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- [00:00]
Eric Trump
Old playbooks won't solve tomorrow's problems. Indiana University is proving how higher education can create solutions with industry. Our partnerships address future talent and workforce needs, support entrepreneurs and local businesses, and create solutions that turn discoveries into dollars. Together, we're building a model for industry partnerships that fuel economic growth. Explore IU's impact at iu.edu impact.
- [00:29]
Carol
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news Lots of.
- [00:35]
Host/Interviewer
News in crypto today. Grayscale investments filed publicly for an ipo. It's the latest crypto linked company to test public markets under an administration more open to digital assets. For more on crypto and bitcoin and bitcoin mining specifically. Joining us now, a name familiar to our audience, Eric Trump is the co founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin. It's a publicly traded bitcoin mining and treasury company. It's got a market cap around $4.4 billion. The company started trading on the Nasdaq back on September 3rd when it merged with a micro cap. Shares hit a high on September 9th. They're down around 47% since then. Eric, of course, also the executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He joins us from Florida. Eric, good to have you on the program again. How are you guys?
- [01:18]
Eric Trump
Great to be on.
- [01:19]
Host/Interviewer
So if somebody wants exposure to bitcoin, why would they do that through American bitcoin rather than just buying bitcoin outright on an exchange or even through an etf?
- [01:30]
Eric Trump
Yeah, well, it's a great question. I mean, if you go out and you buy bitcoin on ETF or you buy it on exchange, you kind of have one to one bitcoin, right? You go out and you buy one bitcoin, you're always going to have one bitcoin. Our entire ethos is increasing bitcoin per share. Right now, every day we're mining bitcoin, we're mining bitcoin at roughly 50% of spot prices of bitcoin. So roughly about $56,000 per bitcoin. That's what we're able to mine at. We're able to mine because we have the best facilities anywhere on Earth. We've got some of the cheapest energy anywhere on Earth. We do it in America. We do it in West Texas. So right now our average cost to produce a bitcoin is roughly $56,000. And we're mining bitcoin 24 hours a day, seven days a week. By doing that, you're able to increase bitcoin per share. Right? And that's the ultimate metric that we chase every Single day. How do you increase the amount of bitcoin you have per share you have of stock? And I think we can do that. Clearly if you go buy on a one to one basis, you don't have that ability to do. And that's the one metric that we track every single day. And that's the one metric that we try and improve every single day. And we've done a hell of a job, guys. I mean we, we, you know, this public was founded on, on March 13th, I'm sorry, March 31st, roughly five months later. Five months and three days to be exact. We were listed on the NASDAQ under abtc. We're less than three months old having been listed and, and we're already well surpassed 4,000 bitcoin that have either mined or that we've accumulated, making us the 25th largest BTC public treasury company in the world. And we're climbing that ladder very quickly every single day. So I couldn't be more proud of what we've been able to accomplish and everything that you just said. I think you mentioned four and a half billion dollar market cap. And again, we've been listed for less than three months and growing by kind of with lightning speed.
- [03:12]
Host/Interviewer
You mentioned the cheapest source of energy in mining, that bitcoin. Last time we spoke back in September we had a discussion about wind energy that, that powers some of this mining. Is it still wind that's powering the mining operations for American bitcoin?
- [03:26]
Eric Trump
There's different sources, but certainly when there was a defunct wind farm, you know, the guys over at 8, which is our sister company, were able to lock into incredibly cheap energy because frankly it wasn't being utilized because it wasn't being pumped at the grid and lock into a very cheap contract for a very long period of time. And so we've got unbelievable renewable energy that we're using to mine our bitcoin. But you're going to see a lot of other energy sources. Come on. I mean we're on the energy revolution in this country. I think you guys know that better than anybody. Look at oil, look at gas, you know, the policies are working. Look at these SMRs, look at, you know, kind of fusion.
