Author: Jessica Klein, Wired Magazine
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Eric Trump (the second son of President Trump and executive vice president of the Trump Organization) attended the "Bitcoin 2025" conference 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 Chief Strategy Officer Michael Ho enjoyed thin-crust pizza with Eric Trump at Trump's golf club in Jupiter, Florida. Genoot recalled that they talked for hours and proposed a business plan that extremely interested Eric Trump: forming a Bitcoin mining alliance.
The two initially met through a mutual friend 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 talked to Genoot about 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 that on April 1, American Bitcoin (abbreviated as ABTC) was established. Hut 8 holds 80% of the shares (the company claims to "manage a 1,020 megawatt energy capacity across 15 locations in the US and Canada"), while the Trump brothers (Eric and Donald Jr.) and their data center company American Data Centers' old shareholders hold 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 affiliated Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital), stated that the Trump brothers brought "two things." First, leveraging the Trump family's international business connections to access capital markets; second, in Prusak's words, a more attractive "narrative value," stemming from the Trump family name.
Although Prusak said Eric "can contact many potential partners with one phone call," he and Genoot both insisted that Eric's position does not grant them direct access to the president. They emphasized Eric's connections with large family offices and institutions. "Institutions in Europe, Canada, and even the Middle East are interested in strategic cooperation with American Bitcoin," Prusak said.
In March, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced a $2 billion investment from a fund supported by the Abu Dhabi government. Two months later, the stablecoin USD1 from the Trump family's cryptocurrency 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 delivered to the White House before August.
"We can leverage the US energy market," Prusak said, mentioning that Eric and Donald Jr. have a large audience that is increasingly interested in cryptocurrency. Hut 8's CFO Sean Glennan (formerly of Citigroup) stated that the industry he is in is "highly imitative," and having an executive from one of the world's most talked-about families on stage is certainly not a bad thing.
"American Bitcoin has a unique advantage, allowing it to expand faster and operate more efficiently than any player in the industry," Eric said 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, was more straightforward: 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 the purchase of Bitcoin and mining machines. In addition to the Trump family's previous cryptocurrency 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 consolidating the family's influence in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The current cryptocurrency ecosystem is continuously expanding and increasingly connected to institutions and governments.
According to reports, as of mid-March, the Trump family's cryptocurrency 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 are rewarded for their computational power contributions, and the cost is lower than purchasing from 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 and through which exchange, but Coinbase Prime is currently its "main market." (It is reported that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has met with President Trump to assist in formulating US cryptocurrency policies.)
Foxley stated that when Hut 8 announced its joint venture with the Trump brothers to establish American Bitcoin, many in the cryptocurrency mining circle were "caught off guard." Meme coins like TRUMP coin can create buzz and make headlines, but Foxley believes that Bitcoin mining is a "niche area" in the cryptocurrency field—neither attractive nor well-covered, leaving only articles criticizing its high energy consumption.
However, Foxley added that this layout makes sense when combined with the "America First Energy Plan" promoted by the Trump administration. In June 2024, the president met with several of the largest mining operators in the US during a campaign event at Mar-a-Lago to discuss how the US could become the "largest Bitcoin mining country." The following month, he reiterated this goal at the Nashville Bitcoin Conference.
During the 2024 election, the cryptocurrency industry invested $135 million to maintain political influence through lobbying Congress and approaching the president. President Trump, while promoting cryptocurrency-friendly legislation and planning a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve, also ensured that he could directly benefit from industry profits.
Although President Trump once proposed tariffs on Chinese mining machines, which is not good news for the US cryptocurrency mining industry, the policy has not yet been 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's goal is 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 world's largest and most efficient pure Bitcoin mining giant." 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 on its website 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 releases capital and institutional access, which will drive us to achieve our mission of building 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, 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 significant capital" and will not "burden 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 Meta and Google, which require high-energy data centers.
Since Hut 8 provides funding for data centers, American Bitcoin only needs to procure mining machines. The company inherited an agreement from Hut 8's subsidiary Zephyr to purchase approximately 17,280 Bitmain U3S21EXPH mining machines for up to $320 million. As of May 31, American Bitcoin has owned over 60,000 mining machines, mainly including Bitmain's Antminer S21+ series (Glennan described these mining machines as "Cadillacs... not Ferraris") and China's MicroBt M5X and M6X series mining machines.
The US 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 the US financial ecosystem," said Sanjay Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer of Auradine (a US competitor of Bitmain). As President Trump pushes for Bitcoin to be integrated into the US financial system, experts warn that connecting Chinese hardware to US critical power infrastructure could pose security risks.
Bitcoin mining must face increasingly tough economic realities: it relies on price fluctuations, and approximately every four years, mining rewards are 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 hash power to increase profitability, which may involve replacing old machines with more efficient new devices or acquiring other mining companies.
All of this requires capital, and the company hopes that the Trump family's name can attract funding. Although representatives from Hut 8 and American Bitcoin claim that their businesses are unrelated to Trump's political connections, the company could not help but flaunt this association at the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May 2025. At an event hosted by American Bitcoin, the Winklevoss twins (each donating $1 million to Trump's 2024 campaign) and Cantor Fitzgerald chairman Brandon Lutnick (son of US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick) were both present.
On a 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: "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.
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