The truth about Trump's second son's Bitcoin game: he made a fortune of $100 million, retail investors lost $500 million.

Title: How Eric Trump Got Rich From Bitcoin While Losing Investors a Fortune

Author: Dan Alexander, Forbes

Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

This time, Eric Trump brought this approach into the cryptocurrency world. He packaged his Bitcoin company as a “money-printing machine,” claiming the company could mine Bitcoin at nearly half the market price.

But when Forbes reporter Dan Alexander opened the books, the story revealed another side: 70% of the Bitcoin held by this company was not mined but bought with additional stock issuance; the true overall cost was far higher than Eric’s quoted figures; and the financing structure that made the balance sheet look better might also mean that all Bitcoin mined so far will have to be sold in bulk to pay for mining equipment bills in the future.

The numbers ultimately point to a more direct conclusion: Eric’s personal wealth increased by about $90 million, while ordinary investors collectively lost about $500 million.

After the report was released, Eric Trump quickly responded on X, accusing Forbes of being bought by China, claiming the report was politically motivated propaganda, and citing a string of operational data to counter: 7,000 Bitcoin, nearly 90k mining machines, and Q4 revenue of $78.3 million. Incidentally, he also brought up an old story from twenty years ago about fundraising for a children’s hospital, trying to prove that Forbes has always targeted “good people” like him.

There is only one thing he has consistently not responded to directly: where did the $500 million go?

Below is the original text:

Eric Trump stirs up the crowd. Photo: Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

The ability to incite a crowd isn’t just useful in politics. Ask Eric Trump: his Bitcoin company attracted a large following, then dumped a bunch of overpriced stocks on them.

In February this year, Eric Trump appeared energetic at a quarterly earnings call, ready to do what the Trump family does best—sell.

His company, “American Bitcoin,” had just gone public on Nasdaq a year earlier. “We are rapidly becoming a leader in the Bitcoin world, I truly believe we have the strongest brand,” Eric said, “I want to thank Mike (Mike Ho), Asher (Asher Genoot), Matt (Matt Prusak), and everyone at American Bitcoin.”

Note: Mike Ho is CEO of American Bitcoin and also serves as Chief Strategy Officer at Hut 8. Asher Genoot is Chairman of American Bitcoin, co-founder of Hut 8, and led the partnership deal with the Trump family. Matt Prusak is President of American Bitcoin, a former Hut 8 employee, assigned from Hut 8.

This closing remark is quite telling. Saying “everyone” is because American Bitcoin has almost no other staff.

A month after the earnings call, the annual report showed the company had only two full-time employees—probably just CEO Mike Ho and President Matt Prusak. Maybe a few more—Ho also holds an executive role at another company; someone who served in investor relations there for less than a year now lists himself on LinkedIn as “Chief of Staff” at American Bitcoin; another woman says she’s been the social media manager since January this year. (Chairman Asher Genoot, Ho, and three independent directors form a five-member board.)

The Trump family quickly learned a pattern: exaggerating the facts is profitable.

It’s said that Donald’s father, Fred Trump, once defrauded regulators by inflating project costs for profit. Donald Trump himself inflated asset values to banks and media like Forbes, ultimately being found guilty of fraud by a New York judge. Eric was also involved in that lawsuit, barred for two years from serving as an executive or director of any New York-registered company. Nevertheless, he started anew, registering in Delaware, basing himself in Florida, and marketing himself in a way that even his ancestors would admire.

Note: Fred Trump was Donald Trump’s father, a New York real estate developer suspected of inflating construction costs to increase profits.

Eric Trump’s latest Bitcoin venture may be more about storytelling than a real business. According to him, American Bitcoin can mine Bitcoin at about half the market price, making it a genuine “money-printing machine.” But scrutinizing the numbers raises doubts: can this company actually profit from mining, let alone sustain such astonishing margins? Representatives of Eric Trump, the Trump Organization, and American Bitcoin did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Many believe in the son of the president, and real money has already been invested. On September 3, 2025, American Bitcoin went public, with about $270 million worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet, and a market valuation of $13.2 billion.

Over the past eight months, American Bitcoin has continued to sell stock and buy more Bitcoin at this absurdly high valuation. The stock price, after a sharp decline, has fallen 92% from its peak. Eric Trump initially entered with almost no cost, but now, through financial alchemy, his personal wealth has grown from about $190 million to $280 million. Other insiders have also profited handsomely. In contrast, ordinary investors who bought into the story with real money have collectively lost an estimated $500 million.

Eric Trump (left) was once seen as a charitable figure, launching fundraising campaigns at his father’s golf courses shortly after graduating from college to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Photo: Bobby Bank/WireImage

Eric Trump’s first truly independent project wasn’t an apartment building but a charity.

