**출력:** Trump 막내아들의 비트코인 게임: 자신은 1억 달러 대박, 개미들은 5억 달러 폭락

Original Title: How Eric Trump Got Rich From Bitcoin While Losing Investors A Fortune

Original Author: Dan Alexander, Forbes

Original Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: The Trump family has a signature skill: bluffing and making things sound bigger than they are.

This time, Eric Trump has brought that approach into the crypto space. He has packaged his bitcoin company as a "money-printing machine," claiming it can mine bitcoin at nearly half the market price.

But when Forbes journalist Dan Alexander looked at the books, a different story emerged: 70% of the company's bitcoin holdings were not mined but bought with newly issued shares; the real average cost was far higher than Eric's claimed figure; and the financing structure, which made the balance sheet look better, might mean that all the bitcoin the company has ever mined will eventually be used in bulk to pay the mining equipment bills.

The numbers ultimately point to a more direct conclusion: Eric's personal wealth increased by about $90 million, while ordinary investors collectively lost about $500 million.

After the report was published, Eric Trump quickly fired back on X, accusing Forbes of being acquired by China, calling the report politically motivated propaganda, and citing a string of operational data to refute the claims: 7,000 bitcoin, nearly 90,000 mining rigs, and Q4 revenue of $78.3 million. Along the way, he also brought up a fundraising event for a children's hospital from twenty years ago, trying to prove that Forbes has always been targeting him, a "good guy."

There's one thing he never directly addressed: where did that $500 million go?

Below is the original text:

Eric Trump riling up the crowd. Photo: Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

The ability to rile up crowds isn't just useful in politics. Just ask Eric Trump: his bitcoin company attracted a legion of followers, then dumped a pile of overpriced stock on them.

In February, Eric Trump appeared energized on an earnings call, ready to do what the Trumps do best — sell.

"We are rapidly becoming the leader in the bitcoin world, and I truly believe we have the strongest brand," Eric said. "I want to thank Mike [Ho], Asher [Genoot], Matt [Prusak], and everyone at American Bitcoin."

Note: Mike Ho is CEO of American Bitcoin and Chief Strategy Officer of Hut 8. Asher Genoot is Executive Chairman of American Bitcoin and Co-Founder of Hut 8, who led the partnership deal with the Trump family. Matt Prusak is President of American Bitcoin and a former Hut 8 employee seconded from the company.

The closing remark was curious. Saying "everyone" was telling, because American Bitcoin hardly has anyone else.

The annual report filed a month after the earnings call showed the company had only two official full-time employees, likely CEO Mike Ho and President Matt Prusak. There might be a few more — Ho is also an executive at another company; someone who worked there in investor relations for less than a year now lists themselves as "Chief of Staff" at American Bitcoin on LinkedIn; another woman said on her profile she has been the company's social media manager since January. (Executive Chairman Asher Genoot, Ho, and three independent directors make up the five-person board.)

The Trump family figured out early on that there's money to be made by making things sound bigger than they are.

Allegedly, Donald's father, Fred Trump, deceived regulators by inflating project costs to pocket the difference. Donald Trump inflated asset values to banks and media outlets like Forbes, leading a New York judge to rule it was fraud. Eric was also caught up in that case and was banned from serving as an officer or director of any New York-registered company for two years. Despite this, he set up shop elsewhere, incorporating in Delaware and operating from Florida, marketing his new company in a way that would make his forebears proud.

Note: Fred Trump was Donald Trump's father, a New York real estate developer who was once accused of inflating construction costs to extract higher profits.

Eric Trump's latest bitcoin venture might be selling a story more than a business. By his account, American Bitcoin can mine bitcoin at about half the market price, a genuine "money-printing machine." But a closer look at the numbers raises questions about whether the company can even mine profitably, let alone maintain such an astonishing margin. Representatives for Eric Trump, the Trump Organization, and American Bitcoin did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Forbes. Quite a few people trust the president's son, and they have put real money on the line. When American比特币 listed on the public market on September 3, 2025, its balance sheet held about $270 million in bitcoin, yet investors gave it a market cap of $13.2 billion.

Over the past eight months, American Bitcoin has consistently used this absurdly high valuation to sell stock and buy more bitcoin. The heavily diluted stock price has since fallen 92% from its peak. Eric Trump, who seemed to enter the deal at virtually no cost, continues to thrive. Through financial alchemy, his estimated personal wealth has ballooned from about $190 million to $280 million. Other insiders have also profited handsomely. In contrast, ordinary investors who bought the sales pitch and invested real money have lost an estimated total of $500 million.

Eric Trump (left) in his early years, cultivating a charitable image. Shortly after college, he held fundraisers at his father's golf courses to benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Photo: Bobby Bank/WireImage

Eric Trump's first real independent project wasn't an apartment building, but a charity.

