Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Welcome back. I'm Romain Bostik.
Speaker 3: You are watching Bloomberg Markets, but right now I'm alongside
Speaker 3: the host of Bloomberg Crypto, Tim Stenovik, for a discussion,
Speaker 3: a very special discussion about American Bitcoin, which went public
Speaker 3: earlier this month and is one of the many crypto
Speaker 3: players that have entered the public markets this year. It
Speaker 3: is also part of a surge in digital asset treasuries,
Speaker 3: reaching a market cap of almost seven billion dollars. But uniquely,
Speaker 3: its chief strategy officer is a son of the President
Speaker 3: of the United States. Please to say that Eric Trump
Speaker 3: joins us right now alongside American Bitcoin CEO Mico. Welcome
Speaker 3: to both of you.
Speaker 2: Thank you guys very much. It's good for having us guys.
Speaker 4: No shortage of crypto treasury firms out there, no shortage
Speaker 4: of bitcoin mining firms out there, Mike. What makes American
Speaker 4: Bitcoin different from everything else out there?
Speaker 5: Well, we're the best of all worlds apart from Meeric Trump,
Speaker 5: apart from America.
Speaker 2: That's the best part. But we're the best of all worlds.
Speaker 6: We're not just a bitcoin mining company, We're not just
Speaker 6: a treasury We're a bitcoin accumulator, and what that means
Speaker 6: is we use bitcoin mining as just one layer of
Speaker 6: the strategy. Bitcoin mining is effectively, as of recent allows
Speaker 6: us to accumulate bitcoin at a fifty percent discount to
Speaker 6: Spot price. As a publicly listed, actively managed accumulator, we're
Speaker 6: very different than just buying an ETF. When you buy
Speaker 6: an ETF, when you buy spot bitcoin, your ownership ratio
Speaker 6: to bitcoin will only ever be one blessed feast. When
Speaker 6: you buy an actively managed accumulation company.
Speaker 2: We use all of our tools, our know how, our.
Speaker 6: Ability to monetize volatility. As a public stock, we have
Speaker 6: a very volatile profile given that we track underlying bitcoin
Speaker 6: and our volatility is higher than bitcoin.
Speaker 2: So being able to.
Speaker 6: Issue low cost converts that convert at a premium to
Speaker 6: wear our share price today to buy moreco Bitcoin is
Speaker 6: an asset class that has been increasing double digits for
Speaker 6: the last decade is very highly a creative to our
Speaker 6: shareholders and increases the metric that is most important, and
Speaker 6: that is our Bitcoin ownership per share. As an actively
Speaker 6: managed company, it's using all these tools to increase bitcoin ownership.
Speaker 4: Sure they're come on in here, because finally show that
Speaker 4: you own about a seven and a half percent stake
Speaker 4: of the company. What's your commitment to holding on to
Speaker 4: this equity?
Speaker 2: Long?
Speaker 5: And I've locked myself out for a very long period
Speaker 5: of time. How long, well over a year, and I
Speaker 5: think it's going to be beyond that. But we've locked
Speaker 5: ourselves out, and in fact, the whole board has, and
Speaker 5: you know, the company has. I'm damn committed to this company.
Speaker 5: And I'm committed to this company because they did everything
Speaker 5: they could to try and cancel us. They did everything
Speaker 5: they could I'm talking about traditional finance to put us
Speaker 5: out of business. I was the guy that was getting
Speaker 5: hundreds of letters from the big banks, Capital One, JP Morgan,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean all of them, Bank America. I
Speaker 5: saw one hand was just on trying to take away
Speaker 5: accounts for for golf courses, for hotels, for residential buildings,
Speaker 5: for doing absolutely nothing wrong. And it drove me into
Speaker 5: crypto because I realized that there was nothing that couldn't
Speaker 5: be done in crypto better, faster, cheaper, more transparently. And
Speaker 5: it's an amazing industry. You know you've covered well, I've heard
Speaker 5: you talk about this before. The idea that you were
Speaker 5: de banked and your family was de banked in recent years.