- [04:00]
Carol
Well, wait a minute Eric. Because smrs, I mean we do know we're on it every day. And these small modular reactors, none of them are up and running. And anybody we talk to who understands the nuclear industry says that it'll take a few years to get them up and running.
- [04:15]
Eric Trump
Guys, absolutely don't think that I'm saying that they're up and running by any means. What I'm saying is we're in the heyday of power and power exploration in this country. Right now you have an administration that's hell bent on making sure this country has incredibly cheap power. Well, it's really interesting.
- [04:32]
Carol
Let me just jump in there because we've done a deep analysis into the cost of electricity in 2025. Electricity costs depend far on where you're located and a lot of it has to do with the AI buildout and the cost of those data centers and tapping into the networks. You talk about Texas. I'm curious what you're paying per megawatt an hour in Houston right now. It's $25. It has gone up a lot since 2020. If you go back to 2020, it was $17 per hour. I mean, you know, those elections, I don't want to get political, but those elections, I mean, part of it was electricity prices that people, Americans have had enough.
- [05:11]
Eric Trump
Carol, you can't be serious. And honestly, I don't want to argue on Bloomberg. It's not what I came here to do. I've got plenty of things to do in my daily life. You had the last administration that had the greatest war on energy that we've ever seen in the country. You had an administration that was literally shutting down oil and gas exploration daily. They were shutting it down daily. They were cutting every pipeline, they were stopping every pipeline from being built. Which ones do you want me to name? I could go through a list of 15 of them. In fact, it was Joe Biden's first executive order to shut down the Keystone pipeline. They shut down all permitting, they shut down all transmission of oil and gas. There was a war on energy in this country the likes of which you've never seen before. We went from being energy independent under my father, where we're exporting energy to countries all around the world, to being energy dependent under Joe Biden. Don't even try and say, you know, that we're not seeking lowest cost energies. They had power plants that they were trying to build for a 15 year period of time. Nuclear power plants. And guess what? At the end of them, Joe Biden's administration would turn them down and deny them the permits for nuclear energy. Right. My father is hell bent on making this country energy independent. The reason. Hold on, please let me finish. The reason he's hell bent on it is if you track gdp, any gbt, GDP growth around the world, and you directly correlate that with energy costs, they're 100% correlated. The lower your energy costs are for production of energy, the higher your GDP costs are. We have to win the war on cryptocurrency. We have to win the war on AI. We have to win these for our national security. We have to win these because we're the United States of America and we're the number one superpower. We must lead the way. Well, we need energy generation and my father is hell bent of getting that through every single form, whether it's natural gas and we're drilling. Remember the slogan, really baby drill. And we're drilling again. And we're exploring again, Eric. And nuclear power plants are getting permits again, which was not happening. So please don't, please, please don't talk to me about affordability when you had an administration that did everything they could to crush energy prices for a four year period of time.
- [07:23]
Carol
Erica, I respect your position and opinion on this, but I also will say that, you know the US is the largest oil producer that's out there. I want to go to your company because on mining, we learned today that Bit Farms, it's one of the largest cryptocurrency miners, said it plans to wind down those operations over the next two years. Focus on providing infrastructure to generate power for artificial intelligence applications. We continue to see that a growing list of bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI and high performance compute services as profit margins shrink due in part to those falling prices of the tokens or the digital tokens that are out there. Do you have any plans for, for American Bitcoin to pivot away from bitcoin mining into artificial intelligence now?
- [08:06]
Eric Trump
The exact opposite. We're only going to ramp up. We're going to ramp up every single day. I mean, Carol, you mentioned falling prices. Let me just kind of hit on this one for you. You know, guess what? Bitcoin prices were exactly two years ago from today. I'll tell you, because you wouldn't know 36,500 was the cost of a Bitcoin two years ago. We are up 180% in a 24 month period. The spot price of BTC, which is, is probably the number one performing asset of any asset. And this is coming from a guy who believes in hard assets, right? I mean, I run one of the great real estate portfolios anywhere in the world. Cryptocurrency is absolutely on fire. Cryptocurrency is taking on the whole world.