In 2006, he graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in finance and management, full of enthusiasm to change the world. At that time, his brother Don Jr. and sister Ivanka had already moved into Trump Tower, involved in real estate projects. One day, while driving on a highway in New Jersey, Eric recalled in an interview with Forbes that a sudden thought crossed his mind: how can I truly do something for the world? This marked the start of his earliest entrepreneurial effort—a nonprofit called “Eric Trump Foundation.”

This organization did a lot of good. It was more of a fundraising platform than an operational charity, channeling over $16 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. But over time, both the organization and Eric himself began to become more “Trump-like.”

Forbes obtained documents through a public records request (despite objections from the nonprofit’s legal team) showing that the organization displayed dishonest fundraising language, weak governance, and chaotic financials. Eric claimed to donors that he kept expenses minimal, almost all funds went directly to St. Jude, partly because his father provided free use of Trump-owned clubs’ venues, and celebrities agreed to perform pro bono. But checks and invoices obtained by Forbes showed that over $500k went to other charities, over $500k to Trump-owned businesses, at least $90k paid to performers, and over $35k to a chauffeur service—including passengers like Eric’s mother, a “Real Housewives” actress, and a van full of people heading to the Hooters restaurant.

In his father’s daily business, Eric initially focused on hotel operations, learning many lessons—including a key insight: branding a business is far easier than building buildings.

Trump Organization had defaulted on a loan for its Chicago hotel in 2008, filed for bankruptcy protection for Atlantic City assets in 2009, and its Washington, D.C., hotel had been losing money for years. Eventually, the Trump family shifted its hotel empire’s expansion to what industry calls “light assets,” moving from development to management and branding.

Another training ground for Eric was his father’s golf course investment portfolio, where he learned the tricks of unconventional financing. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, golf clubs often charged initiation deposits, promising to return them interest-free after thirty years. These liabilities appeared on the books, discouraging many investors from selling the properties. But Donald Trump was fearless, ultimately taking on about $250 million of such liabilities, capturing income from over a dozen golf courses across the U.S., while long-term liabilities were kept off his personal balance sheet. When repayment was due, the value of these properties had long surpassed the debt.

In January 2017, Donald Trump took office, and Eric and his brother Don Jr. took over their father’s assets. Eric seemed to have little personal plan, just hoping to follow the existing pattern. “We’re not the kind of company that sells assets,” he told Forbes in an interview in February 2017 at Trump Tower, “We buy, manage them well.” The Trump brothers tried to expand into new businesses, including launching two mid-range hotel brands, but with limited success. Amid tough operations and their father’s cash crunch, they did a lot of what Eric said he wouldn’t do: selling assets, totaling an estimated $411 million.

Then, a new opportunity arose: the 2024 election.

Returning to the White House meant new business opportunities. President Trump’s children attended his second inauguration on January 20, 2025. Photo: Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images

Just two weeks after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, the company that later became American Bitcoin was quietly registered in Delaware. It wasn’t initially a cryptocurrency bureau. Dubai developer Hussain Sajwani, who had partnered with the Trump family on golf projects in Dubai, appeared at Mar-a-Lago, announcing a $20 billion plan to build data centers in the U.S., riding the wave of AI hype. “That guy knows what he’s doing,” the future president praised. Within weeks, Trump’s two sons revealed plans to follow this strategy, naming the company “American Data Centers,” with Eric Trump claiming it was “crucial for the development of U.S. AI infrastructure.”

A month later, he changed course. Through mutual friends, Eric and Don Jr. met two entrepreneurs: Asher Genoot and Mike Ho. These two already owned a company similar to what the Trump brothers envisioned—Hut 8, a data center giant with AI exposure and significant Bitcoin mining capacity. As the AI boom approached, Bitcoin rewards for solving mathematical problems halved, and mining costs soared. Industry-wide, much of the computing power shifted to AI, and Hut 8’s institutional shareholders pressured Genoot to follow the trend.

But Genoot and Ho, leveraging their backgrounds in brand management and arbitrage trading, came up with a more creative solution: using a 20% stake in their Bitcoin mining hardware as bait, convincing the Trump brothers to abandon the data center plan. Then, with the family’s involvement, they integrated this hardware into a publicly traded company, igniting a Trump-driven hype machine.

This deal structure was tailor-made, as if designed for someone familiar with hotel business. The machines roared day and night, but American Bitcoin’s operation resembled a light-asset hotel brand: Hut 8 owned properties, managed data centers, handled back-end operations, and even the executives were sent from Hut 8—Prusak had worked there, Ho still did, serving as both American Bitcoin CEO and Hut 8 Chief Strategy Officer. This allowed the Trump brothers to focus solely on their strength: sales.

“I’ll never forget telling them, ‘Listen, the name has to have two words,’” Eric Trump later recalled in a CoinDesk video interview, “It has to have ‘America,’ it has to have ‘Bitcoin.’” One of them said, “Eric, let’s call it American Bitcoin. That’s the name.”