Speaker 5: I just want to make sure I understand this. Are
Speaker 5: you saying that the Trump organization was not able to
Speaker 5: do business with any large financial institution. At one point,
Speaker 5: I got dozens of letters and I'm talking about the
Speaker 5: biggest banks anywhere in the world again, Bank of America, right,
Speaker 5: you know, Capital One, JP Morgan Where for no reason
Speaker 5: other than the fact that my father wore a red
Speaker 5: hat that said make America great again, you know, and
Speaker 5: maybe sat on a different end of a political aisle
Speaker 5: than kind of the woke ideology of the time. They
Speaker 5: were sending me letters for condominian buildings. Some of the's
Speaker 5: assets we didn't even necessarily own. We managed, right, residential
Speaker 5: component in one of our buildings, right, they would send
Speaker 5: a letter to the board saying, congratulations, we will no
Speaker 5: longer bank you. It's like, that's not our banking the
Speaker 5: bank account of a residential building. I saw the weaponization
Speaker 5: of financial industry, and then I started realizing how broken,
Speaker 5: how slow it was. My wife and I owned my father, right,
Speaker 5: we had two point one percent residential mortgage rates.
Speaker 2: I got via schmuck not to go.
Speaker 5: Out and you know, get financing We bought a home
Speaker 5: with a bank that I had banked with for twenty
Speaker 5: five years. It took me one hundred and twenty days
Speaker 5: to go through and know your customer right, and you're
Speaker 5: seeing there saying why why is it every week as
Speaker 5: a hospitality company, Right, I'm trying to get a wire
Speaker 5: out or I'm waiting to receive a wire through the
Speaker 5: Swift system, where if I don't get it out by
Speaker 5: five o'clock and by way, even if you get out
Speaker 5: five o'clock, zero chance it's making Therefore, before Monday, you know,
Speaker 5: when you can transfer five hundred million dollars with bitcoin
Speaker 5: from an iPhone to an iPhone having a wallet address
Speaker 5: you know at you know, eleven o'clock on a Sunday night,
Speaker 5: you know, for no fees, for practically no fees, and
Speaker 5: that scares the big financial institutions and guys. I've always
Speaker 5: been a hard asset person. I've always been a builder
Speaker 5: of big buildings. That's what my families know. One for
Speaker 5: us and had it not been for the weaponization of
Speaker 5: the big banks, I would have never found the crypto industry.
Speaker 5: It's one of the greatest things and I am the
Speaker 5: biggest proponent of Bitcoin. I think it's the greatest asset
Speaker 5: of our time. You have an asset that's, you know,
Speaker 5: appreciating seventy percent a year over year for the last
Speaker 5: ten year period of time. It's global, it's instantly liquid,
Speaker 5: it's the greatest hedge against real estate, and it's It's
Speaker 5: been a lot of fun, guests.
Speaker 3: And I understand your personal experience at helping fuel this,
Speaker 3: But beyond your personal experience, what is the long term
Speaker 3: advantage And I'm talking for the broader audience out there,
Speaker 3: the broader community of folks out there for transacting more
Speaker 3: in that space, not just necessarily with bitcoin, but using
Speaker 3: the blockchain tocnos.
Speaker 2: Such a great question.
Speaker 5: And the reason that's great question is we have the
Speaker 5: greatest economy in the world.
Speaker 2: Buy far barn On.
Speaker 5: We all know this, right, I mean, imagine it's just
Speaker 5: tig Zimbabwe, right all right, where they had ten thousand
Speaker 5: percent inflation.
Speaker 2: Year over year.
