A new crypto assets mining company is emerging with the name and connections of Trump.
Written by: Jessica Klein, Wired Magazine
Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News
Eric Trump (the second son of President Trump, Executive Vice President of the Trump Organization) attended the "Bitcoin 2025" conference held in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA on May 28, 2025.
In the early days of Trump's second term, Asher Genoot, the CEO of the infrastructure company Hut 8, and Michael Ho, the Chief Strategy Officer, 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 piqued Eric Trump's interest: to form a Bitcoin mining alliance.
The two first met through mutual friends at the end of 2024: Genoot said he had shown Eric photos of the "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 (referred to as ABTC) was established. 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 Don Jr.) and their long-time shareholders from their data center company American Data Centers hold the remaining 20%. Eric serves as the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of American Bitcoin.
American Bitcoin CEO Matt Prusak (who is also the former CEO of Hut 8 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, is a more attractive "narrative value," which comes from the Trump family's name.
Although Prusak said that Eric "can reach numerous potential partners with a 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 a strategic partnership 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 crypto project World Liberty Financial was chosen as the settlement currency for transactions. On July 18, President Trump signed the GENIUS Act, establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The House passed the cryptocurrency market regulatory bill the day before, and the President requested that the bill be delivered to the White House before August.
"We are able to leverage the U.S. energy market," Prusak said, mentioning that Eric and Little Donald have a large and increasingly interested audience in Crypto Assets. Hut 8's Chief Financial Officer 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 unique advantages, allowing 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."
Blockspace Media co-founder Will Foxley, who focuses on Bitcoin mining, said it more bluntly: "In the fiercely competitive Bitcoin mining industry, there are few ways to stand out. Involving the president's son in founding the company is one of them."
From April to May 31, American Bitcoin has mined 215 bitcoins, further enhancing the Trump family's Crypto Assets business portfolio. As of July 1, American Bitcoin has raised $220 million from investors, which is planned for the purchase of bitcoins and mining machines. In addition to the Trump family's previous Crypto Assets layout (including meme coins, stablecoins, and the $2.5 billion Bitcoin treasury investment made by Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns Truth Social), American Bitcoin is further consolidating the family's influence in the Crypto Assets ecosystem. The current Crypto Assets ecosystem is continuously expanding, with increasingly close ties to institutions and governments.
According to reports, **as of mid-March, the Trump family's encryption business has contributed approximately $2.9 billion to their wealth. The core goal of American Bitcoin is to accumulate coins, **which may further increase the family's wealth. First, by mining to acquire bitcoins at a cost lower than market price (miners receive rewards for their computational power contribution, with costs lower than purchasing from exchanges); secondly, by expanding their strategic reserves of bitcoins through acquisitions.
On June 18, Prusak told Wired magazine that he could not disclose when the company began purchasing Bitcoin or which exchange it used, but Coinbase Prime is currently its "primary market." (It is reported that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong met with President Trump to assist in the formulation of U.S. crypto policy.)
Foxley stated that when Hut 8 announced the joint establishment of American Bitcoin with the Trump brothers, many in the Crypto Assets mining circle were caught "off guard." Meme coins like TRUMP coin can generate hype and make headlines, but Foxley believes that Bitcoin mining is a "niche area" in the encryption field — neither attractive nor well-reported, only leaving behind some articles criticizing its high energy consumption.
But Foxley added that, combined with the "America First Energy" policy promoted by the Trump administration, this layout makes sense. In June 2024, the president met with some of the largest miners in the United States at a campaign event in Mar-a-Lago to discuss how America can become the "largest Bitcoin mining country." The following month, he reiterated this goal at the Nashville Bitcoin Conference.
During the 2024 election, the Crypto Assets industry invested $135 million to maintain political influence through lobbying Congress and approaching the President. President Trump, while promoting crypto-friendly legislation and planning a federal Bitcoin strategic reserve, also ensured that he could directly benefit from the industry's profits.
Despite President Trump’s proposal to impose tariffs on Chinese mining machines, this is not good news for the U.S. crypto mining industry, but 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, they "operate approximately 5,880 Bitcoin mining machines at third-party facilities in Pennsylvania," and these devices come from the Chinese company Bitmain.
According to the SEC filings of American Bitcoin, 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 world's largest and most efficient pure Bitcoin mining giant." After the merger, the company's board of directors will consist of 5 members: Ho, Prusak (who is also the founder and partner of the venture capital firm Defense Angels, which claims on its website to "invest in the future of national security"), and three external directors — FabFitFun co-founder Michael Broukhim, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, 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, what Hut 8 provides is infrastructure. According to SEC filings, American Bitcoin pays Hut 8 for energy, operational, and shared service costs, including "accounting, human resources support, payroll, benefits, IT support" and legal services. Hut 8 provides mining sites for American Bitcoin (currently located in Niagara Falls, New York; Medicine Hat, Alberta; and Ola, Texas). Prusak stated that American Bitcoin can help Hut 8 "raise and deploy large amounts of capital" and will not "burden Hut 8's balance sheet." Foxley believes that with American Bitcoin focusing on mining, Hut 8 can concentrate on supporting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, competing for "hyperscale data center users"—like Meta and Google, which require high-energy data centers.
Since Hut 8 provides funding for the data center, 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 referred to these machines as "Cadillac... not Ferrari") as well as China's MicroBt M5X and M6X series mining machines.
The United States possesses 30%-40% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, but 90% of mining machines come from China. "Bitcoin is increasingly becoming the core of the American financial ecosystem," said Sanjay Gupta, Chief Strategy Officer of Auradine, a US competitor to Bitmain. As President Trump pushes for the integration of Bitcoin into the US financial system, experts warn that connecting Chinese hardware to critical US electrical infrastructure could pose security risks. For example, Bitmain is a private company with ties to the AI firm Sophgo, which has been blacklisted by the US 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 the increasingly harsh economic reality: an asset reliant on price fluctuations, with mining rewards halving approximately every four years. Currently, out of the 21 million Bitcoins, more than 19 million have already been mined.
Glennan stated that maintaining low debt and hedging risks through the Bitcoin derivatives market will help American Bitcoin "safely weather market fluctuations." The company also plans to enhance its computing power to improve profitability, which may mean replacing old machines with more efficient new equipment or acquiring other mining companies.
All of this requires capital, and the company hopes that the Trump family name can attract funding. Although representatives from Hut 8 and American Bitcoin claim that their business has no connection to Trump's political network, the company couldn't help but flaunt this association at the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May 2025. At the 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 both present.
On the stage where Vice President J.D. Vance spoke a few hours ago, Donald Trump Jr. participated in a discussion with Prusak and Ho, addressing the somewhat conservative audience: "My father made many promises to the Crypto Assets community... (Eric and I) have demonstrated our sincerity in all our actions in this field." The first thing he mentioned was American Bitcoin.
