Bitcoin Sinks Deeper Below $100,000 as Bear Market Grips Crypto

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2:52It's the latest crypto link 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 and aim 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 four point four billion dollars. 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.

3:26He joins us from Florida. Eric, good to have you on the program again. How are you? Guys, great to be on. 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? 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.

4:00We're mining Bitcoin at roughly 50 percent of spot prices of Bitcoin. So roughly about fifty six thousand dollars 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.

4:44This public was founded 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 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 said. I think you mentioned a$4.5 billion market cap. And again, we've been listed for less than three months and growing by kind of with lightning speed.

5:25You 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 powers some of this mining. Is it still wind that's powering the mining operations for american bitcoin there's different sources but certainly when there was a defunct wind farm um you know the the guys over at hud 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 dumped into the grid um 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 our bitcoin but you're gonna see a lot of other energy sources come on i mean we're on the the energy revolution in this country i think You guys know that better than anybody.

6:05Look at oil, look at gas. You know, the policies are working. Look at these SMRs. Look at, you know, kind of fusion. Well, well, well, well, wait a minute, Eric, because SMRs, I mean, we 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. Oh, guys, absolutely. Don't don't 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.

6:38You have an administration that's hellbent on making sure this country has incredibly cheap power. Well, that's really interesting. Let me just jump in there because we've done a deep analysis into the cost of electricity. In 2025, electricity costs depend far more on where you're located. And a lot of it has to do with the AI build out 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 twenty five dollars. It has gone up a lot since 2020. If you go back to 2020, it was seventeen dollars per hour.

7:14I 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. Carol, you can't be serious. And honestly, I don't I don't want to argue on Bloomberg. It's not 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. Right. 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.

7:45They were they were stopping every pipeline from being built. I mean, which ones do you want me to name? I could go through a list of 15 of them. In fact, it was 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. You know, 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 the lowest cost energies.

8:22They 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. And the reason hold on, please let me finish. The reason he's hell bent on it is if you track GDP, any GDP growth around the world and you directly correlate that with energy costs, they're 100 percent 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.

8:59We have to win the war on AI. We have to win these for 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. 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, drill, baby drill. And we're drilling again and we're exploring again. 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.

9:36Erica, I respect your position and opinion on this, but I also will say that, you know, the U.S. is the largest oil producer that's out there. I want to go back to your company because on mining. We learned today that Bitfarms, 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.

10:13Do you have any plans for American Bitcoin to pivot away from Bitcoin mining into artificial intelligence? No, 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 a BTC is probably the number one performing asset of any asset. And this is coming from a guy who believes in hard assets, right?

10:51I run one of the great real estate portfolios anywhere in the world. Cryptocurrency is absolutely on fire. Cryptocurrency is taking on the whole world. 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 60 % this year. No, I'm just saying - Do you want to reverse that? I mean, do you want to go back two years? Do you want to go back three years? Do you want to go back five years? Do you want to go back 10 years? I know how to dice and slice the market. I'm just - BTC prices historically have gone up on average of about 70 % a year, year over year for the last 10 year period of time.

11:22All I'm saying is if you invested in BTC two years ago is probably the best investment you could have made. If you may have invested in BTC five years ago, So, you know, 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, right? 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.

11:55You were talking about NVIDIA in the intro clip to introducing me today and how they're down 4%. This is one of the largest companies on earth, if not the largest company on earth. I mean, 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. Totally understand markets, the ups and downs. And sometimes the downs are an indication of 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 seven and a half percent of the company.

12:28Has 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 number has not changed at all. I have every share 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. And guys, what I'll tell you is, you know, I spend a lot of time all over the world.

13:02I 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 a great asset.

13:27It's an asset that can't be inflated. It's an asset that will only have 21 million coins ever. You know, if 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 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.

13:56And 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, 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, you know, transferable 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Think about something that's global. Think about something that's easy to transport. You do love assets. And you guys, your family is so entrenched, obviously, in real estate.

14:23You 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? Both. Both. No, no, no. You have to choose. You have to choose. Come on, Eric. You're smart. Come on. 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 kind of countries that have instability where government can come in at any time and steal your house, steal your piece of property, steal your hotel, right?

15:04You 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 literally qualified on ledger 24 hours a day. So 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 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 we're 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 you know 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 lived in a lot of places and let me ask you here in africa you'd probably appreciate that No, I understand what you're saying.

16:12And 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. Do you not believe it? Do you not believe it? No, no, no, I do. 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 feel like, you know, Tim asked about, you know, maybe the advantage of, you know, buying into your company versus maybe a micro strategy or something else.

16:43Do 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? yeah carol it's such a frustrating question no you know my advantage is our advantage with american bitcoin is we can mine bitcoin at 50 cents on the dollar roughly you know and we're mining bitcoin every single day any others and by the way michael is a very close friend of mine and there's no person in the world i you know virtually that i respect more he's an amazing human being uh an incredible visionary and everything he's accomplished our advantage to mining bitcoin is is every single day we mine a lot of bitcoin and we do so for 50 cents on the dollar.

17:32Go 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 downpricing, you know, 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.

18:04But 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 that you understand why we you do understand why we ask it. Right. I mean, full disclosure, like we try to be as so many of the questions here have just been I understand clearly where where you stand right but you know there's not it's 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 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.

18:58Hey, Eric. So when I hear questions about how, you know, somebody could possibly argue that Biden had better energy policies for the United States than Donald Trump, like, give me a word. I didn't argue that. I just, you know, we are a data-driven company. And so I look at data. Give me the data. So perfect. Give me the data. Give me one quantifiable metric where Joe Biden was a better energy president than Donald Trump. You can't. You just can't. Well, I will say that. When you had a president 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.

19:38And there's 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 i gave you no one can credibly tell me you know as these guys build there's build wind farms in the middle of nowhere that aren't even plugged into the grid but i mean i say that with all due respect 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 drill or we're only going to do it.

20:20We'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 do you think any of it has anything to do with the transportation of oil? Right. 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 be heavy. Right. And that's what Joe Biden was doing. It was the biggest it was the biggest.

20:51Yeah. 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, your transportation secretary, who is completely incompetent. All right. I don't I don't want to get too political. But anyway, listen, in five years, what do you hope your company is just to wrap up? Where do you see its its role? 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.

21:28We're ascending the ladder very quickly. I think I mentioned that we're under three months old and 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.

21:59And we need to lead the world in the financial, you know, 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 getting tremendously well. 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 Join in executive vice president of the Trump Organization joining us there in Florida.

22:37Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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