Speaker 5: You go, you work your butt off, right, and all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, your money's burned. I mean you literally
Speaker 5: get in you actually have Crypto is going to be
Speaker 5: the greatest tool to create financial free them throughout the world. Now,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, stead of having that money just
Speaker 5: disappear because you've got a cookie government, or you've got
Speaker 5: bad financial policy, or because one hundred other Now, all
Speaker 5: of a sudden, you can take that based on one
Speaker 5: thing that everybody has, which is, you know, a smart
Speaker 5: device now in their pocket or just about anybody, and
Speaker 5: that gives you financial freedom. Now, all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: you can go buy bitcoin, and you can go buy
Speaker 5: an asset that'sppreciating, as I said before, between fifty and
Speaker 5: seventy percent a year, and you actually have something at
Speaker 5: tangible at the end of it. Take the other side
Speaker 5: of crypto, right, you know, take take stable coin.
Speaker 2: You can invest in the US dollar. You're in Zimbabwe.
Speaker 5: Instead of having your currency devalue by that ten thousand
Speaker 5: percent a year, you can go invest in the US dollar.
Speaker 5: We're going to onshore trillions and trillions of dollars in
Speaker 5: the United States of America because of it, and that
Speaker 5: gives people financial freedom, and that's a wonderfulingful thing as
Speaker 5: well for the United States of America.
Speaker 4: He might jump on in here because I want to
Speaker 4: ask a little bit about the relationship that American bitcoin
Speaker 4: has with bitmin the bitcoin mining equipment provider Representative none
Speaker 4: of Iowa Republican calling for a federal review of Bitmain,
Speaker 4: essentially saying that the US could that this could present
Speaker 4: a national security risk here in the U. Is it
Speaker 4: a national security risk for you to use this equipment?
Speaker 2: I don't believe.
Speaker 6: So it's very proven that these ACIS chips are programmed
Speaker 6: just for one purpose, and it's for computations on the
Speaker 6: shot two five to six algorithm, and ben Main has
Speaker 6: been a leading manufacturer for US. It's really about the
Speaker 6: merits of the technology, the hardway that we use. We
Speaker 6: use the most efficient, the most cost effective to be
Speaker 6: able to produce bitcoin at the lowest costs and most
Speaker 6: efficient with the most uptime.
Speaker 3: But I am curious just on that point though too, Mike.
Speaker 3: I mean, is there any risk and I mean this
Speaker 3: also dovetails with having you know Eric by your side,
Speaker 3: but is there any risk with regards to teriff and
Speaker 3: trade policies and being able to get our hands meaning
Speaker 3: the US being able to get their hands on things
Speaker 3: from there or vice versa. I mean, just the start
Speaker 3: of this week, I mean we came in with China
Speaker 3: putting some blocks potentially on Nvidia and some of our
Speaker 3: homegrown chip makers.
Speaker 6: We're really just focused on the silicone that is the
Speaker 6: A six that we use for bitcoin mining. We pay
Speaker 6: tariffs on the silicone that we imported from that made
Speaker 6: It is still the most competitive and most efficients and
Speaker 6: when we measure this latest generation of hardware, it is
Speaker 6: very technologically advanced in terms of the efficiencies. We've moved
Speaker 6: from twenty eight naanimeter chips down to sixteen, downs to ten,
Speaker 6: down to five. Now the latest generation of A six
Speaker 6: that we use our three nanometer chips. The technology for
Speaker 6: the manufacturers to produce at this efficiency is very competitive
Speaker 6: and very difficult.
Speaker 4: Eric, I'm curious how you view energy sources here because
Speaker 4: Mother Jones reporting recently that HUT eight buys wind power
Speaker 4: from a facility in Texas. Your father has made clear
Speaker 4: his views on wind power, and he's attacked projects and
Speaker 4: he stopped projects on federal lands. Do you disagree with
Speaker 4: his view on wind power?
Speaker 2: No, I totally agree with it.
Speaker 5: In fact, the reason we're able to buy wind power
Speaker 5: for such low amounts as they built a wind farm
Speaker 5: in the middle of absolutely nowhere and they didn't have
Speaker 5: anybody to distribute.
Speaker 2: That energy to.
Speaker 4: They were distributed to make before they were selling it
Speaker 4: to the hot eight they were bitting get to the grid.
Speaker 2: They were distributed into two.
Speaker 5: Texas, they didn't really have anywhere to send the power,
Speaker 5: and it was massively subsidized. Here's the reality with win power.
