Original title: The Inside Story of Eric Trump's American Bitcoin
Original author: Jessica Klein, Wired magazine
Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News
In the early days of Trump's second term, Hut 8's CEO Asher Genoot and Chief Strategy Officer Michael Ho enjoyed thin-crust pizza with Eric Trump at Trump Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida. Genoot recalled that they talked for hours, proposing a business plan that greatly interested Eric Trump: 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 discussed his experiences growing up on construction sites with his father. According to Genoot, after that pizza night, they almost met every day. The ultimate outcome was the establishment of American Bitcoin (abbreviated as ABTC) on April 1. Hut 8 holds 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' original shareholders hold the remaining 20%. Eric serves as the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of American Bitcoin.
Matt Prusak, CEO of American Bitcoin (who was also the former CEO of Hut 8 affiliate Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital), claimed that the Trump brothers brought "two things." First, leveraging the Trump family's international business connections to access capital markets; second, according to Prusak, a more attractive "narrative value" stemming from the Trump family's name.
Although Prusak claimed that 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 partnerships with American Bitcoin," Prusak said.
In March, cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced a $2 billion investment from a government-backed fund in Abu Dhabi. Two months later, the stablecoin USD1 from the Trump family's crypto project World Liberty Financial was selected as the settlement currency for transactions. On July 18, President Trump signed the (GENIUS Act), establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The House passed a cryptocurrency market regulation bill the day before, and the president requested that the bill be sent to the White House before August.
"We can leverage the American energy market," Prusak said, referring to the large and increasingly crypto-interested audience that Eric and Donald Jr. have. Hut 8's CFO Sean Glennan (formerly of Citigroup) stated that having an executive from one of the world's most talked-about families on stage is certainly not a bad thing in an industry that is "highly imitative."
"American Bitcoin has unique advantages, enabling it 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 "unmatched."
Will Foxley, co-founder of Blockspace Media, which focuses on Bitcoin mining, put it more bluntly: in the highly competitive Bitcoin mining industry, "there are few ways to stand out. Having the president's son involved in founding the 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, planned for purchasing Bitcoin and mining machines. Along with the Trump family's prior crypto ventures (including meme coins, stablecoins, and a $2.5 billion Bitcoin treasury investment by Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social), American Bitcoin is further consolidating the family's influence in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Today's crypto ecosystem is continuously expanding and increasingly interconnected with institutions and governments.
Reports indicate that by mid-March, the Trump family's crypto business had contributed approximately $2.9 billion to their wealth. The core goal of American Bitcoin is to accumulate Bitcoin, which could further increase the family's wealth. Firstly, by mining to acquire Bitcoin at a cost lower than market price (miners receive rewards for their computational power contributions, making it cheaper than purchasing on exchanges); secondly, 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 met with President Trump to help shape U.S. crypto policy.)
Foxley stated that when Hut 8 announced its partnership with the Trump brothers to co-found American Bitcoin, many people in the crypto mining community were caught "off guard." While meme coins like TRUMP can create hype and grab headlines, Foxley believes that Bitcoin mining is a "niche area" in the crypto space—neither appealing nor well-reported, leaving only articles criticizing its high energy consumption.
But Foxley added that, combined with the Trump administration's "America First Energy" policy, this layout makes sense. In June 2024, the president met with some of America's largest mine owners at his Mar-a-Lago campaign event to discuss how the U.S. could become the "leading country 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 the president. At the same time, President Trump ensured he could directly benefit from the industry's profits while promoting crypto-friendly legislation and planning a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve.
Although President Trump previously proposed tariffs on Chinese mining machines, which is not good news for the U.S. crypto mining industry, this policy has yet to be implemented. On May 12, American Bitcoin announced plans to go public through a merger with Nasdaq-listed company Gryphon Digital Mining. According to Gryphon's SEC filings, it "operates approximately 5,880 Bitcoin mining machines in third-party facilities in Pennsylvania," and these devices come 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 adoption.
"Like all of the Trump family's ventures, American Bitcoin aims to become an industry giant," Eric said in an interview at the May blockchain conference Consensus. 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 fulfill our mission of building the largest and most valuable long-term Bitcoin accumulation platform," Eric said.
However, Hut 8 provides the infrastructure. According to SEC filings, American Bitcoin pays Hut 8 for energy, operations, 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 massive capital" without "burdening Hut 8's balance sheet." Foxley believes that with American Bitcoin focusing on mining, Hut 8 can concentrate on supporting emerging technologies like AI, competing for "hyperscale data center users"—companies like Meta and Google that require high-energy data centers.
Since Hut 8 provides funding for the data centers, American Bitcoin only needs to procure mining machines. The company inherited an agreement from Hut 8 subsidiary Zephyr to purchase approximately 17,280 Bitmain U3S21EXPH mining machines for a maximum of $320 million. As of May 31, American Bitcoin had over 60,000 mining machines, primarily including Bitmain's Antminer S21+ series (Glennan described these mining machines as "Cadillacs... not Ferraris") as well as MicroBt's M5X and M6X series mining machines from China.
The U.S. holds 30%-40% of the world's Bitcoin hash rate, but 90% of mining machines come from China. "Bitcoin is increasingly becoming the core of America's financial ecosystem," said Sanjay Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer of Auradine (a U.S. competitor to Bitmain). As President Trump promotes the integration of Bitcoin into the American financial system, experts warn that connecting Chinese hardware to critical U.S. power infrastructure could pose security risks. For example, Bitmain is a private company linked to AI company Sophgo, which has been blacklisted by the U.S. government on security grounds (Bitmain and Sophgo share a co-founder but have not yet been placed on the entity list).
Bitcoin mining must confront increasingly harsh economic realities: it relies on price volatility, and every four years or so, the mining reward is halved. Currently, out of the 21 million Bitcoins, over 19 million 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 computing power to improve profitability, which may involve replacing old machines with more efficient new equipment or acquiring other mining companies.
All of this requires capital, and the company hopes the Trump family's name can attract funding. Although representatives from Hut 8 and American Bitcoin both claim their business is unrelated to Trump's political connections, at the May 2025 Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas, the company could not help but flaunt this association. At an event hosted by American Bitcoin, the Winklevoss twins (who each donated $1 million to Trump's 2024 campaign) and Cantor Fitzgerald Chairman Brandon Lutnick (son of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) were present.
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, telling the somewhat conservative audience, "My father has made many promises to the crypto community... (Eric and I) have shown our sincerity through all our actions in this field." The first thing he mentioned was American Bitcoin.
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