Latest news with #AmericanBitcoin
WIRED
12 hours ago
- Business
- WIRED
A False Start on the Road to an All-American Bitcoin
Jun 20, 2025 5:30 AM Donald Trump pledged to cement the US as the bitcoin mining capital of the planet. The president's sweeping tariffs stand to simultaneously undermine and advance that ambition in one swoop. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES US president Donald Trump waited a beat to soak up the applause. In front of a baying crowd of bitcoiners at crypto conference Bitcoin 2024 in July, he had just laid out his plan to turn the US into the world's undisputed bitcoin mining superpower. 'I want it to be mined, minted, and made in the USA,' he told the audience. 'You're going to be very happy with me—you're going to be so happy.' Since returning to the White House, Trump has largely followed through on his crypto-related pledges: He has moved to establish a national bitcoin reserve, replaced the leader of the regulatory agency that pursued crypto firms most hotly under the prior administration, and appointed a crypto czar to help set clear rules for the industry. But with respect to bitcoin mining, the US president has so far given with one hand and taken with the other. When Trump announced punitive new tariffs on 57 countries on April 2, US-based mining companies dependent on two dominant Chinese suppliers—including American Bitcoin, the Trump family's new mining outfit—faced the prospect of spiraling hardware costs. The tariffs included a levy on shipments from China later revised to 55 percent, and tariffs between 24 and 36 percent on Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, in which Chinese firms manufacture some of their machines. But meanwhile, the tariffs promised a leg-up to smaller US manufacturers, whose American-made machines are not subject to the steep new import levies. The ability for US-based hardware makers to seize upon any tariff-related advantage will depend, though, on whether their prospective customers, the US mining firms, can withstand a period of acute economic instability that those same tariffs stand to aggravate. To guarantee supply, mining companies often enter into long-term agreements with hardware makers, so they face the prospect of paying the new import duty on unfulfilled orders with the Chinese suppliers. Already, US mining companies are pivoting to AI and other data center operations in search of more reliable profits. The aspiration for an all-American bitcoin—mined on US soil by a US company, using hardware made in the US—could fall apart at the outset. 'If things continue like they are right now, mining will continue to be pushed out of the US,' says Chris Bendiksen, bitcoin research lead at investment firm CoinShares. 'We might have seen the zenith of US mining.' In a statement to WIRED, White House spokesperson Kush Desai rejected the idea that tariffs threaten to undermine Trump's ambitions for the bitcoin mining industry. 'Two things can be accomplished at once,' he said, describing the aim to both onshore hardware manufacturing and use energy policy as a lever to reduce cost for bitcoin mining firms. Bitcoin mining is a hardware arms race: To win the right to process a batch of transactions and claim the associated bitcoin reward, mining companies compete in a race to solve a computational puzzle. To ensure their fleet is sufficiently powerful to beat out competitors, miners must constantly replace old and weatherbeaten hardware with the latest, most advanced machines. In the mining hardware market, two Chinese manufacturers—Bitmain and MicroBT—are king. The pair are estimated by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), an offshoot of the University of Cambridge, to control a combined 97 percent of the market. Plenty of challengers have tried to break the oligopoly, but failed to compete on hardware performance or reach the necessary economies of scale. 'The road is lined with the corpses of people who have tried that,' says Bendiksen. However, the pressure applied to mining companies buying from Chinese hardware suppliers under the new tariff regime has forced some to confront their import dependency—and search for a workaround. The company best placed to take advantage is Auradine, a Santa Clara–based mining hardware manufacturer, analysts say. In its three years in operation, Auradine has failed to wrench market share away from Bitmain and MicroBT, which have wielded pricing power to preserve their dominant position, Auradine has previously alleged. MicroBT did not respond to a request for comment. 'We welcome fair competition, because when miners win the whole ecosystem grows,' says Irene Gao, president of mining at Bitmain.) But since Trump announced the new tariffs, Auradine has fielded an influx of requests from US mining firms wanting to diversify their hardware fleets, claims Rajiv Khemani, its cofounder and CEO. Though there are small hardware challengers other than Auradine—among them Bitfury, Iceriver, iPollo, and BIT Mining—none were founded in the US. 'We have a very strong pull,' claims Khemani. 