Trump family pushes further into crypto, starting another venture

Eric Trump is listed as the chief strategy officer of the new Bitcoin-mining company. Photo / Tamir Kalifa, The New York Times

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are investing in a bitcoin-mining company called American Bitcoin, created by the merger of two firms.

Two of President Donald Trump’s sons announced Monday that they were investing in a new bitcoin mining venture, an expansion of the family’s business interests in the crypto industry.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump jnr said they would join forces with bitcoin mining company Hut 8 to create a firm called American Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining is a lucrative branch of the crypto industry, in which large companies run energy-guzzling machines that help process bitcoin transactions.

“From the start, we’ve backed our conviction in bitcoin, personally and through our businesses,” Donald Trump jnr said in a statement. “But simply buying bitcoin is only half the story. Mining it on favourable economics opens an even bigger opportunity.”

Under the terms of the deal, Hut 8 will control 80% of the new company, with the other 20% going to a business entity called American Data Centers Inc. whose investors include the two Trump sons. The announcement Monday by Hut 8 listed Eric Trump as a co-founder of the new mining venture and said he would serve as its chief strategy officer.

The mining project is the third major crypto venture that the Trump family has started over the past year. During the campaign, Donald Trump and his sons launched a crypto company, World Liberty Financial, that offers two types of digital currencies, including a so-called stablecoin unveiled last week.

Then, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, he and his wife, Melania Trump, each launched a memecoin, a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or mascot.

These business ventures have created some of the most overt conflicts of interest in the history of the US presidency, according to government ethics experts. Since taking office, Trump has relaxed enforcement of the crypto industry and announced the creation of a government stockpile of bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Four years ago, Trump was a crypto sceptic who dismissed bitcoin as a “scam”. Now, he regularly promises to turn the United States into the “crypto capital of the planet”.

Bitcoin mining has been among the most widely criticised features of the crypto industry. When bitcoin was a niche, novelty investment, anyone could run a computer program to help process bitcoin transactions, earning new bitcoins as a reward.

But as the industry grew, the amount of computing power required for mining skyrocketed. Publicly traded firms like Hut 8 run sprawling data centres packed with servers that power bitcoin transactions. These mining operations have drawn complaints from environmental organisations and people who live near the noisy machines.

The origins of the Trump family’s mining venture trace back to February, when the investment firm Dominari Holdings announced the creation of American Data Centers Inc. At the time, Eric Trump, a member of Dominari’s advisory board, said the venture was designed to develop computing infrastructure for the artificial intelligence industry.

For now, though, the objective is bitcoin mining. The Trump family’s venture will focus on running bitcoin mining machines and establishing a large stockpile of the cryptocurrency, according to the announcement. A post on the new venture’s account on the social platform X said Eric Trump would present his “vision and strategy” for American Bitcoin in a livestream Tuesday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: David Yaffe-Bellany

Photographs by: Tamir Kalifa

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