Speaker 5: Wind power is a massively subsidized thing. Right, the governments
Speaker 5: could go over to Europe, go over to the UK
Speaker 5: where my father is right now, the amount of subsidy
Speaker 5: you're talking about eighty percent subsidy on wind farms, where
Speaker 5: the government's paying them, subsidizing the actual creation.
Speaker 2: Of them, and they're also ruining landscape.
Speaker 5: Now, America, we have the greatest energy anywhere in the world,
Speaker 5: and it's untapped. We have energy reserves that every country
Speaker 5: in the world, including China, would absolutely die to have.
Speaker 5: It's just we've had that policy where we've never actually
Speaker 5: been able to exploit that. And so I'm not a
Speaker 5: wind power guy. I think there's much better forms of energy.
Speaker 5: I'm beyond excited about the potential of actually leading the
Speaker 5: revolution in terms of nuclear Again, it's something that America
Speaker 5: was winning. America was winning the nuclear power revolution, and
Speaker 5: then all of a sudden, one day we just gave
Speaker 5: up on it. And then you see what's happening again
Speaker 5: in China. You see what's happening in the Middle East.
Speaker 5: I mean even France for the longest time was winning
Speaker 5: that technological revolution, and I think under my father's leadership,
Speaker 5: that's coming back. But you cannot have a strong GDP
Speaker 5: as a country if you don't have cheap, efficient energy,
Speaker 5: and we better as a country be damn committed to
Speaker 5: that task at hand.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting.
Speaker 4: In the last couple of years, you've accumulated quite a
Speaker 4: bit of crypto. Your family's net worth has increased substantially,
Speaker 4: and now the value of its assets that are tied
Speaker 4: to crypto kind of rivals what it has when it
Speaker 4: comes to real estate. At the Trump organization, you're still
Speaker 4: co EVP of the Trump organization. Are you spending more
Speaker 4: time on crypto than you are at the Trump administration
Speaker 4: or Trump organization?
Speaker 5: Now, I spent a lot of time on crypto. I
Speaker 5: spent a lot of time in real estate. As you
Speaker 5: can imagine, I've got one anymore. I've got one of
Speaker 5: the greatest portfolios of the projects of the world. I've
Speaker 5: got the best hotels in the world. We have the
Speaker 5: best golf course in the world, some of the greatest
Speaker 5: commercial buildings in the city. You probably know many of
Speaker 5: them and all around the world, and we do it
Speaker 5: incredibly well, and that's become that's obviously an incredible business.
Speaker 5: And the underlying value of our hard assets is unlike
Speaker 5: any real estate portfolio in the world, especially based on
Speaker 5: the fact that we practically have no debt and I've
Speaker 5: spent years just paying off debt, and our cash flow
Speaker 5: is tremendous, and that's incredible. Then on the opposite side,
Speaker 5: we obviously have crypto holdings, and they're the greatest counterpart.
Speaker 5: Right on one side, you have really very little liquidity.
Speaker 5: Very few people could come out and buy Trump Cower.
Speaker 5: The asset is too valuable. There's very few families in
Speaker 5: the world or companies in the world who could buy,
Speaker 5: you know, for it to buy a building like that,
Speaker 5: So that means, hey, guess what, it goes up in
Speaker 5: an inflationary period like we had under Biden. It's actually
Speaker 5: very good for real estate. You know, just guess what,
Speaker 5: every ibeam, every two by four becomes exponentially more expensive.
Speaker 5: But if I tried to go sell one of those properties,
Speaker 5: you could take me six months, It could take me
Speaker 5: a year, It could take me eighteen months and.
Speaker 2: You could have limited buyers. Right. You have the opposite
Speaker 2: side of the equation.
