American Bitcoin (ABTC) Begins Trading on Nasdaq After Hut 8 + Gryphon Merger — Eric Trump and Don Jr. as Co-Founders; UAE ADQ and Taqa Explored as Expansion Partners

On September 3, 2025, American Bitcoin (NASDAQ: ABTC) began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market following an all-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining. The company was founded in March 2025 by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. as a bitcoin mining and digital-asset treasury operation. Hut 8 Mining Corp. owns 80% of the entity; the Trump brothers and legacy American Data Centers shareholders own the remaining 20%. Subsequently, CEO Mike Ho confirmed in October 2025 that American Bitcoin has held discussions with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ and Abu Dhabi-based global energy company Taqa regarding UAE expansion.

American Bitcoin is the Nasdaq-listed flagship of the Trump-family crypto empire, operating alongside World Liberty Financial (the DeFi / USD1 stablecoin venture documented in 2025-01-17–tahnoon-uae-buys-49-percent-wlfi-500m) and other Trump-family crypto interests.

Founding and Ownership

• Founded: March 2025
• Founders: Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., legacy shareholders of American Data Centers (Eric + Don Jr.’s February 2025 data-center/crypto infrastructure venture)
• Majority owner: Hut 8 Mining Corp. (80% ownership) — publicly-traded (NASDAQ: HUT) bitcoin mining firm with approximately 1,020 MW of energy capacity across 15 sites in U.S. and Canada
• Minority ownership: Trump brothers + legacy American Data Centers shareholders (20% combined)
• Eric Trump role: Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer
• Donald Trump Jr. role: Co-founder
• CEO: Matt Prusak (initial); Mike Ho (subsequent)
• Listing: Nasdaq Global Select Market, ticker ABTC, trading began September 3, 2025
• Listing mechanism: All-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining (reverse merger take-public strategy)

The Gryphon Merger Structure

The Gryphon Digital Mining merger was the specific structural mechanism by which American Bitcoin achieved public-market listing without a traditional IPO process. The SEC filing (August 2025 Form 425) documents:

• Reverse-merger structure: American Bitcoin + Hut 8 + Trump brothers merged into Gryphon’s public shell
• SEC registration: Full SEC review of the merger was required but compressed vs. conventional IPO timeline
• Speed to market: The merger route allowed American Bitcoin to achieve Nasdaq listing within approximately six months of founding (March → September 2025)
• Capital access: Public-market listing provides direct access to public-market capital without the Trump-family direct capital contribution

The “Two Things the Trumps Brought” — Per Matt Prusak

American Bitcoin’s initial CEO Matt Prusak publicly described the Trump brothers’ contribution to the venture in two categories:

1. “Access to capital markets” — specifically, “the Trumps’ international business connections”
2. “Narrative” — “the one that comes with the Trump family name”

Both descriptions are structurally significant. The “international business connections” framing confirms that the Trump-family Middle East and Gulf capital relationships are operational business assets, not merely personal social connections. Prusak’s public statement documents that Trump-family political positioning and international networks are being deployed as commercial resources for a publicly-listed Nasdaq company during Trump Sr.’s active presidency.

Hut 8’s Parallel $220M Raise

In the same approximate window as American Bitcoin’s founding and listing, parent Hut 8 raised $220 million to fund large-scale mining operations and Bitcoin reserves. Per Decrypt reporting, this raise was explicitly linked to “deeper ties with the UAE” and the broader Trump-linked crypto expansion. The capital is deployed across the combined Hut 8 + American Bitcoin mining footprint.

The UAE Expansion

In October 2025, American Bitcoin CEO Mike Ho publicly confirmed that the company had engaged in discussions with Abu Dhabi sovereign entities:

• ADQ (Abu Dhabi Developmental Holding Company) — UAE sovereign wealth fund
• Taqa (Abu Dhabi National Energy Company) — UAE state-owned energy and utilities company

Both entities are Abu Dhabi sovereign-controlled. ADQ is one of the three major Abu Dhabi sovereign funds (alongside ADIA and Mubadala); Tahnoon bin Zayed (who paid $500M for 49% of WLFI per 2025-01-17–tahnoon-uae-buys-49-percent-wlfi-500m) chairs ADIA, not ADQ, but the three funds operate in coordinated Abu Dhabi sovereign capital strategy.

Mike Ho’s statement: “I’ve had conversations with [Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund] ADQ and with [Abu Dhabi-based global energy company] Taqa.”

Taqa is significant specifically because bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive operation — a partnership with Taqa would provide American Bitcoin with access to Abu Dhabi’s massive energy infrastructure (including solar, natural gas, and nuclear), potentially at subsidized rates. ADQ involvement would provide capital.

The UAE expansion was being explored within 90 days of the Nasdaq listing — a timeline consistent with the relationship being pre-existing rather than newly initiated.