In 2006, he graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in Finance and Management, filled with a desire to change the world. At the time, his older brother Don Jr. and sister Ivanka were already working at Trump Tower on real estate projects. Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike one day, Eric later recalled in an interview with Forbes, a different idea popped into his head: how could he truly make a difference for the world? Thus began his earliest entrepreneurial venture — a non-profit called the Eric Trump Foundation.

The organization did a lot of good. More of a fundraising platform than an operating charity, it sent over $16 million to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. But as time went on, the organization, and Eric himself, became increasingly "Trumpified."

Documents obtained by Forbes through an open records request (despite objections from the non-profit's legal team) revealed a pattern of deceptive fundraising tactics, weak governance, and chaotic finances. Eric often told donors he kept costs minimal, channeling almost everything to St. Jude, partly because his father provided free space at Trump-owned venues and celebrities agreed to perform "pro bono." But checks and invoices obtained by Forbes show: over $500,000 went to other charities, over $500,000 went to Trump-owned businesses, at least $90,000 was paid to various performers, and over $35,000 went to a car service — with passengers including Eric's mother, a Real Housewives star, and a van carrying people to a Hooters restaurant.

In his daily work at his father's company, Eric primarily handled the hotel business early on, learning a key lesson: making money by branding and licensing is much easier than actually building hotels.

The Trump Organization defaulted on a loan for its Chicago hotel in 2008, put its Atlantic City portfolio into bankruptcy protection in 2009, and its Washington, D.C., hotel lost money for years. Eventually, the Trumps pivoted their hotel empire towards what the industry calls the "asset-light" model, focusing on management and licensing rather than development.

Eric's other training ground was his father's golf course portfolio, where he saw the beauty of unconventional financing structures. In the 1980s and 90s, golf clubs often took deposits from new members, promising to return them without interest after thirty years. These liabilities scared off many potential buyers. But Donald Trump wasn't afraid, eventually taking on about $250 million in such liabilities to acquire over a dozen golf properties nationwide, while valuing those liabilities at zero on his personal balance sheet for years. By the time the repayments were due, the properties were worth far more than the amounts owed.

In January 2017, Donald Trump entered the White House, and Eric and his brother Don Jr. took over their father's asset portfolio. Eric seemed to have few plans of his own, preferring to maintain the status quo. "We're not a company that sells assets," he told Forbes in February 2017 from an office on the 25th floor of Trump Tower. "We buy, and we dress them up beautifully." The Trump brothers tried to start new ventures, like launching two mid-tier hotel brands, but with little success. Facing a struggling business and their father's depleted cash reserves, they spent the next seven years doing what Eric said they wouldn't: selling assets, estimated to have netted about $411 million.

Then a new money-making opportunity arrived: the 2024 election.

A return to the White House meant business opportunities. The President's children attended his second inauguration on January 20, 2025. Photo: Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images

Just two weeks after Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, the company that would become American Bitcoin was quietly incorporated in Delaware. It didn't start as a crypto play. Dubai developer Hussain Sajwani, who partnered with the Trumps on a golf project in Dubai, appeared at Mar-a-Lago, announcing a $20 billion investment to build data centers in the U.S., riding the AI wave. "That guy knows what he's doing," the President-elect said. Within weeks, Trump's two sons revealed plans to follow this strategy, naming the company "American Data Centers," with Eric Trump calling it "critical for the development of America's AI infrastructure."

A month later, he changed direction. Introduced by a mutual friend, Eric and Don Jr. met two entrepreneurs: Asher Genoot and Mike Ho. They already owned a business similar to what the Trumps envisioned — data center giant Hut 8, which had both AI exposure and significant bitcoin mining power. Shortly after the AI boom hit, the reward for solving a math problem (bitcoin mining) halved, sharply increasing mining costs. Industry-wide, a lot of computing power shifted to AI, and Hut 8's institutional investors pressured Genoot to follow suit.

But Genoot and Ho, with their background in brand operations and arbitrage, had a more creative solution: they used a 20% equity stake in their bitcoin mining equipment to convince the Trumps to abandon the data center plan. Then, leveraging the first family's involvement, they packaged this hardware into a public company, creating a hype machine fueled by the Trump brand.

The deal structure was tailor-made for someone familiar with the hotel business. The machines run 24/7, but American Bitcoin operates more like an asset-light hotel brand: Hut 8 owns the property, runs the data centers, handles the back office, and even provides the executives — Prusak was a Hut 8 employee, and Ho still works there, serving as both CEO of American Bitcoin and Chief Strategy Officer of Hut 8. This allows the Trumps to focus on their strength: sales.