Speaker 5: Where you have something like bitcoin, where if I wanted
Speaker 5: to sell a billion dollars at bitcoin, you know, I
Speaker 5: could walk out of the studio about three seconds after
Speaker 5: this interview, I could hit you know, two buttons on
Speaker 5: a phone and you could instantly liquidate it into any
Speaker 5: currency that you wanted. Right, and so they are unbelievable
Speaker 5: kind of counterparts to one another. Right once immediately liquid
Speaker 5: one is twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 5: One you can you know, transact, it becomes utilitarian. You
Speaker 5: can do so anywhere in the world any demographic. You
Speaker 5: have another one that's a hard asset that's fixed to
Speaker 5: a certain geography, fixed to a certain city. Guess what
Speaker 5: if there's a flight to Florida from New York. You know,
Speaker 5: an asset in New York, you know, might suffer a
Speaker 5: little bit more, but maybe an asset in Florida picks
Speaker 5: up that weight.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: It's why I always go out and I say, I
Speaker 5: actually think crypto is the greatest instrument for people in
Speaker 5: the real estate industry because it's the perfect edge, and
Speaker 5: it's why you see people like Grank Cardon. He's doing
Speaker 5: these walk up buildings, He's doing kind of rental projects
Speaker 5: all over Florida. He's actually anchoring those projects layering crypto
Speaker 5: in order to effectively buy down your effective yield on
Speaker 5: your mortgages. And I think a lot of people in
Speaker 5: the real estate space are going to get into crypto
Speaker 5: for this reason. It's an unbelievable instrument and it's the
Speaker 5: perfect complement.
Speaker 3: This gets to the use case though, that I think
Speaker 3: we used to talk about in years past when it
Speaker 3: came to the advent of a bitcoin and the other
Speaker 3: crypto tokens out there. I am curious, Mike, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of entrants in this space now. And Eric
Speaker 3: was talking a little bit earlier about traditional finance. Traditional
Speaker 3: finance has finally taken notice of this as well. So
Speaker 3: how do you structure this business to not only grow yourself,
Speaker 3: but more importantly defend off what's probably going to be
Speaker 3: maybe your Brian one Hands or your Jamie Diamonds or
Speaker 3: other folks who finally decide they want a piece of
Speaker 3: this as well.
Speaker 6: We see that as all extremely positive when you look
Speaker 6: at the proliferation and the rise of even ethereum or Solana.
Speaker 6: That just means that it broadens the on ramps of
Speaker 6: more dollars moving on chain. On chain benefits every crypto,
Speaker 6: and Bitcoin is not immune to that. Bitcoin will benefit
Speaker 6: from that as well. Bitcoin is the reserve asset class,
Speaker 6: whereas some of these other alternative coins are more on
Speaker 6: ramps and or throughput settlement layers. But when you look
Speaker 6: at when you look at bitcoin adoption, when you look
Speaker 6: at crypto adoption, I'll start there first, crypto adoption, there's
Speaker 6: about sixty million active wallets out there with a non
Speaker 6: zero balance. I think it took Bank of America almost
Speaker 6: one hundred years to develop something similar million wall. It's
Speaker 6: sixty million bank accounts, and it took a lot of
Speaker 6: mergers and acquisitions and a lot of governance and permitting.
Speaker 6: When you look at Blackrocks Gold ETF, it's about twenty
Speaker 6: they're coming up on their twenty year anniversary, and it's
Speaker 6: only about thirty billion dollars. Now, contrast that to Blackrocks IBIT.
Speaker 6: They're Bitcoin ETF. That's almost ninety billion dollars and it's
Speaker 6: been only a couple of years. And when you look
Speaker 6: at total ETFs institutional ownership of bitcoin, that represents more
Speaker 6: than six percent. Everyone wants bitcoin. Bitcoin's proliferation adoption is
Speaker 6: only the beginning.
Speaker 3: All right, you have to leave it there. Really appreciate
Speaker 3: both of you coming.
Speaker 2: HEK you guys very much.
Speaker 3: Michae the CEO of American Bitcoin and of course he
Speaker 3: needs no introduction. Eric Trump as well, and our thanks
Speaker 3: to Tim Stenovich will be back in a moment. This
Speaker 3: is Bloomberg