- [08:45]
Carol
Well, bitcoin is up this year by about 5%. The S&P is up 15%. The Nasdaq 100 is up 20%. Gold is up close to this year.
- [08:54]
Eric Trump
No, I'm just saying do you want to reverse, Carol? Do you want to reverse that? I mean do you want to go back 2 years? Do you want to go back 3 years? You want to go back 5 years? Do you want to go Back 10 years?
- [09:03]
Carol
Had a dice have gone up on.
- [09:05]
Eric Trump
Average of about 70% a year, year over year for the last 10 year period of time. All I'm saying is if you invested in BTC two years ago is probably the best investment you could have made. If you made invested BTC five years ago. You're sitting on infinite amounts of money, right? BTC has been probably the highest performing asset of the last decade right now. Also with BTC comes volatility. With crypto comes volatility. Volatility is our friend. Volatility is something that should be harnessed. And so I think bitcoin is going to continue to massively overperform the markets. Of course you're going to have drawdowns, right? I mean every cycle has drawdowns. You're seeing, you were talking about Nvidia in the intro clip to introducing me today and how they're down 4% and this one, largest companies on earth, if not the largest company on earth, that's down 4%. You're going to have drawdowns and things. That's life. But look at the historical performance of an asset and nothing has compared to what bitcoin has.
- [10:02]
Carol
Totally understand markets, the ups and downs and sometimes the downs are an indication of either even it moving down further. Hey, one thing I want to ask you is, I think you were on with Bloomberg back in September. You owned about 7 1/2% of the company. Has that number changed? Because it sounds, I can hear your conviction. It sounds like it's a long term conviction when it comes to the digital world and bitcoin in particular. So are you buying more shares that.
- [10:28]
Eric Trump
That number has not changed at all? I have every share that, that I started this company with and I plan to for a long time to come. I love it, I believe in it. I think the people that we're doing it with are the smartest people in the world. We've got some of the greatest energy contracts, we've got the most sophisticated facilities. Guys, what I'll tell you is I spent a lot of time all over the world. I think you know that from our real estate projects everywhere. Everybody wants cryptocurrency, Everybody believes in cryptocurrency. Everybody's tremendously worried about their respective governments. Everybody's tremendously worried about their respective financial systems. Especially when you leave the United States. You know, people in so many countries around the world, they get paid, you know, they may as well burn that paycheck because of inflation. It absolutely kills them. All of a sudden, you know, kind of, you know, bitcoin is digital gold. People believe in it. It's great asset. It's an asset that can't be inflated. It's an asset that only have 21 million coins ever. You know, the price of gold ever went to 40,000 bucks an ounce. Guys, I would tear down this building and I would find gold in the columns. I'd find gold in the concrete. Right? You're going to. You're going to, you know, you're going to dig deeper and you're going to go farther and you're going to spend more money. You know, so you're never going to actually have cap supply with bitcoin. You have cap supply. And I can tell you whether it's Asia, whether it's Middle east, whether it's South America, you know, there is a longingness, you know, to treasury, bitcoin. And you're seeing that from even some of the very biggest companies in the United States. They're putting it on their balance sheets in ways that they've never done before because they believe in digital assets and they, you know, they believe in the attributes of them. Right. You know, and again, I'm a real estate guy. I love assets. But think about something that's transferable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Think about something that's global. Think about something that's easy to transport.
- [12:05]
Carol
You do love assets. And you guys, your family is so entrenched, obviously, in real estate. You think Trump, you think real estate. But I'm just curious, if you had to choose between owning real estate or bitcoin, what would it be?
- [12:16]
Eric Trump
Both. Both. No, no, no.
- [12:18]
Carol
You have to choose. Come on, Eric, you're smart.
