A wave of crypto firms have hit the public markets this year, including one project from the Trump family. More than one, actually, but this is one we haven't talked about. Eric Trump, co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, and Asher Genoot, CEO of Hut 8 and executive chairman of American Bitcoin. Welcome to you both.
Who wants to go slow? I mean, I understand Bitcoin is basically like a Bitcoin treasury company. Are you just betting on continued upward moves in Bitcoin?
Well, clearly we believe in Bitcoin, right? We think it's one of the great generational assets. It's, you know, gone up roughly 50, 70% every year, you know, for a 10-year period of time. It's incredible. But no, it's actually so much more because we actually mine the Bitcoin. We're mining it at about a 50% discount to the market value of Bitcoin right now. So every single day as we're sitting here right now, we're sitting there mining Bitcoin. So we're one of the few companies that every single day we're mining it, we're also accumulating it. We're dollar-cost averaging our Bitcoin holdings down, all while having an asset, as I said, that's outperformed generally every index, every market around the world, and it's probably been the number one performing asset, you know, of our time.
The mining operations you provided with your side of the — was it a merger with a SPAC?
So Hut 8 was one of the earliest and largest mining companies. And so we carved off our Bitcoin mining business because we had more pressure to build data center infrastructure, energy infrastructure. So Hut 8 has a pure energy infrastructure business now, with the Bitcoin itself all being mined at American Bitcoin today.
This is not the first crypto investment from the Trump family, but can you explain the news, Eric, that happened on Monday? That was pretty positive for the Trump family as well. Then we'll talk about all of this with the backdrop of having your father as president.
So, Joe, you know better than anybody why we got into crypto, right? We were debanked by everybody. We were debanked by Capital One, by JP Morgan, which has been admitted by certain — Oh, of course. And by the way, it's really interesting. They're afraid of the Fed. I think they're all coming back, you know, begging us to please open accounts. The Trump Organization, please open accounts. And I never thought there'd be a time — well, I mean, clearly you need conventional banking as well, but never did I think there was a time that such a great company, great hospitality company that's been around for so long, so honest, so perfect, could get debanked by Wall Street. And we fell into crypto. We met some of the smartest people in the world. I met Asher because of it. Unbelievable what they've done at Hut 8, you know, the growth of the company, the stock price, etc. And we got into this new world because we needed to find a new solution for modern-day finance. And you start realizing how antiquated the banks are, how broken they are, how slow they are, how costly they are.
What do you still need them for? You say you do need traditional banking.
So, Becky, in time, I actually think that there's nothing on the blockchain that can't be done better, faster, more transparently. You know, why is it if Laura and I go out to get a mortgage on a home, it takes us 120 days? Why? Why is it that every week, Becky, I'm waiting at 5:00 to send out a SWIFT wire transfer? And if I don't get it out by 5, or if I don't receive it by 5, congratulations. Somebody doesn't get it until the following Monday night or Tuesday. Our financial system is broken. And then, by the way, our financial system literally attacked 50% of the people in this country. And now they're making up for it. Now they're kind of reversing course.
What eventually — you don't think you'll need traditional banking for any of that, but you do need it now for some of those things still.
Well, listen, you need payment rails, and I think stablecoin and a lot of other things is obviously picking up the slack. I think you're going to see that in a very, very big way. And I just think you're going to see modernized finance, which turns into 24/7. But you're also seeing assets like Bitcoin. Bitcoin has become the modern-day gold. People all over the world are pouring into it. Companies from Fortune 500s, a company like ours, to sovereign wealth funds, to the richest families on earth are all hoarding Bitcoin. It's become such an incredible asset. It's immediately liquid. It's probably the greatest hedge to real estate, you know, that there is, right? Because again, you have massive liquidity. It's all around the world. It's protected by kind of the greatest ecosystem of energy mining companies in the world that safeguard it. Bitcoin has become, I think, the truly greatest asset of our time.
This is today, Eric, two big deals. And just — I'm sure you hear about this all the time. You've got a way, obviously, of explaining that. I mean, you've thought about this when you talk to the president about this, or when Don talks about some of his — or with Mr. Witkoff as well in this one. They're talking about the UAE investing some money at the same time that they were granted access to some chips, and not saying it's related, but it could be. You're going to see this again and again in mainstream media in terms of a conflict of interest between the president and his position and his family being able to do so well in crypto.
Yeah. Joe, how long have I been sitting at this table? Like 20-something years. I've been doing this with you guys for a very long time. You know, we're far from Hunter Biden, right? The guys out there are selling — That's what people say, all presidents' sons do these things. Okay. The guys out there selling finger art, right? You know, I've run one of the great hospitality companies, you know, anywhere in the world. You know, we went through hell. Believe me, my father's the first guy who hasn't made money off of the presidency. In fact, you know, if I were to send you a tally of our legal bills over the last year — the Trump brand probably got — we've always been, you know, serial capitalists. We've always had companies, and honestly, crypto came out of a necessity that we were debanked by everybody and we needed to find a new way. And so I couldn't be more proud of American Bitcoin. We're obviously ringing the bell right in this room in a couple minutes, and, you know, it's going to be an amazing venture. I think we're going to do Bitcoin, I think we're going to do cryptocurrency better than anyone. We've truly built one of the great companies, one of the great crypto companies. And by the way, one thing: America's got to lead the way in it. I mean, I watch in Asia, I watch in the Middle East, I watch in all these places around the world. They are all sprinting toward cryptocurrency. And it was really nice — my father became a believer when he was debanked, you know, and it's really nice to see a country take such an incredible initiative and actually — because it is the future. I don't care what anybody says, it is the future. You fast-forward 18 months, you fast-forward 5 years, our financial markets and the way they operate, the speed at which they operate, the efficiency at which they operate, you know, the pace, everything, the fees — I mean, it's going to transformally change how we do business, and I am so proud of that.
The financial markets don't see the financial companies, the big financial companies coming under a lot of pressure from this. If you look over the year to date, they're up 50% over the last year. Citigroup, JP Morgan's done very well, Wells Fargo, all the way through with those big banks. You think there's room for everybody to play in this?
Yeah. Let me maybe challenge you. Look at the amount of money that BlackRock's putting into cryptocurrency, right? Look at the amount of money all of them. If you went back 12 months, not a single one of them were talking about treasuring any Bitcoin assets, any kind of crypto assets. Now all of a sudden, Schwab's doing it and Fidelity is doing it.
Is there room for everybody? That's, I guess, that's my question.
Yeah. Listen, I think the people who embrace it the quickest are going to win the race. And I think those that don't embrace it, you know what they're going to do? They're going to die a very slow and painful death. And you're already seeing that. Look at the success of Coinbase. I mean, look at their stock relative to everybody else, right? I mean, crypto is leading the way. It's what people want. It's an incredible generational play, but it also solves all the problems of modern-day finance, which is the fact that it's lethargic. It's slow. It's costly. It's costly as hell. You know this better than anybody. I mean, it's inefficient. Look at your FX rates every single day, right? That all gets eliminated. And it's also really punitive because there's people at the other side, you know, who will make the decision as to, you know, 'Joe, you're not getting banked. You know why? Because you're a conservative, and so we're going to take away your bank accounts. We're going to destroy your business. We're going to take away —'
Just a hypothetical thing you're saying here.
It's not a hypothetical thing.
No, I mean about me being a conservative.
Exactly.
I mean, these are varied, incendiary investments, though. The Trump — I'm just wondering. I mean, you go across, you span the whole gamut. You've got stablecoins, you've got memes, you've got World Liberty. You've got this initiative. I mean —