On the day American Bitcoin went public, investor enthusiasm soared, and Eric Trump’s personal wealth was estimated to surpass $1 billion. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Ever since Eric Trump entered the crypto scene, he’s been telling a myth about why he got involved. “Every bank in this country blacklisted me,” he said at a Wyoming conference last August. “Because my father is a politician, we faced de-banking,” he added a week later in Hong Kong. “Every major bank started closing our accounts,” he claimed earlier this year in Palm Beach, “You know what we did? We went out and entered decentralized finance because we realized that’s the future of finance.”

But that’s not quite true.

Indeed, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase closed some of Trump’s accounts in 2021, six years after he entered politics. At that time, his reputation was battered by the Capitol Hill riot and extensive investigations by New York Attorney General, with courts ultimately ruling Trump Organization engaged in fraud and likely to do so again.

Still, many banks were willing to work with the Trump family—JPMorgan, after closing some accounts, participated in refinancing two of Trump’s largest loans. With cash tight and leverage high after leaving office, he needed support from major lenders, and he got it: from January 2021 to mid-2022, the former president, with help from his sons Eric and Don Jr., completed nearly $700 million in debt refinancing as part of a full balance sheet restructuring.

So why did Trump really enter the crypto space? A more plausible explanation is that he sensed an extension of his licensing business—selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs), just like sneakers and guitars. He started with NFT trading cards, launching digital images depicting Trump as a superhero. The products sold out in a day, bringing in over $7 million in cash and crypto—crucial for a man facing nearly $500 million in fraud judgments. (Later, an appellate judge overturned that ruling, citing disputes over fines, but did not deny Trump’s fraudulent conduct.) Subsequent crypto projects added billions in liquidity, fueling the Trump family’s bets, including a plan announced last May to spend about $2 billion on cryptocurrencies through Trump Media & Technology Group.

In 2025, Bitcoin accumulation became the hottest trade of the year. Over 200 listed companies scrambled to copy Michael Saylor’s strategy—his company amassed over $50 billion worth of Bitcoin, with its market cap soaring during Bitcoin rallies and plunging recently. American Bitcoin stood out in this frenzy, thanks to the Trump family halo. But on the day American Bitcoin went public on September 3, 2025, Eric Trump took the stage in a Spaces chat on X, offering a more data-driven narrative. “Our actual cost to mine Bitcoin each day is about $57k or $58k per coin,” he said, noting that the market price was roughly twice that, “Our fundamentals are better than ever.”

This argument sounds convincing, even though the speaker had long been accustomed to selectively ignoring unfavorable expenses during charity fundraisers. Over $50,000 indeed covered operational costs of American Bitcoin’s equipment. But when including other expenses—buying equipment, marketing, capital allocation—the total costs soared to a much higher figure, roughly $92k per Bitcoin at the time, only profitable if cryptocurrency prices stay high.

Depreciation is especially critical in American Bitcoin’s case because it adopted Hut 8’s unconventional financing strategy. Between August and September 2025, American Bitcoin spent about $330 million upgrading its mining fleet. But instead of paying cash upfront, the company pledged some Bitcoin and gained an option on the final payment: if Bitcoin prices rose, it could pay about $330 million in cash and redeem the pledged Bitcoin; if prices fell, it could settle with the pledged crypto directly.

Since this large purchase, Bitcoin has fallen about 30%. This means American Bitcoin is likely to pay for equipment using the pledged crypto assets. But the problem is: as of March 25, the company pledged 3,090 Bitcoin, yet has only mined about 1,800. In other words, if prices don’t recover, all the Bitcoin mined so far will be used to settle equipment costs when the options expire around August 2027, leaving nothing for shareholders.

Investors may not realize this. The company still has about 15 months to decide whether to pay in crypto or cash, and during this period, the mined Bitcoin remains on the balance sheet. The result is that American Bitcoin appears far more stable than it actually is. The company promotes this Bitcoin reserve as a core asset but deliberately downplays a fact: most or all of it will eventually be used to pay for the machines that mined it.

Beyond marketing appeal, it’s easy to see why the Trump family is interested in this payment method—they once built a portfolio of golf courses using similar unconventional financing. They bet on it and won because the assets’ value actually increased.

Eric Trump has become a regular at major crypto conferences worldwide, pictured here attending an event in Hong Kong. Photo: Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

About 70% of the cryptocurrencies held by American Bitcoin are not mined but acquired through stock sales and direct purchases on the open market. This is the real secret behind American Bitcoin.

Why would Hut 8 willingly give up 20% of its Bitcoin mining hardware shares to a newly formed data center company? Perhaps because: in an era of meme stocks and MAGA fervor, a Trump name alone can attract enough “dumb money” to push the stock price sky-high. When the stock becomes absurdly overvalued, the company can sell its shares and reinvest the proceeds into Bitcoin, stacking up mountains of crypto.