"I will always remember saying to them, 'Listen, the name has to have two words,'" Eric Trump later recalled in a video interview with CoinDesk. "It has to have 'American' and it has to have 'Bitcoin.' One of them said, 'Eric, let's call it American Bitcoin. That's the name.'"

On the day American Bitcoin went public, investors jumped in, pushing Eric Trump's estimated personal wealth above $1 billion at one point. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Ever since Eric Trump entered the crypto space, he has been telling a myth about why he got in. "Every single bank in this country has banned me," he said at a conference in Wyoming last August. "We were de-banked because of my father's political figure," he added about a week later in Hong Kong. "Every major bank started closing our accounts," he claimed earlier this year in Palm Beach. "You know what we did? We went out and got into decentralized finance because we realized that's the future of finance."

But that's not what happened.

It's true that Capital One and JPMorgan Chase closed some Trump accounts in 2021, six years after Donald Trump entered politics. At that time, the President's reputation was damaged by the Capitol riot and a sweeping investigation by the New York Attorney General, which ultimately led a court to rule that the Trump Organization had committed fraud and was likely to do so again.

Despite this, plenty of banks were still willing to work with the Trumps — even JPMorgan, shortly after closing some accounts, participated in refinancing two of the largest loans in Trump's asset portfolio. When Trump left office, he was short on cash and highly leveraged, needing big lenders' support, and he got it: between January 2021 and mid-2022, with the help of his sons Eric and Don Jr., the former president refinanced nearly $700 million in debt as part of a comprehensive balance sheet restructuring.

So, why did Trump really get into crypto? A more plausible explanation is that he saw an opportunity to extend his licensing business, selling non-fungible tokens (NFTs) like selling sneakers and guitars. He started with NFT trading cards, featuring digital images of himself as a superhero. They sold out in a day, eventually netting the former president over $7 million in cash and crypto — every penny mattered for someone facing a nearly $500 million fraud judgment. (A judge later overturned the penalty on the grounds of challenging the fine amount, but did not deny the finding of fraud.) Subsequent crypto projects brought in hundreds of millions more in liquidity, escalating the first family's bets, including a separate plan announced last May: investing about $2 billion in crypto through Trump Media and Technology Group.

In 2025, hoarding bitcoin became the hottest trade of the year. Over 200 public companies tried to copy Strategy's (Michael Saylor's company) playbook — accumulating over $50 billion in bitcoin, seeing their market cap soar during the bull run, and then slump recently. American Bitcoin stood out in this frenzy for an obvious reason: the first family's aura. But on the day American Bitcoin went public, September 3, 2025, Eric Trump, in an X Spaces conversation, offered a more data-driven pitch. "Our actual cost to mine a bitcoin per day is about $57,000, $58,000," he said, noting that the market price was about double that. "Our fundamentals couldn't be better."

It was a compelling argument, though the speaker had a history of conveniently ignoring inconvenient expenses during charity fundraising events. The $50,000 figure did cover American Bitcoin's operational costs for the equipment. But factoring in other expenses — including equipment purchases, marketing, and capital allocation — the all-in cost climbed much higher, roughly $92,000 per bitcoin at the time, only profitable if crypto prices remained elevated.

Including depreciation is crucial in American Bitcoin's case because it uses an unconventional financing strategy inherited from Hut 8. Between August and September 2025, American Bitcoin spent about $330 million to upgrade its mining fleet. But instead of paying cash immediately, the company pledged some bitcoin as collateral and got an option on the final payment method: if bitcoin's price rises, it can pay about $330 million in cash and redeem the pledged bitcoin; if the price falls, it can simply use the pledged crypto to settle the debt.

Since that large purchase, bitcoin has fallen about 30%. This means, currently, American Bitcoin will likely pay for the equipment with its pledged crypto assets. But here's the problem: American Bitcoin has pledged a total of 3,090 bitcoins (as of March 25), while the company is estimated to have mined only about 1,800 bitcoins to date. In other words, if the price doesn't recover, every single bitcoin the company has ever mined could be used to pay the equipment costs as the options expire around August 2027, leaving them with nothing.

Investors may not understand this. The company has about 15 months to decide whether to pay for the equipment with crypto or cash; meanwhile, the mined bitcoins remain on the balance sheet. The result is that American Bitcoin looks much more robust than it actually is. The company pitches this bitcoin reserve as a core selling point to investors while downplaying the fact that all or most of it will eventually be used to pay for the machines that mined it.

Beyond the marketing appeal, it's easy to see why the Trump family is interested in this payment method — they built a portfolio of golf courses using similar unconventional financing. They won that bet because the underlying assets did appreciate.

Eric Trump has become a regular at crypto conferences worldwide. Photo: Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images

About 70% of American Bitcoin's crypto holdings were not mined at all, but bought directly on the open market