Trump Crypto Company Rings Nasdaq Opening Bell After $1.5B Deal

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. outside of Nasdaq in August (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Trump-backed American Bitcoin debuts on Nasdaq

Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. , and other major shareholders like the Winklevoss brothers will own 98% of the new company.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

9/3/25 10:26AM

American Bitcoin, the Hut 8 subsidiary backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., began trading on the Nasdaq today under the ticker “ABTC” as a pure-play bitcoin accumulation platform. This follows a recently completed all-stock merger with Gryphon Digital.

Matt Prusak, American Bitcoin’s president, told Sherwood News that the company, which the Trump brothers along with Hut 8 launched in March, will focus solely on bitcoin accumulation. It will use a dual accumulation strategy that integrates self-mining operations and opportunistic bitcoin purchases, which sets it apart.

Prusak said that the impetus for listing the company now was institutional adoption going mainstream. The company also chose to go public via a reverse merger instead of an IPO for speed.

“It’s an exciting day. We worked hard to get through this process. This is not the finish line — now it’s about the execution, hash rates, and building the reserve. The listing is opening the door; the real work starts now,” Prusak said.

American Bitcoin holds 2,400 bitcoin and intends to accumulate “as fast as possible,” Prusak said, declining to give specific numbers or a timeline.

The company will use Hut 8 as leverage by monetizing ASIC technology and the bitcoin miner’s colocation infrastructure platform “to mine bitcoin without the need to commit significant capital to build and operate proprietary data centers,” according to a press release.

Prusak said the Trump brothers, Hut 8, and other major shareholders, such as Gemini cofounders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, will own 98% of the new entity.

He also underscored that the competition in the bitcoin treasury space “is real” but that American Bitcoin “won’t drift.”

“We don’t have side hustles. We are not focused on AI or data centers,” he said.

In addition, he said that capital markets can be punishing, you need scale, and that another challenge some companies face is discipline, as many miners “get distracted by side businesses.”

In terms of expansion, Prusak said that while the company’s core strategy and infrastructure are in the US, it might look to buy crypto assets in Asia, specifically in Japan.

When asked what makes American Bitcoin “American,” Prusak said that it’s “in its DNA.”

“We are headquartered in the US, and we are offering US investors and US capital markets a pure-play bitcoin company. The US has the chance to own the future of money,” he said.

“Our Nasdaq debut marks a historic milestone in bringing Bitcoin into the core of U.S. capital markets and advancing our mission to make America the undisputed leader of the global Bitcoin economy,” Eric Trump, American Bitcoin cofounder and chief strategy officer, said in the release.

Sage D. Young

14h

Zcash nosedives after counterfeit vulnerability revealed

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency has dropped more than 40% in the last 24 hours, shedding $3.8 billion in market capitalization.

$62B

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy14h

Bitcoin digital asset treasuries (DATs) have taken a big hit amid bitcoin’s tumble, shedding $62 billion in value since the asset’s October 6 all-time high, Artemis data shows, with their fully diluted market cap dropping to $72 billion from $134 billion in early October.

Meanwhile, bitcoin, which has fallen below $62,000 on Friday morning, is down 50% from its all-time high. DAT pioneer Strategy’s market cap stood at $102.2 billion on October 6, according to Macro Trends, and is now down to $45.6 billion, a 55% decline. Strategy has been in hot water since it sold 32 bitcoin earlier this week, and because its digital credit instrument, STRC, has been trading below its par value. Shares of Strategy are down 17% in the past week.

Sage D. Young6/4/26

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter” as sector sinks, with tokens hitting multiyear lows

On Thursday, altcoins swept lower as bitcoin weakened. The tokens with the biggest losses in the last 24 hours are NEAR, ethena, and Zcash, each declining double digits in the period.

Other tokens have dropped to lows not seen in over a year in the past 24 hours:

Ethereum dropped 4.4% to under $1,780, a level not seen since April 2025.
XRP declined 4.5% to an 18-month low last hit in November 2024.
Solana decreased 6% to trade below the $70 mark, its lowest price since December 2023.
Dogecoin slid below $0.09, a 27-month low last seen in February 2024.

“Sentiment for crypto is firmly in the gutter as fears surrounding BTC/STRC and its potential overflow compound and overshadow anything that can be read as positive news (e.g. CLARITY movements),” according to Sean Dawson, head of research at crypto options platform Derive.xyz.

“[Altcoins] are high beta plays to BTC and are typically sold heavily in a downturn. Simply put, I’d be even more bearish on alts,” Dawson told Sherwood News.

“Further, liquidity has been drained into this year’s ‘superhot’ narrative of AI/data centers. In other words, there are just better, more exciting opportunities elsewhere,” Dawson added.

One cryptocurrency that has bucked the downtrend has been worldcoin, the native token for World, the digital identity project backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. While the broader crypto market has been pushing lower, WLD has jumped nearly 5% in the last 24 hours and 90% in the past seven days, data from CoinGecko shows.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

6/4/26

Bitcoin nears February lows amid $1.4 billion exiting its ETFs

“This week has been painful in crypto. There is really no other way of putting it.”