'We are seeing incredible interest in our customer base in making sure that in whatever environment we end up in, mining operators are hedged' against tariff risk. To capitalize, Auradine recently released an updated and extended range of bitcoin mining hardware, and raised an additional $153 million in Series C funding. The company will soon announce new high-profile customers signed in the wake of Trump's tariff announcement, according to Khemani. The company's headline client is US-based MARA Holdings, a publicly traded bitcoin mining firm that helped to launch Auradine and now owns an $85.4 million equity stake in the business. Though Auradine products account for only a small proportion of the hardware deployed at MARA facilities, they make up around half of the machines the mining company has ordered in 2025, says Fred Thiel, MARA CEO. 'In an environment where you have geopolitical risk and tariff risk and can buy a US-made miner at the same price as a Chinese-made miner, would you buy the US-made miner, all else being equal? Yes,' says Thiel. 'If the next shoe to drop is a prohibition of import of Chinese miners and you have placed a $300 million order and paid a deposit, you are in a difficult situation.' The degree to which Auradine stands to gain by the tariffs, however, will depend to some extent on the ability of US-based mining firms to withstand the weight of those same tariffs, as applied to their preexisting hardware orders. The timing could barely be less opportune: Though the rising price of bitcoin has helped, other factors—fierce competition, a slump in transaction fees, diminishing bitcoin rewards, and so on—have whittled down margins for mining companies, analysts say. Mining firms are also facing heightened competition for limited energy resources in the US, mostly from AI companies flush with venture funding. New projections from the US Department of Energy indicate that, by 2028, AI could consume the equivalent amount of electricity as 22 percent of US households. 'Miners have always been scrappy buyers. They are kind of the vultures of the power grid,' says Bendiksen. 'The AI companies are outbidding—they are just willing to pay more.' The tariff hikes alone are not enough to drive bitcoin miners out of the US; by comparison to the price of energy, say, the cost of a hardware import levy has only a small impact on the viability of a mining operation, claims Thiel. But as an aggravating factor in an already unfavorable environment, they matter. 'Typically, this type of shock would lead to consolidation,' says Thiemo Fetzer, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick, referring to the tariffs. 'A priori, one would expect a cull of small miners because of the rising cost of equipment and greater supply chain uncertainty.' Bitcoin mining firms operating in the US—including Riot Platforms, Bitfarms, MARA, CoreWeave, Core Scientific, Hut 8, Iris Energy, and others—are already scrambling to diversify out of the mining market, reworking their facilities to accommodate AI training and high-performance computing. Only few large outfits, like CleanSpark, remain committed to bitcoin mining exclusively. 'Most of the miners are throwing in the towel,' says Bendiksen. 'I think a lot of people were going down this route before the tariffs. But tariffs have probably confirmed the validity of that strategy.' Some, among them MARA, are choosing to expand their mining operations into countries other than the US, negating tariff risk. 'Why do you want to have a lot of international business? It eliminates single-bullet regime risk,' says Thiel. 'I'm a big believer in you have to have optionality as a bitcoin miner.' Meanwhile, Bitmain and MicroBT are ramping up manufacturing capacity within the US, potentially eroding part of the value proposition—tariff immunity—currently pushing buyers towards companies like Auradine. 'We're actively investing in the US, including manufacturing,' says Gao. For now, bitcoin mining firms are in a holding pattern. Until the 90-day pause on Trump's new tariffs comes to an end in July, the extent of their financial impact will remain uncertain—and firms are delaying hardware procurement decisions accordingly. 'I think people are looking at where things will bottom out on the tariffs,' says Khemani. On their face, Trump's tariffs stand at odds with his stated ambitions for the US bitcoin mining industry, even as his own sons forge into the sector. 'The tariffs are clearly destructive,' claims Bendiksen. To achieve both ends—to drive business towards US-based bitcoin mining hardware makers, whilst lending support to bitcoin mining firms facing deteriorating economics in the US—would require Trump to pull on other levers to balance out the impact of tariffs. One option would be to prioritize the buildout of new energy generation capacity, analysts say, creating an abundance that in theory would drive down a major input cost for bitcoin mining. The Trump administration claims that a raft of recent executive orders will combine to reduce energy costs in the US. But so far, the picture on the ground—the deprioritization of bitcoin mining among US firms—indicates that Trump's message about the prospect of all-American bitcoin is 'basically just words,' claims Bendiksen. 'It's just pandering to nationalist feelings.'
Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
The Trumps Promote a New Crypto Venture: Bitcoin Mining
Live Events BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM. END OPTIONAL TRIM. STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS. (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel On a Wall Street conference call in April, Eric Trump made a pitch for the newest venture in his family's rapidly expanding cryptocurrency the president's second son, said he was joining forces with the crypto firm Hut 8 to start a company focused on bitcoin mining, the business of running energy-guzzling machines to generate new mining is a notoriously difficult industry. But in the pitch, Trump made clear that the policies of his father's administration would give the new company, American Bitcoin , a "competitive advantage.""We're doing it in America with a government that's dedicated to low-cost energy," he said, later adding, "We've got the best energy policy in this country. That policy is only getting better."Virtually every aspect of the Trump family's business portfolio is fraught with conflicts of interest that have blurred the boundary between government and industry. The debut of American Bitcoin, which is set to merge with a publicly traded company later this year, has heightened those concerns, introducing new ethical questions and pulling the Trumps even deeper into crypto, a business the White House has aggressively Donald Trump is financially intertwined with two other crypto ventures -- a so-called meme coin created by a longtime business partner, and a separate company, World Liberty Financial , that he and his sons founded before the election. At the same time, he has ended a yearslong enforcement campaign against crypto companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission and vowed to sign legislation that would advance the industry's his family is seeking to profit from a branch of the industry tied directly to bitcoin, a famously volatile asset that has seen its price surge based on the president's pronouncements. Eric Trump serves as chief strategy officer for American Bitcoin. A business entity he formed with his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., controls 20% of the new the past month, the Trump brothers have embarked on a promotional tour, trumpeting American Bitcoin at high-profile corporate conferences in Las Vegas and Toronto, where a giant company banner hung over the convention new venture could soon become an important source of capital for the Trump family. American Bitcoin has a stash of 215 bitcoin, worth about $22.5 million at current prices, with plans to accumulate more. And once the company's shares become available on Wall Street, it will offer another avenue for traders to invest in a Trump entity."They're doing this because they want to make money," said Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee . "In so many ways, it's a conflict."In the crypto world, mining serves a vital purpose. A central appeal of bitcoin is that it allows people to transfer money without a bank overseeing the exchange. Instead, a loose network of computers across the globe run calculations that verify every transaction -- a process known as "mining" because the computers are rewarded for that work with newly generated computing power necessary to run these machines is enormous. The constant whirring of bitcoin miners has prompted noise complaints in states like Arkansas, where mining facilities have popped up near small communities. For years, environmental groups have argued that the energy-intensive practices of miners have contributed to climate the business is growing. Many prominent bitcoin mining companies have been traded on the public market for years, including MARA Holdings , Core Scientific and Riot Platforms, which are worth more than $12 billion of those firms have profited from the Trump year, the White House announced the creation of a national bitcoin stockpile and other pro-crypto policies, propelling bitcoin to a record price. Mining companies could be poised for even bigger gains if the president follows through on his campaign promises to reduce the cost of energy sources that help power mining operations."With low energy cost, America will become the world's undisputed bitcoin mining powerhouse," Trump declared on the campaign trail last Trump family's bitcoin business is also likely to intersect with trade policies dictated by the White House. In a recent securities filing, Gryphon Digital Mining , the firm chosen to merge with American Bitcoin, warned that tariffs could hinder the new company's efforts to "import equipment at levels that are cost effective."The majority of bitcoin mining firms buy machines from Chinese providers, said Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA, a publicly traded mining firm."I do find it rather comical that American Bitcoin is running all Chinese equipment," Thiel White House maintains that Trump has no conflicts of interest, noting that his assets have been placed in a trust managed by his children. In a text message, Eric Trump said he was "incredibly proud" of American Bitcoin. "We're mining the American dream!" he Bitcoin's leaders have said Eric Trump is not acting as an extension of his father's administration. He is a "private businessman for sure" and "not related to anything on the political side," Mike Ho, the company's executive chair, said at a conference last month.A spokesperson for Hut 8, Gautier Lemyze-Young, said in a statement that Trump's role in the company was to provide "commercial acumen.""Like every industry and company in the United States, we stand to benefit from the administration's pro-business policies," the statement Trump, 41, has spent most of his career in real estate. But lately, bitcoin has "truly become a love of mine," he said in the Las Vegas conference, Trump recounted a formative conversation with Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy, a publicly traded software firm that has accumulated tens of billions of dollars of a year ago, he recalled, Saylor told him that he should "take $2 billion out of Mar-a-Lago right now" and "go long bitcoin."Trump did not mortgage his father's Florida club. But in recent months, he has become the face of the family's crypto ventures, traveling the world to promote World Liberty February, an investment firm that Eric Trump helps run, Dominari Holdings, announced the creation of a business entity called American Data Centers. Six weeks later, American Data Centers joined with Hut 8 to establish American Bitcoin. A presentation on the new venture's website called Trump a "strategic amplifier" with "exceptional network reach."The company's unveiling took place at a delicate moment. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had heavily endorsed bitcoin, writing on Truth Social that mining firms would help the United States become "ENERGY DOMINANT!!!"But like many businesses, the bitcoin mining industry was plunged into uncertainty this year, when the White House announced 145% tariffs on China, as well as import taxes targeting dozens of other countries. The market for a crucial type of hardware used in bitcoin mining is dominated by Bitmain, a Chinese manufacturer, according to Stephen Glagola, a mining analyst at 8 was among the likely casualties of the tariffs. A subsidiary of the company has a deal with Bitmain to purchase as much as $320 million of the Chinese firm's mining machinery, according to securities filings. It's possible some of those machines had arrived in the United States before the tariffs were issued. But a recent filing suggested that not all the supplies had been delivered and that the deal's official price tag did not include any "applicable tariffs.""That does imply there might be some tariff impact," Glagola did not respond to requests for comment, and Hut 8 did not address detailed questions about the hardware deal. Lemyze-Young, the Hut 8 spokesperson, said the company sources "some equipment and materials overseas, including China" and complies with the end, the president rolled back the Chinese tariffs. That same day, his sons announced that American Bitcoin would pursue a public is no evidence that the company's reliance on Bitmain's machines played any role in the tariff debate. But the announcements vividly illustrated how the Trumps' business interests are intertwined with policies set by the White of this appears to have deterred Eric Trump. At the Las Vegas conference in May, he took the stage alongside his older brother and predicted that bitcoin would reach a price of at least $170,000 by next year."We have a president who loves this industry and is behind this industry 100%," he said. "And guys, I'm telling you, we as a family could not be more excited about this."This article originally appeared in The New York Times
Hans India
3 days ago
- Business
- Hans India
Trump Family Unveils T1 Smartphone and Trump Mobile Network, Emphasizing ‘Made in America'
In a bold move into the tech world, the Trump family has officially launched a new smartphone and mobile service under the Trump brand. Announced on Monday, June 16, the T1 smartphone and the Trump Mobile network mark the latest additions to the Trump Organization's expanding business portfolio, which already includes real estate, hospitality, digital media, and cryptocurrency. According to the Trump Organisation, the newly unveiled T1 smartphone is described as 'a sleek, gold smartphone engineered for performance and proudly designed and built in the United States.' The phone is currently available for pre-order across the United States for a $100 deposit, with full pricing set at $499. Sales are expected to begin in August or September this year. The T1 phone sports a luxurious gold finish, featuring the T1 logo and an American flag on the rear, offering a patriotic design tailored to Trump's base. The hardware includes a 6.78-inch 120Hz OLED display, 12GB RAM, and 256GB of expandable storage. It is equipped with a 5000mAh battery and a 3.5mm headphone jack, appealing to users who value both performance and legacy features. The camera system includes a 50MP primary sensor, along with 2MP macro and depth sensors. However, there's no ultrawide lens, and the chipset details remain undisclosed. The device will run Android 15 out of the box. Complementing the phone is the Trump Mobile wireless service, which currently offers a single plan named 'The 47 Plan', likely a reference to Donald Trump's bid to become the 47th President of the United States. The plan costs $47.45 per month and includes unlimited calls, texts, and data, in addition to 24/7 telehealth access and roadside assistance. The mobile service can also be used with other smartphones, not just the T1. As per reports from The Verge, Trump Mobile operates as an MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) through Liberty Mobile, leveraging T-Mobile's network infrastructure, much like Mint Mobile or Metro. MVNOs rent network access from larger carriers to offer competitive service plans. Trump's son Eric Trump, speaking on Fox News, called the initiative a game-changer, stating, 'Trump Mobile is going to revolutionize cellphones, mobile calling.' While the project showcases a strong nationalist theme and tech independence, it could also reignite concerns over ethical boundaries and political conflicts, especially given that some regulatory decisions may fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC, chaired by Brendan Carr—a Trump appointee closely tied to the administration. This development follows a string of tech-related ventures from the Trump brand, including ventures into cryptocurrency with meme coins and American Bitcoin, a Trump-supported crypto mining company preparing for a public offering. As the Trump family continues to fuse politics with business, the T1 smartphone and Trump Mobile may appeal to a niche but loyal demographic looking for American-made alternatives in the mobile market.
