The Trump Family Advances Its All-Out Crypto Blitz, This Time With Bitcoin Mining

The president’s two oldest sons are investing in a bitcoin-mining company, adding to the Trump family’s expanding portfolio of cryptocurrency businesses.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.’s American Data Centers will merge with and take a 20% stake in American Bitcoin, a mining operation majority-owned by Hut 8 , the publicly traded crypto-infrastructure company. Together, they aim to create the world’s largest miner of the digital currency, with designs on building its own “bitcoin reserve.”

In a matter of months, the Trumps started a decentralized-finance, or DeFi, project called World Liberty Financial , said their social-media company would invest in bitcoin and other digital assets, launched meme coins to capitalize on the popularity of the president and his wife and announced plans to issue a World Liberty dollar-backed stablecoin . And in his return to the White House, President Trump has said he aims to make the U.S. the “crypto capital of the world.”

The digital networks that comprise the cryptocurrency markets have offered the Trumps an ideal complement to their other family business: real estate, Eric Trump told The Wall Street Journal.

“We are a hard-asset family. I’m a hard-asset guy,” said Eric Trump, who will serve as American Bitcoin’s chief strategy officer. “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.”

American Data Centers was launched in February by Eric Trump, his brother Donald Jr. and Dominari , a small investment firm that recently appointed the Trump brothers as advisers.

As part of the deal, Hut 8 will shift nearly 61,000 of its specialized bitcoin-mining machines to American Bitcoin in exchange for an 80% ownership in the new entity. The companies said no cash changed hands in the deal.

Eric Trump said American Bitcoin, which aims to go public, will remain a separate venture from the Trump Organization, the family real-estate empire he runs. But World Liberty, the DeFi platform Eric Trump called his “whole heart and soul” might collaborate with the bitcoin-mining operation in the future, he said.

American Bitcoin’s executives said their plans to mine and stockpile bitcoin for their own reserve are unrelated to the U.S. strategic crypto reserve that President Trump established earlier this month with an executive order.

Bitcoin, the world’s most-popular digital asset, is created by computer servers that solve complex equations, unlocking, or “mining” new tokens.

The business of mining new bitcoin has grown more challenging as new companies have sprung up to capitalize on rising prices and the number of unmined tokens has dwindled. Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto , capped the digital currency’s supply at 21 million, and more than 90% of those tokens have already been released. Critics also raised concerns about the environmental impact of bitcoin mining , pointing to the massive amounts of energy required to run mining operations.

Some critics also said they were concerned that the Trumps’ recent investments in crypto pose conflicts of interest, given Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

“At least in the last term, it was all golf courses and hotels, whereas now he’s getting into crypto, which could have a systemic effect on the economy,” said Richard Painter , a former ethics attorney for President George W. Bush . “This is an area where conflicts of interest, whether the Trump family or anybody else, could have devastating consequences.”

Hut 8, based in Miami, will host American Bitcoin’s mining machines at its data centers and include the new company’s results in its financial statements.

Asher Genoot , Hut 8’s chief executive, said the company’s ability to secure cheap energy, build low-cost data centers and mine bitcoin at a low cost will help differentiate American Bitcoin from competitors. Hut 8 owns 11 data centers.

“There is still 100-plus years of bitcoin mining left, and bitcoin continues to appreciate,” Genoot said. “Being the lowest-cost bitcoin miner is how you will continue to manage through that volatility and being able to be at scale.”

Eric Trump said American Bitcoin and other U.S.-based miners will benefit from the recent decline in energy prices.

“That is what puts bitcoiners in this country,” he said. “It is going to put them ahead of everybody because we actually have a government that wants to see low-cost energy.”

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

Venture-capital investors Justin Mateen , co-founder of Tinder, and Michael Broukhim , co-founder of FabFitFun, an e-commerce startup, will join Hut 8’s Ho and Genoot as the board of directors for American Bitcoin.

A sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.

The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.

The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.

The debt behind the AI build-out

Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.

Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.

JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.

The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.

That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.

A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.

When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.

Inflation changes the calculation

September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.

The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.

CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.

Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.

Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.

The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.

China adds another source of pressure

Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.

Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.

The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.

That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.

A reset rather than the end of the boom

The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.

What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.

The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.

More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.

For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.

Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.

The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.

Fact box

Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026

Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent

Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent

Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent

SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent

US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually

Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion