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Donald Trump's son bet big on Bitcoin, lost $600 million from family fortune

American Bitcoin Corp. was built around a simple idea: that owning and mining Bitcoin would be enough to mint money.Instead, the company co-founded by Eric Trump is mired in a deep downturn. As Bitcoin sank into a bear market and demand for artificial intelligence surged, investors increasingly favored miners that could repurpose their infrastructure for AI-focused data centers.American Bitcoin, though, stuck with its crypto strategy and has seen its shares slump more than 95% from their peak. That’s erased more than $600 million from the market value of Eric Trump’s stake over the past 10 months, according to Bloomberg calculations, and forced the company this week into a 1-for-15 reverse stock split to maintain its Nasdaq listing. On Wednesday, its stock price hit an all-time low.The reversal illustrates just how quickly investors have soured on crypto pure-plays. Success is no longer determined by who can produce the most Bitcoin, but by who has the flexibility to monetize their electricity, land and computing infrastructure.For the Trump family, American Bitcoin’s struggles illustrate the volatile nature of the first family’s digital asset investments. Even as President Donald Trump reported at least $1.4 billion in crypto earnings last year in his latest financial disclosure, many retail investors have taken a hit as Trump-affiliated tokens and American Bitcoin stock tanked.Eric Trump owns roughly 6% of American Bitcoin, according to Bloomberg calculations, and serves as its chief strategy officer. Adviser Donald Trump Jr. ’s stake is undisclosed.Eric Trump, the Trump Organization and American Bitcoin didn’t respond to requests for comment.Ironically, when American Bitcoin’s predecessor company debuted, it said its strategy would be to build a portfolio of data centers. American Data Centers Inc., a venture backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. , was set up by the Trump-advised investment bank Dominari Holdings Inc. in February 2025. Eric Trump said at the time that it was “crucial for the development of AI infrastructure in the United States.”But just a month later, it pivoted, striking a deal to receive mining equipment from a company called Hut 8 Corp. in exchange for an equity stake and exclusive service agreement. Then the renamed American Bitcoin reverse-merged with an already-public mining company, Gryphon Digital Mining Inc., and began trading on the Nasdaq in early September. The stock price peaked five trading days later, closing at a high of $139.65 on Sept. 9.AI ShiftAs crypto prices plunged over the past nine months, investors rewarded other US-based miners for leasing out their computing infrastructure to AI. Riot Platforms Inc., Cipher Digital Inc., MARA Holdings Inc. and TeraWulf Inc. all announced deals to expand into data centers. Their shares are up an average of more than 60% this year, compared to a 77% plunge for American Bitcoin.“Every single name in my coverage is pushing towards HPC (high-performance compute),” said John Todaro, an analyst at Needham & Co.But American Bitcoin has remained committed to a Bitcoin-mining and gathering strategy. It may not have much choice.The company’s main assets are its mining rigs and Bitcoin holdings. The power, sites, hosting infrastructure and day-to-day mining operations are provided by Hut 8, American Bitcoin’s majority owner, under exclusive service arrangements. That leaves much of the AI data-center optionality with Hut 8, which has leaned into that strategy through a rebrand around power infrastructure and multibillion-dollar AI data center leases. Hut 8’s shares have more than doubled this year.Rather than treating Bitcoin mining as a stepping stone to AI infrastructure, American Bitcoin executives have argued that the cryptocurrency itself will ultimately deliver the highest returns and that accumulating it during downturns will create more value than redeploying capital elsewhere.The company also argues that the industry’s pivot to AI could strengthen its position over time. As competitors redirect power and capital toward data centers, fewer machines remain dedicated to securing the Bitcoin network, reducing mining difficulty and increasing the amount of Bitcoin available to those that stay. As such, the AI boom may also provide a chance to win a larger share of Bitcoin rewards.“We’re seeing hundreds of megawatts from the leading public miners’ shift towards AI,” CEO Mike Ho said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call. That “resulted in the network difficulty dropping about 6% this quarter.”‘Hold On’A slew of companies began collecting Bitcoin in their treasuries last year, and most of their stocks got hammered as the cryptocurrency’s price dropped. The biggest such holder, Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc., outlined plans to sell some Bitcoin last month after years of promising not to do so.American Bitcoin doesn’t plan to sell its holdings, Eric Trump said in a recent podcast, adding that any reasons for doing so would have to be “beyond catastrophic.”Indeed, it’s continued to buy the token in the market, adding another 500 on Monday.Many investors believe Bitcoin’s price is near this cycle’s bottom. If it recovers, American Bitcoin’s focus on the cryptocurrency could eventually pay off, especially as competitors that shifted focus can’t easily re-enter the space.“From the standpoint of fleet efficiency, fleet size and the ability to produce Bitcoin, the company is very well positioned,” said Mark Palmer, an analyst at Benchmark Co. “The issue, of course, is that the price of Bitcoin needs to be moving up for the business model to work.”That’s the message Eric Trump pushed in April.“We are in the greatest period in the history of crypto,” he said at the Bitcoin Conference 2026 in Las Vegas. “Just hold on guys, just hold on.”

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