American Bitcoin, a bitcoin mining and accumulation business backed by President Trump's two eldest sons, jumped on its first day of trading Wednesday as investors scooped up shares of the Trump-linked crypto venture.
The details
American Bitcoin debuted on the Nasdaq Stock Market after completing its merger with Gryphon Digital Mining.
Shares surged about 17% Wednesday after the company filed to sell up to $2.1 billion of stock through an at-the-market offering. The stock had rocketed as much as 110% higher intraday before retreating.
Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., the bitcoin-mining company Hut 8 and other American Bitcoin shareholders own about 98% of the combined company, which trades under the ticker "ABTC." Investors in Gryphon stock, which had traded under "GRYP," hold the rest.
American Bitcoin has stockpiled approximately 2,443 bitcoin, following the so-called corporate-treasury strategy popularized by Michael Saylor, a software executive turned bitcoin evangelist. Bitcoin, the world's largest cryptocurrency, traded at $112,266 at 4 p.m. ET Wednesday.
"We've become the obvious name in crypto," Eric Trump told The Wall Street Journal. "American Bitcoin is going to be the greatest treasury company ever built."
The context
American Bitcoin was formed in March through a merger between the Trump brothers' American Data Centers and Hut 8, which swapped its bitcoin-mining division in exchange for an 80% ownership stake.
The company raised $220 million in cash and bitcoin from investors, including the Gemini co-founders, Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, in a June private stock offering. American Bitcoin used the proceeds to buy more digital tokens and mining equipment.
Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive, and intensely competitive, process. Miners use computers that generate random numbers in the hopes of finding the right combination that unlocks new bitcoins. The cryptocurrency's inventor capped the number of bitcoins that can be created at 21 million. More than 90% of those have already been released, leaving aspiring investors to fight for a shrinking pool of tokens.
The big picture
American Bitcoin's listing marks the latest expansion of the Trump family's crypto empire. It now spans everything from mining operations and memecoins to stablecoins, the dollar-linked tokens used by investors to trade crypto. On Monday, the Trumps pocketed as much as $5 billion in paper wealth from the trading debut of WLFI, a token issued by the family-backed World Liberty Financial.
Ethics lawyers and government watchdogs have raised concerns related to the president's business interests and family involvement in crypto as he loosens regulations on the industry.