The Trump-Family Crypto Empire Architecture

American Bitcoin sits within a broader Trump-family crypto structure that includes:

1. World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — DeFi protocol, USD1 stablecoin; 49% owned by Tahnoon lieutenants since January 2025 (2025-01-17–tahnoon-uae-buys-49-percent-wlfi-500m)
2. American Bitcoin (ABTC) — Nasdaq-listed bitcoin miner; Hut 8-majority, Trump-minority
3. American Data Centers — Eric + Don Jr. data-center/crypto infrastructure venture (Feb 2025)
4. USD1 stablecoin — issued by WLFI, launched March 2025
5. Trump family titles within WLFI — Donald Trump as “Chief Crypto Advocate”; Don Jr. and Eric as “Web3 Ambassadors”; Barron Trump as “DeFi Visionary”

Each entity operates as a separate legal vehicle but with overlapping Trump-family leadership. The structural design provides:

• Diversified crypto exposure across bitcoin (ABTC), stablecoins (USD1/WLFI), and data-center infrastructure (American Data Centers)
• Multiple revenue streams to Trump-family members
• Cross-entity cooperation — e.g., WLFI holdings of Witkoff Holdings-held positions, ABTC bitcoin mining potentially backing USD1 reserves
• Regulatory arbitrage — different entities face different regulatory regimes (SEC public-company, commodity exchanges, DeFi ambiguity)

Don Jr.’s Parallel 1789 Capital Role

Donald Trump Jr. simultaneously serves as a partner at 1789 Capital — the Palm Beach-based “patriotic capitalism” venture firm with approximately $2 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2025 (up from $200M at year-start 2025). 1789’s co-founders include Omeed Malik and Rebekah Mercer (Robert Mercer’s daughter). 1789 Capital invests in SpaceX, Anduril, Groq, and Polymarket (the last of which Don Jr. joined as advisory board member in August 2025).

This means Don Jr. simultaneously:

• Co-founds American Bitcoin (crypto mining, Nasdaq-listed)
• Partners at 1789 Capital ($2B AUM venture fund)
• Serves on Polymarket advisory board (prediction market)
• Serves on Unusual Machines advisory board (drone company; received $12.8M DOD contract September 2025)
• Holds “Web3 Ambassador” WLFI title
• Has 2025 additional international business activities (Greenland, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria per existing KB entries)

Significance

American Bitcoin is the Trump-family operational confirmation that the presidential-family-business architecture includes publicly-listed Nasdaq entities operating during the active administration. The distinctive features:

1. Public-market listing during active presidency — ABTC is trading on Nasdaq, with public-company disclosure requirements, while the co-founders’ father is president
2. Stated “international business connections” asset — the Prusak framing is the explicit operational acknowledgment that Trump-family political networks are crypto-business capital
3. UAE sovereign-entity expansion — the ADQ and Taqa conversations confirm the Pipeline 2 Abu Dhabi connection extends beyond WLFI/Tahnoon into the broader Trump-family crypto ecosystem
4. Rapid speed to market — six months from founding to Nasdaq listing is unusually fast and suggests pre-positioned deal structuring
5. The Hut 8 majority-ownership structure provides operational scale (1,020 MW energy capacity) that small Trump-family ventures could not independently establish

SEC Form 4/3 Insider-Trading Filings Since Listing (as of August 31, 2026)

Direct pull from EDGAR (issuer CIK 0001755953, “American Bitcoin Corp.,” formerly Gryphon Digital Mining, Inc. through 2025-09-03, formerly Akerna Corp. through 2024-02-13). Every Section 16 filing (Form 3 and Form 4) associated with this CIK since the September 3, 2025 merger/listing was pulled and read individually from the underlying XML (not from the EDGAR index summary and not from any aggregator). Filing date and transaction date are reported separately below because they differ — transaction dates lag filing dates by 0-9 days in this set, and several filings bundle transactions from two different trading days into one filing.

Finding: no Form 3 or Form 4 has been filed by Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. as a reporting owner of American Bitcoin Corp. EDGAR full-text search for the phrase “Eric Trump” restricted to CIK 0001755953 across forms 3/4/5 returns zero hits. Donald Trump Jr. does hold an individual EDGAR filer CIK (0002016181, “Trump Donald J. JR”) and has filed Form 3/4s as a reporting person — but only for GrabAGun Digital Holdings, Colombier Acquisition Corp. III, PSQ Holdings, Inc., and Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. None of his filings under that CIK name American Bitcoin as issuer. Eric Trump has no individually registered EDGAR filer CIK searchable under “Trump Eric” or “Eric Trump.” This is a verified absence from the primary Section-16 filing record, not evidence that the Trump brothers hold no economic interest — the company’s own Q3 2025 10-Q (filed 2025-11-14, CIK 0001755953, accession 0001193125-25-281390) describes an 80%/20% Class B/Class A split between Hut 8 Corp. (“Parent,” holding 732,224,903 Class B shares) and the legacy American Data Centers shareholder base, but the 10-Q’s body text contains no occurrence of the word “Trump” — the 20% minority stake is not broken out by named individual anywhere in that filing. Whether Eric Trump and/or Donald Trump Jr. hold their reported “co-founder” equity through a vehicle that itself falls under Section 16 reporting thresholds, or through a stake too small/indirect to trigger individual reporting-person status, is not resolved by the documents pulled for this task — see Research Gaps below.

