Eric Trump, President Donald Trump’s son, dove further into crypto Monday when he announced that he was launching American Bitcoin, a Bitcoin mining firm that wants to “become a publicly listed company,” according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And the new business is so confident it’ll go public that it’s already registered a ticker with the Nasdaq, according to Eric and Asher Genoot, the CEO of Hut 8, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining firm that has partnered with the Trumps.
The ticker will be $ABTC, the pair told Fortune in a Tuesday interview. A spokesperson for the Nasdaq said the exchange is not able to comment on specific companies or tickers. Once issuers reserve a ticker, they must “reasonably expect” to use it within two years, according to the Nasdaq’s website. “We can confirm that we have reserved the ticker with a U.S stock exchange,” said a spokesperson for American Bitcoin.
Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, and Genoot have about “100 of the same friends,” said Trump, adding that the pair connected earlier this year after he and his brother, Donald Trump Jr., announced a plan to launch a data center company called American Data Centers. “Let’s bring these things together,” Genoot remembered thinking, in reference to his Bitcoin mining facilities and the Trumps’ new company.
Following a series of dinners, including pizza at the Trump family’s golf club in Jupiter, Fla., Genoot and Eric Trump decided to rebrand the data center as a new Bitcoin-focused company. “It has to have the word ‘American’ in it,” Trump said. After they settled on the American Bitcoin name, they registered the $ABTC ticker with the Nasdaq right after.
“I think ultimately it will become a Bitcoin proxy,” Trump told Fortune of the new company. “There’s no doubt about it.” There is precedence for this in the corporate world, most notably Michael Saylor’s Strategy, a onetime cybersecurity company that loaded its balance sheet with Bitcoin, and saw its market capitalization rise far above the value of the Bitcoin it itself holds.
Hut 8, the Bitcoin mining firm, owns 80% of the new company, with the other 20% owned by Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and early investors in the original Trump-led data center firm.
American Bitcoin is the latest crypto venture from the Trump family. In December 2022, Donald Trump made his first foray into blockchain when he launched his own NFT collections. Since then, his family has launched its own crypto app World Liberty Financial, Trump has endorsed his own memecoin called TRUMP, and World Liberty Financial announced plans to release its own stablecoin, or cryptocurrency pegged to fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar.
Meanwhile, the White House, under Trump, has signaled a friendlier approach to the crypto industry compared to his predecessor, Joe Biden. He’s appointed an AI and crypto czar, pardoned crypto criminals, and authorized the creation of a strategic Bitcoin and digital assets reserve.
The close alignment between the Trump’s family’s crypto pursuits and the Trump administration’s pro-crypto politics has prompted critics to allege extensive conflicts of interest. Eric Trump, however, disputed those claims. He said that the Trump Organization started World Liberty Financial a year before Trump won office in November.
“This is something that our family believes,” said Trump. “It’s something our family speaks about with our heart and soul.”