptocurrency market regulation bill the day before, with the President requesting that the bill be delivered to the White House by August.
"We can leverage the U.S. energy market," Prusak said, mentioning that Eric and Donald Jr. have a large and increasingly crypto-interested audience. Hut 8's CFO Sean Glennan (formerly of Citigroup) stated that being in an "imitative" industry, having an executive from one of the world's most talked-about families at the forefront is certainly not a bad thing.
"American Bitcoin has a unique advantage to expand faster and operate more efficiently than any player in the industry," Eric stated in a written statement to Wired magazine, noting that Hut 8's past performance, infrastructure, and energy expertise are "unparalleled."
Will Foxley, co-founder of Blockspace Media, which focuses on Bitcoin mining, put it more bluntly: in the competitive Bitcoin mining industry, "there are few ways to stand out. Having the President's son involved in founding a company is one of them."
From its establishment in April to May 31, American Bitcoin has mined 215 Bitcoins, further enhancing the Trump family's cryptocurrency business portfolio. As of July 1, American Bitcoin has raised $220 million from investors, which is planned for purchasing Bitcoin and mining machines. Coupled with the Trump family's previous crypto ventures (including meme coins, stablecoins, and a $2.5 billion Bitcoin treasury investment by Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social), American Bitcoin is further solidifying the family's influence in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The current crypto ecosystem is continuously expanding and increasingly intertwined with institutions and governments.
Reports indicate that as of mid-March, the Trump family's crypto business has contributed approximately $2.9 billion to their wealth. The core goal of American Bitcoin is to accumulate Bitcoin, which may further increase the family's wealth. First, by mining Bitcoin at a cost below market price (miners receive rewards for their computational contributions, which is cheaper than purchasing on exchanges); second, by expanding Bitcoin strategic reserves through acquisitions.
On June 18, Prusak told Wired magazine that he could not disclose when the company would start purchasing Bitcoin or through which exchange, but Coinbase Prime is currently its "primary market." (It is reported that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has met with President Trump to assist in shaping U.S. crypto policy.)
Foxley noted that when Hut 8 announced its partnership with the Trump brothers to establish American Bitcoin, many in the crypto mining circle were "caught off guard." While meme coins like TRUMP can generate buzz and grab headlines, Foxley believes that Bitcoin mining is a "niche area" in the crypto field—neither attractive nor well-covered, often leaving only articles criticizing its high energy consumption.
However, Foxley added that this strategy makes sense in light of the "America First Energy" policy promoted by the Trump administration. In June 2024, the President met with several of the largest miners in the U.S. during a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago to discuss how America could become the "leading nation in Bitcoin mining." The following month, he reiterated this goal at the Nashville Bitcoin conference.
During the 2024 election, the crypto industry invested $135 million to maintain political influence through lobbying Congress and engaging with the President. While President Trump pushed for crypto-friendly legislation and planned a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve, he also ensured that he could directly benefit from industry profits.
Although President Trump had proposed tariffs on Chinese mining machines, which would not be good news for the U.S. crypto mining industry, the policy has yet to be implemented. On May 12, American Bitcoin announced plans to go public through a merger with Nasdaq-listed Gryphon Digital Mining. According to Gryphon's SEC filings, it "operates approximately 5,880 Bitcoin mining machines at third-party sites in Pennsylvania," with these devices sourced from Chinese company Bitmain.
According to American Bitcoin's SEC filings, after accumulating enough Bitcoin through mining and acquisitions, the company's ultimate goal is to "lead the Bitcoin ecosystem," which may include supporting the development of Bitcoin technology and promoting its widespread application.
"Like all of the Trump family's ventures, American Bitcoin aims to become an industry giant," Eric said in an interview at the blockchain conference Consensus in May. According to Gryphon's SEC filings, the merger with American Bitcoin will create a publicly traded company "focused on building the largest and most efficient pure Bitcoin mining giant in the world." After the merger, the company's board will consist of five members: Ho, Prusak (who is also the founder and partner of venture capital firm Defense Angels, which claims to "invest in the future of national security"), and three external directors—Michael Broukhim, co-founder of FabFitFun, Justin Mateen, co-founder of Tinder, and Genoot.
"Going public will change the game. It unlocks capital and institutional access, which will drive us to achieve our mission of creating the largest and most investment-worthy long-term Bitcoin accumulation platform," Eric said.
However, Hut 8 provides the infrastructure. According to SEC filings, American Bitcoin pays Hut 8 for energy, operational, and shared services, including "accounting, human resources support, payroll, benefits, IT support," and legal services. Hut 8 provides American Bitcoin with mining sites (currently located in Niagara Falls, New York, Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Olra, Texas). Prusak stated that American Bitcoin can help Hut 8 "raise and deploy significant capital" without "burdening Hut 8's balance sheet." Foxley believes that with American Bitcoin focused on mining, Hut 8 can concentrate on supporting emerging technologies like AI, competing for "hyperscale data center users"—such as companies like Meta and Google that require high-energy data centers.
Since Hut 8 funds the data centers, American Bitcoin only needs to procure mining machines. The company inherited an agreement from Hut 8's subsidiary Zephyr, planning to purchase approximately 17,280 Bitmain U3S21EXPH mining machines for up to $320 million. As of May 31, American Bitcoin has acquired over 60,000 mining machines, primarily including Bitmain's Antminer S21+ series (Glennan described these machines as "Cadillacs… not Ferraris") and China's MicroBt M5X and M6X series mining machines.
The U.S. holds 30%-40% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, but 90% of the mining machines come from China. "Bitcoin is increasingly becoming the core of the U.S. financial ecosystem," said Sanjay Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer of Auradine, a U.S. competitor to Bitmain. As President Trump pushes for Bitcoin's integration into the U.S. financial system, experts warn that connecting Chinese hardware to critical U.S. power infrastructure could pose security risks.
Bitcoin mining must contend with increasingly harsh economic realities: it relies on price-volatile assets, and mining rewards are halved approximately every four years; currently, over 19 million of the 21 million Bitcoins have already been mined.
Glennan stated that maintaining low debt and hedging risks through the Bitcoin derivatives market will help American Bitcoin "weather market fluctuations." The company also plans to enhance its hash rate to improve profitability, which may involve replacing old machines with more efficient new ones or acquiring other mining companies.
All of this requires capital, and the company hopes that the Trump family's name will attract funding. Although representatives from Hut 8 and American Bitcoin claim that their business is unrelated to Trump's political connections, the company couldn't help but flaunt this association at the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May 2025. At an event hosted by American Bitcoin, the Winklevoss brothers (each donating $1 million to Trump's 2024 campaign) and Cantor Fitzgerald Chairman Brandon Lutnick (son of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) were in attendance.
On the stage where Vice President J.D. Vance had just spoken a few hours earlier, Donald Jr. participated in a panel with Prusak and Ho, addressing a somewhat conservative audience, saying, "My father made many promises to the crypto community… (Eric and I) have shown our sincerity in all our actions in this field." The first thing he mentioned was American Bitcoin.
Recommended reading:
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