The two oldest sons of President Trump 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. 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.” …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…

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.

Excerpt from The Trump Family Advances Its All-Out Crypto Blitz, This Time With Bitcoin Mining, WSJ, Mar. 31, 2025