Miami Herald
4 days ago
- Business
- Miami Herald
The Trumps promote a new crypto venture: Bitcoin mining
On a Wall Street conference call in April, Eric Trump made a pitch for the newest venture in his family's rapidly expanding cryptocurrency empire. Trump, the president's second son, said he was joining forces with the crypto firm Hut 8 to start a company focused on bitcoin mining, the business of running energy-guzzling machines to generate new coins. Bitcoin mining is a notoriously difficult industry. But in the pitch, Trump made clear that the policies of his father's administration would give the new company, American Bitcoin, a 'competitive advantage.' 'We're doing it in America with a government that's dedicated to low-cost energy,' he said, later adding, 'We've got the best energy policy in this country. That policy is only getting better.' Virtually every aspect of the Trump family's business portfolio is fraught with conflicts of interest that have blurred the boundary between government and industry. The debut of American Bitcoin, which is set to merge with a publicly traded company later this year, has heightened those concerns, introducing new ethical questions and pulling the Trumps even deeper into crypto, a business the White House has aggressively championed. President Donald Trump is financially intertwined with two other crypto ventures -- a so-called meme coin created by a longtime business partner, and a separate company, World Liberty Financial, that he and his sons founded before the election. At the same time, he has ended a yearslong enforcement campaign against crypto companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission and vowed to sign legislation that would advance the industry's priorities. Now his family is seeking to profit from a branch of the industry tied directly to bitcoin, a famously volatile asset that has seen its price surge based on the president's pronouncements. Eric Trump serves as chief strategy officer for American Bitcoin. A business entity he formed with his older brother, Donald Trump Jr., controls 20% of the new company. Over the past month, the Trump brothers have embarked on a promotional tour, trumpeting American Bitcoin at high-profile corporate conferences in Las Vegas and Toronto, where a giant company banner hung over the convention hall. The new venture could soon become an important source of capital for the Trump family. American Bitcoin has a stash of 215 bitcoin, worth about $22.5 million at current prices, with plans to accumulate more. And once the company's shares become available on Wall Street, it will offer another avenue for traders to invest in a Trump entity. 'They're doing this because they want to make money,' said Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. 'In so many ways, it's a conflict.' In the crypto world, mining serves a vital purpose. A central appeal of bitcoin is that it allows people to transfer money without a bank overseeing the exchange. Instead, a loose network of computers across the globe run calculations that verify every transaction -- a process known as 'mining' because the computers are rewarded for that work with newly generated bitcoin. The computing power necessary to run these machines is enormous. The constant whirring of bitcoin miners has prompted noise complaints in states like Arkansas, where mining facilities have popped up near small communities. For years, environmental groups have argued that the energy-intensive practices of miners have contributed to climate change. But the business is growing. Many prominent bitcoin mining companies have been traded on the public market for years, including MARA Holdings, Core Scientific and Riot Platforms, which are worth more than $12 billion combined. All of those firms have profited from the Trump presidency. This year, the White House announced the creation of a national bitcoin stockpile and other pro-crypto policies, propelling bitcoin to a record price. Mining companies could be poised for even bigger gains if the president follows through on his campaign promises to reduce the cost of energy sources that help power mining operations. 'With low energy cost, America will become the world's undisputed bitcoin mining powerhouse,' Trump declared on the campaign trail last year. The Trump family's bitcoin business is also likely to intersect with trade policies dictated by the White House. In a recent securities filing, Gryphon Digital Mining, the firm chosen to merge with American Bitcoin, warned that tariffs could hinder the new company's efforts to 'import equipment at levels that are cost effective.' The majority of bitcoin mining firms buy machines from Chinese providers, said Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA, a publicly traded mining firm. 'I do find it rather comical that American Bitcoin is running all Chinese equipment,' Thiel said. The White House maintains that Trump has no conflicts of interest, noting that his assets have been placed in a trust managed by his children. In a text message, Eric Trump said he was 'incredibly proud' of American Bitcoin. 'We're mining the American dream!' he wrote. American Bitcoin's leaders have said Eric Trump is not acting as an extension of his father's administration. He is a 'private businessman for sure' and 'not related to anything on the political side,' Mike Ho, the company's executive chair, said at a conference last month. A spokesperson for Hut 8, Gautier Lemyze-Young, said in a statement that Trump's role in the company was to provide 'commercial acumen.' 'Like every industry and company in the United States, we stand to benefit from the administration's pro-business policies,' the statement said. Eric Trump, 41, has spent most of his career in real estate. But lately, bitcoin has 'truly become a love of mine,' he said in April. At the Las Vegas conference, Trump recounted a formative conversation with Michael Saylor, co-founder of Strategy, a publicly traded software firm that has accumulated tens of billions of dollars of bitcoin. About a year ago, he recalled, Saylor told him that he should 'take $2 billion out of Mar-a-Lago right now' and 'go long bitcoin.' Trump did not mortgage his father's Florida club. But in recent months, he has become the face of the family's crypto ventures, traveling the world to promote World Liberty Financial. In February, an investment firm that Eric Trump helps run, Dominari Holdings, announced the creation of a business entity called American Data Centers. Six weeks later, American Data Centers joined with Hut 8 to establish American Bitcoin. A presentation on the new venture's website called Trump a 'strategic amplifier' with 'exceptional network reach.' The company's unveiling took place at a delicate moment. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump had heavily endorsed bitcoin, writing on Truth Social that mining firms would help the United States become 'ENERGY DOMINANT!!!' But like many businesses, the bitcoin mining industry was plunged into uncertainty this year, when the White House announced 145% tariffs on China, as well as import taxes targeting dozens of other countries. The market for a crucial type of hardware used in bitcoin mining is dominated by Bitmain, a Chinese manufacturer, according to Stephen Glagola, a mining analyst at JonesTrading. Hut 8 was among the likely casualties of the tariffs. A subsidiary of the company has a deal with Bitmain to purchase as much as $320 million of the Chinese firm's mining machinery, according to securities filings. It's possible some of those machines had arrived in the United States before the tariffs were issued. But a recent filing suggested that not all the supplies had been delivered and that the deal's official price tag did not include any 'applicable tariffs.' 'That does imply there might be some tariff impact,' Glagola said. Bitmain did not respond to requests for comment, and Hut 8 did not address detailed questions about the hardware deal. Lemyze-Young, the Hut 8 spokesperson, said the company sources 'some equipment and materials overseas, including China' and complies with tariffs. In the end, the president rolled back the Chinese tariffs. That same day, his sons announced that American Bitcoin would pursue a public offering. There is no evidence that the company's reliance on Bitmain's machines played any role in the tariff debate. But the announcements vividly illustrated how the Trumps' business interests are intertwined with policies set by the White House. None of this appears to have deterred Eric Trump. At the Las Vegas conference in May, he took the stage alongside his older brother and predicted that bitcoin would reach a price of at least $170,000 by next year. 'We have a president who loves this industry and is behind this industry 100%,' he said. 'And guys, I'm telling you, we as a family could not be more excited about this.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
New York Times
4 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
The Trumps Promote a New Crypto Venture: Bitcoin Mining
On a Wall Street conference call in April, Eric Trump made a pitch for the newest venture in his family's rapidly expanding cryptocurrency empire. Mr. Trump, the president's second son, said he was joining forces with the crypto firm Hut 8 to start a company focused on Bitcoin mining, the business of running energy-guzzling machines to generate new coins. Bitcoin mining is a notoriously difficult industry. But in the pitch, Mr. Trump made clear that the policies of his father's administration would give the new company, American Bitcoin, a 'competitive advantage.' 'We're doing it in America with a government that's dedicated to low-cost energy,' he said, later adding, 'We've got the best energy policy in this country. That policy is only getting better.' Virtually every aspect of the Trump family's business portfolio is fraught with conflicts of interest that have blurred the boundary between government and industry. The debut of American Bitcoin, which is set to merge with a publicly traded company later this year, has heightened those concerns, introducing new ethical questions and pulling the Trumps even deeper into crypto, a business the White House has aggressively championed. President Trump is already financially intertwined with two other crypto ventures — a so-called meme coin created by a longtime business partner, and a separate company, World Liberty Financial, that he and his sons founded before the election. At the same time, he has ended a yearslong enforcement campaign against crypto companies by the Securities and Exchange Commission and vowed to sign legislation that would advance the industry's priorities. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