- [12:22]
Eric Trump
I grew up when I was 11 years old on construction sites. Right. I clearly love tangible assets and I believe in them. And I think bitcoin is the greatest hedge toward those tangible assets that there is. What I will tell you is, in any place other than the United States, I would probably take cryptocurrency. I mean, imagine if you lived in one of various South American countries or one of various African countries that have instability, where government can come in at any time and steal your house, steal your piece of property, steal your Hotel, you don't have a chance. You don't have that problem with Bitcoin. You don't have that problem with digital assets. That's, you know, that's. That's qualified on ledger 24 hours a day. So there's. There's a real need for this asset class around the world. And by the way, even in the United States, I mean, guys, I became one of the most debanked person, you know, people, you know, American history for having never done anything wrong. You know, operating great golf courses, operating great residential buildings, condominium associations, hotels. Right. And. And all of that got pulled out from under me because my father happened to wear a hat. I wasn't a politician. I've never been a politician. I've never worked for the government for wearing a hat that said, make America great again. All of a sudden, I started getting canceled left and right. You know, the interesting thing about crypto technology, blockchain technology, digital assets, digital wallets, can't cancel them. You can't take them away. Right? And that's a beautiful thing. And there's a flight to safety. There's a flight to safety that a lot of people in America have a harder time appreciating, albeit, when people see what happened to us, they can appreciate more. But a lot of people around the world can really appreciate. I think if you lived in a lot of the Asian countries, you'd appreciate it. I think if you lived in a lot of places and let me up here in Africa, you probably appreciate that.
- [13:57]
Carol
No, I understand what you're saying, and I think, you know, we've been talking about cryptocurrencies for a long time here at Bloomberg, and I think time will tell whether or not this is something that becomes, well, entrenched within our financial system, because at this point, people are still buying things like stocks and bonds.
- [14:14]
Eric Trump
Do you not believe it?
- [14:14]
Carol
No, no, I do. But what I wanted to ask you is, and I think it's something that we talked about in our planning call. Do you. Do you feel like, you know, Tim asked about, you know, maybe the advantage of, you know, buying into your company versus maybe a microstrategy or something else. Do you feel like you guys do have an advantage because of your proximity to the White House? And I ask this full disclosure. When we talk about Paramount, Skydance, we say the same thing, because we know that David Ellison certainly is looked upon favorably by the White House when it comes to maybe doing another acquisition. So do you think you have a little bit of an advantage?
- [14:52]
Eric Trump
Yeah, Carol, it's such a frustrating question. Now, you know my advantages. Our advantage with American bitcoin is we can mine Bitcoin at $0.50 on the dollar, roughly. And we're mining bitcoin every single day any other. And by the way, Michael is a very close friend of mine, and there's no person in the world virtually that I respect more. He's an amazing human being and an incredible visionary in everything he's accomplished. Our advantage to mining bitcoin is every single day, we mine a lot of bitcoin, and we do so for 50 cents on the dollar. Go name another commodity you can do that with. Right? Every other treasury company virtually out there, they have to go buy bitcoin at the spot price of bitcoin that day. I can effectively go out right now and mine Bitcoin at 50% of that number. I can also go out and I can acquire bitcoin and American bitcoin can go out and acquire bitcoin at spot prices. And guess what? As I do that, I can also yield, manage down pricing based on the bitcoin that we mine each and every day. Obviously, the amount that you can mine is somewhat finite, even though our mining operations are growing on a daily basis. But that's a great advantage that I believe we have. We can increase the amount of bitcoin per share of our shareholders, and we do. And that's why we're growing as quickly as we are. So I clearly believe in our strategy. I'm really, really proud.
- [16:04]
Carol
But you understand why we. You do understand why we ask it, right? I mean, full disclosure, like we try to be.
- [16:09]
Eric Trump
I mean, Carol, so many of the questions here have just been. Listen, I understand clearly where. Where you stand, right? But, you know, this no shock to me. I understand why you're asking the question. I also understand that I have absolutely nothing to do with the federal government. I want nothing to do with the federal government. I have no interaction with the federal government when it comes to crypto policy. I stay in my own damn lane, and my lane is operating the greatest hospitality company on earth. An operating company that I truly believe in with every ounce of my heart and soul, which is what we're doing with bitcoin, which, again, historically, has been an incredible asset.