Named individual reporting owners who HAVE filed Form 3/4s for ABTC since the merger (officers and directors, per their own filings — none are Trump family members):

Transaction-code key used above: P = open-market purchase, S = open-market sale, A = equity award/grant (no cash changes hands), M = exercise/conversion of a derivative security (e.g., RSU vesting into common stock), J = other transaction type specified in a filing footnote. An award (A) or an exercise (M) is not the same event as an open-market purchase (P) and none should be characterized as “buying” without the code attached.

On the only large sale in the record — Anchorage Lending CA, LLC’s three same-day dispositions on 2025-09-03, the day trading opened — no Trump-family individual is the reporting owner (Anchorage Lending is a crypto-lending/custody firm and pre-merger investor), and no dated crypto-policy announcement was found in this KB’s timeline in the surrounding days that the sale could be checked against. No correlation is asserted for this transaction.

On the apparent date-proximity between some director Form 4s and unrelated Trump-crypto policy timeline entries — e.g., the 2026-02-24/26 RSU awards to Broukhim/Busch/Prusak/Mateen fall in the same window as this KB’s separate entry 2026-02-26–american-bitcoin-trump-family-59m-loss-stock-collapse (ABTC’s own $59M-loss/stock-collapse report), and the 2026-03-03/03-04 open-market purchases by Busch and Mateen fall on the same calendar dates as 2026-03-03–senate-republicans-block-trump-emoluments-crypto-resolutions and 2026-03-04–trump-sides-with-crypto-firms-stablecoin-yield-conflict — none of these three policy-timeline entries concern American Bitcoin specifically (the emoluments/stablecoin entries are about World Liberty Financial), and none of the reporting owners transacting on those dates is a Trump family member. These are noted as adjacencies observed while cross-referencing dates, not as documented correlations — a correlation claim requires both a dated filing AND a dated public event concerning the same entity, which this set does not meet. Whether Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. have any economic exposure to these RSU-award or purchase dates through an undisclosed indirect vehicle is an open question the primary-source record here does not answer.

Typed access note: data.sec.gov and www.sec.gov EDGAR endpoints responded normally throughout (HTTP 200) when queried with a company-identifying User-Agent header; no 403s or rate-limiting encountered. One efts.sec.gov full-text-search query for “Eric Trump” scoped to CIK 0001755953 returned zero hits — reported above as a verified absence, not a tooling block, since the search endpoint itself returned a valid (200) empty result set.

Research Gaps

• ABTC stock price trajectory since September 3, 2025 — performance and volatility
• Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.’s specific equity holdings — Form 4 insider-trading filings since listing — RESOLVED (2026-08-31): neither has filed a Section 16 Form 3/4 as a reporting owner of American Bitcoin Corp. (CIK 0001755953). Don Jr. has an EDGAR filer CIK (0002016181) but it is not linked to ABTC as issuer; Eric Trump has no discoverable individual EDGAR filer CIK. New gap opened below.
• NEW: how is the Trump brothers’ reported ~20% (with legacy American Data Centers shareholders) minority equity stake actually held? — the Q3 2025 10-Q’s related-party/equity disclosures do not name Eric Trump or Donald Trump Jr. and do not break out the Class A minority stake by individual holder. Determine whether the stake sits in a holding LLC (which would itself need to be identified and checked for its own Section 16 status), whether it falls below individual reporting thresholds, or whether “co-founder”/“Chief Strategy Officer” titles as used in press materials do not correspond to Section 16 “officer” status under SEC rules.
• Hut 8’s broader corporate structure — its own ownership, any UAE or other sovereign capital in its cap table
• ADQ and Taqa conversations outcome — as of late 2025 / early 2026, have any specific agreements been signed?
• American Data Centers’ current operational scope — was it folded into American Bitcoin or does it operate independently?
• USD1 stablecoin reserve composition — does it include any ABTC-mined Bitcoin holdings?
• Tax treatment of the Trump family’s 20% ABTC stake — specific valuation and any sale or hedging activity
• SEC Form 10-K and 10-Q filings by ABTC since listing — compliance status
• Insider-trading restrictions during periods when Trump Sr. has announced crypto-policy decisions
• Gryphon Digital Mining legacy operations — what happened to the pre-merger Gryphon business and employees?

Related Entries

• 2025-01-17–tahnoon-uae-buys-49-percent-wlfi-500m — parallel Trump-family crypto event (WLFI)
• 2025-09-29–ea-55b-acquisition-affinity-silver-lake-pif — concurrent Affinity activity
• 2026-01-11–trump-organization-dar-global-10b-saudi-slate — concurrent Trump Organization foreign expansion
• 2024-11-27–trump-jr-joins-unusual-machines-advisory-board — pre-existing Trump Jr. defense-contract conflict
• 2025-05-15–donald-trump-jr-s-transformation-into-washington-power-broke — pre-existing
• eric-trump-jr — (needs actor entry for Trump 2 role)
• donald-trump-jr — (needs actor entry for Trump 2 role; expand from existing)
• 1789-capital — (needs organization entry)
• hut-8-mining — (needs organization entry)
• trump-2-personnel-pipelines
• investigation-map-april-2026