Eric Trump, son of President Donald Trump, has partnered with Miami-based crypto infrastructure company Hut 8 to launch American Bitcoin Corp., a new Bitcoin mining venture with plans to go public. The deal, announced on Tuesday, represents the latest move in the Trump family’s growing cryptocurrency strategy.

The partnership structure gives Hut 8 an 80% ownership stake in American Bitcoin. The remaining 20% belongs to American Data Centers, a company formed by Eric and Donald Trump Jr.

As part of the agreement, Hut 8 will contribute the majority of its specialized mining equipment. This includes nearly 61,000 Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners that will be hosted at Hut 8’s data centers.

This mining venture adds to the Trump family’s rapidly expanding cryptocurrency portfolio. In recent months, the Trumps have launched World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform, in October 2024.

They’ve also developed the USD1 stablecoin in March 2025. Additionally, their social media company has announced plans to invest in Bitcoin and other digital assets.

President Trump has openly supported making the United States the “crypto capital of the world.” This support comes with concrete action, including the establishment of a government reserve for Bitcoin through an executive order earlier this month.

Eric Trump, who will serve as American Bitcoin’s chief strategy officer, expressed enthusiasm about the venture’s economic potential.

“Combine that with an asset that’s appreciated 60% year-over-year for the past decade, and a company that can mine Bitcoin at nearly half its current trading price while scaling rapidly—it’s a dynamite combination,” he told Bloomberg TV.

The venture aims to capitalize on America’s energy advantages. “That is what puts bitcoiners in this country,” Eric Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “It is going to put them ahead of everybody because we actually have a government that wants to see low-cost energy.”

Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot described the merger as creating a vertically integrated model with strong economic advantages. The structure allows investors to gain direct exposure to Bitcoin through American Bitcoin while investing in the business’s energy and infrastructure side through Hut 8.

“The vision here is to give shareholders a pure play mining company that has the ability to produce Bitcoin cheaper than just buying it,” Genoot explained.

This approach aims to build a strategic reserve while becoming one of the largest Bitcoin miners.

In a Fox Business interview, Eric Trump revealed that his interest in cryptocurrency stemmed from personal experience with traditional banking. “I never thought I’d fall into the world of crypto—until every bank started canceling us for no reason other than my father being in politics,” he told host Maria Bartiromo.

“That’s when I realized how important crypto is—cheaper, faster, more transparent, uncancelable, global,” he added. The Trump son described this as his “epiphany” about how financial institutions “can shut out anyone they don’t like.”

Eric Trump also characterized his family as focused on hard assets. “We are a hard-asset family. I’m a hard-asset guy,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “My entire life has been spent building things, and I don’t think there is ever a better hedge against all of that than the true digital assets.”

The leadership team for American Bitcoin includes Mike Ho, chief strategy officer of Hut 8, who will serve as executive chairman. Matt Prusak, former chief commercial officer of Hut 8, will become the company’s CEO.

The board of directors will include venture capital investors Justin Mateen, co-founder of Tinder, and Michael Broukhim, co-founder of e-commerce startup FabFitFun, alongside Hut 8’s Ho and Genoot.

While American Bitcoin will operate separately from the Trump Organization, Eric Trump has suggested that World Liberty Financial might collaborate with the mining operation in the future.

Bitcoin was recently trading at about $84,900, showing a more than 2.5% gain over 24 hours, according to data provider CoinGecko. The cryptocurrency briefly touched over $85,000 last week.

American Bitcoin executives have clarified that their plans to mine and stockpile Bitcoin for their own reserve are unrelated to the U.S. strategic crypto reserve established by President Trump’s executive order.

Critics have raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest given the Trump family’s expanding crypto investments alongside Donald Trump’s presidency.

“This is an area where conflicts of interest, whether the Trump family or anybody else, could have devastating consequences,” said Richard Painter, a former ethics attorney for President George W. Bush.