- [16:44]
Host/Interviewer
Hey, Eric.
- [16:45]
Eric Trump
So when I hear. So when I hear questions about how, you know, somebody could possibly argue that Biden had better energy policies for the United States than the Donald Trump, like, like, give me a. Give me.
- [16:57]
Carol
I didn't argue that. I just, you know, we are. We are a data Driven company. And so I look at data. Give me the data.
- [17:02]
Eric Trump
So, so perfect. Give me. Give me the data. Give me one quantifiable metric where Joe Biden was a better energy president. Donald Trump. You can't. Well, you just can't. Well, I will say when you, when you had president on the, on the first day of his term, cancel every pipeline, including the Keystone XL pipeline, which is why every gas pump in the United States of America had a little sticker on it saying, I did that. It was a picture of Joe Biden pointing to the price of gas. Please spare me this conversation. You've got some of the lowest gas prices in the history of our country. They're coming down every single day. You've got an administration that are putting through permits for nuclear reactors like their pez, because we need it if we're going to be successful. Based on all the metrics I gave you, no one can credibly tell me, you know, as these guys build, build wind farms in the middle of nowhere that aren't even plugged into the grid. I mean, I say that with all due respect, Carol.
- [17:55]
Carol
No, I know, I know, and I don't want to argue. I mean, but there's a reason that, you know, WTI crude is below $60 a barrel and, you know, you know, the oil giants will talk and they'll say, listen, we're only going to do it. What is the reason? We're only going to do it if it makes sense. If the price of oil goes up because there is, you know, balance sheets. There's going to be a cost to drilling and doing exploration, and they're not going to do it unless the price of oil, whether the demand is there and as there is more oil or.
- [18:23]
Eric Trump
Do you think any of that has anything to do with the transportation of oil? Right. When. When you're shutting down pipelines every single day, you know what else is affecting price? The fact that you can't move something that's naturally heavy. Right. And that's what Joe Biden was doing. It was the biggest. It was the biggest.
- [18:38]
Carol
Yeah.
- [18:39]
Eric Trump
War on oil and gas. All for the purpose of creating, you know, EV cars that the consumers around this country did not want to buy. I mean, how many billions of dollars did they spend building four charging stations in the middle of absolutely nowhere, you know, under Pete Buttigieg or Transportation Secretary, who is completely incompetent.
- [18:57]
Carol
All right, I don't want to get you political, but anyway, listen, in five years, what do you hope your company is just to wrap up where, where do you see its role?
- [19:08]
Eric Trump
Yeah, I'm glad we came back to this. Thank you. I think we're going to create one of the great bitcoin companies anywhere in America. We're ascending the ladder very quickly. I think I mentioned that, you know, we're under three months old and you know, we're a 25th largest public Bitcoin treasury company on all the lists. And we're sending that list very quickly. We just passed Gemini. Very good friends of ours, the Winkle bosses, you know, they actually invested in American bitcoin and they're good friends of ours. And it seems like every day we're kind of climbing another step up that ladder. I think we're doing it well. I think we're doing it with tremendous heart and soul. I think we're doing it here in the United States of America. I think that's philanthropic to this country and we need to lead the world in the digital financial revolution. Bitcoin is clearly leading that charge right now based on market cap. And I'm very, very proud of the company we're building and the speed of our growth. And I think we're going to do tremendously well.
- [20:03]
Carol
I'm sure all the financial execs do like this. Probably played into it possibly as well as regulatory stuff when they were there at the White House. It's all coming at us. Hey, Eric, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. We went around and around and I'm glad we were able to cover a lot of ground. Eric Trump, co founder, chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, joining us there in Florida.
- [20:24]
Eric Trump
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