It’s a hype-driven arbitrage game: convincing investors that the company is worth a fortune, then selling shares when the stock price is outrageously high. As long as the profits from this arbitrage exceed the value of that 20% mining hardware stake, it’s a profitable deal for insiders—while retail investors outside the circle are another story.

The sell-off started almost immediately after the IPO. Within 27 days, American Bitcoin sold 11 million shares, raising $90 million at an average of about $8 per share. After deducting broker commissions ($2 million), American Bitcoin bought about 725 Bitcoin. As the stock price declined, the selling continued. From early October to mid-November, the company sold another 7 million shares, raising $44 million at an average of just over $6 per share. In late November, after Bitcoin’s price plunged, the company sold a further 47 million shares before year-end, raising about $106 million at an average of $2.25 per share.

The sell-off wasn’t just of the company’s stock. In early December, early investors’ lock-up periods expired, and within two days, the stock plummeted 48%. Prominent supporters stepped in to boost confidence. Crypto evangelists Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss—who had donated to Trump-related super PACs and supported White House events—publicly endorsed the company.

Note: Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are American cryptocurrency investors and close to the Trump family, having publicly endorsed American Bitcoin.

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci also joined the endorsement. Host Grant Cardone claimed to be a “long-term investor, not a short-term trader,” later adding that his tweet “does not constitute investment advice.” American Bitcoin’s official social media accounts shared all these endorsements. Neither Cardone nor the Winklevoss brothers responded to requests for comment, and Scaramucci’s representatives declined to comment.

Note: Anthony Scaramucci briefly served as White House Communications Director for Trump, for only 11 days, later becoming a crypto investor and supporter of American Bitcoin. Grant Cardone is a well-known sales trainer and motivational speaker in the U.S., publicly supporting American Bitcoin on social media but disclaiming that his statements are “not investment advice.”

Bitcoin prices continued to be under pressure, especially after the Federal Reserve paused rate cuts in January. The company stuck to its original strategy. Forbes estimates that from January 1 to March 25, American Bitcoin sold 84 million shares, raising $111 million, and used that to buy about 1,430 Bitcoin. Overall, from its founding to the end of March this year, American Bitcoin’s total investment in crypto was about $525 million, with the current market value of these coins around $390 million, resulting in a cumulative loss of about $135 million for shareholders.

Eric Trump last year praised the UAE at a crypto conference in Dubai. “Other countries in the world must be alert to the UAE, for one reason only,” he told the audience, “they will always give you a ‘yes’.” Photo: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images

American Bitcoin’s mining operations are ongoing. But with Bitcoin prices down 31% since the company’s IPO, the economics are increasingly difficult. Optimized new mining rigs have reduced operating costs to about $47k per Bitcoin. But including management fees, amortization, and depreciation, the total costs still reach roughly $90k per Bitcoin—about $13k above the current market price, making profitability only possible if prices stay high.

If investors lose faith in the “money-printing” story, what’s next for Eric Trump’s company? He can pray for a sharp Bitcoin rally—since it’s a highly volatile asset. Forbes estimates that if Bitcoin rises by 35%, American Bitcoin can pay for equipment in cash, keep its pledged crypto, and turn the $135 million trading loss into a small profit. At that point, Eric can claim everything was part of the plan.

Of course, if he doesn’t want to gamble on luck, there’s another option: seek a few overseas backers eager to help. Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan has already connected with another Trump crypto project, injecting an estimated $375 million. While this investment has performed modestly financially, the UAE has gained Trump’s support for advancing its AI initiatives. Reports suggest the Gulf state is seeking some relief from U.S. economic pressures related to Iran conflicts.

Mike Ho, CEO of American Bitcoin, was last recorded as residing in the UAE in November 2023, though the company’s representatives did not respond to inquiries about his current location. Nonetheless, he appeared there in October, giving an interview to Arabian Gulf Business Insight, mentioning contacts with ADQ and TAQA—both linked to Sheikh Tahnoon. An American Bitcoin spokesperson told Forbes in October that Ho was referring to early communications before the company’s founding. Recent recordings, however, show the company is open to overseas collaborations.

“I’ve met with many sovereign wealth funds here through Hut 8, also under the name American Bitcoin,” Ho said in the recording. “The conversations are ongoing.” When asked whether they are considering Bitcoin mining in the region, Ho responded, “We’re always exploring this space. I’ve spoken with ADQ and TAQA. We’ve studied their asset portfolios. The UAE has abundant excess electricity, and Bitcoin mining is a good way to monetize that surplus.”

This statement comes from someone well aware of an arbitrage opportunity that’s too tempting to ignore.