On March 31, Eric Trump and Donald Jr. — U.S. President Donald Trump’s sons — entered into a partnership with the Bitcoin mining firm Hut 8 to launch American Bitcoin.

As per the statement , Hut 8 contributed most of its mining infrastructure to American Data Centers — formed by a group of investors including Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — in exchange for the majority stake in the company, rebranded to American Bitcoin after the deal.

While Hut 8 owns an 80% stake in American Bitcoin, Trump’s sons and their partners own a 20% stake in the company.

Eric Trump will act as the Chief Strategy Officer at American Bitcoin. The company is a subsidiary of Hut 8 that will focus on industrial-scale Bitcoin mining and strategic Bitcoin reserve development.

American Bitcoin aims to become the world’s largest miner with the goal of reaching 50 EH/s in hash rate. Hash rate refers to the speed at which a miner can perform the cryptographic calculations to mine new blocks in the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Trump family is already deeply involved in several cryptocurrency businesses.

World Liberty Financial, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol backed by President Trump and his sons, recently began testing a USD-pegged stablecoin.

On March 24, Trump Media & Technology Group (Nasdaq: DJT) — majority-owned by President Trump — announced a strategic partnership with Crypto.com to launch crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

President Trump and his wife Melania had also launched their eponymous meme coins ahead of his inauguration as the U.S. president.

Challenges ahead for the Bitcoin mining industry

As far as Bitcoin mining is concerned, it once boasted of being an incredibly rewarding business. However, the industry now faces challenges of rising energy costs and reduced block rewards.

The Bitcoin halving in April 2024 reduced the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Add to it the challenge of rising energy costs in the country. Besides, miners need to replace their equipment to keep up with the advancement of technology.

Bitcoin, who significantly rallied around President Trump’s election win and inauguration, has been on a decline for the past few weeks.

As per Kraken's price feeds , BTC was trading at $81,808.38 at press time, with a modest hike of around 15% year-on-year (YoY).