TORONTO —Eric Trump, the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, said he believes bitcoin is digital gold and called the largest digital currency a store of value, during a packed panel at Consensus 2025 in Toronto.
“I really believe in digital gold, which is bitcoin, right? I believe in the store of value,” Trump said.
However, Eric Trump — who has a background in real estate — told the crowd at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto that he didn’t get into bitcoin or crypto until politics intertwined the Trump family and the crypto community.
“It wasn’t until the very same group that was attacking my family for no reason whatsoever other than political beliefs, started attacking [the] crypto community that it really drove two people who might not have always been like-minded together and that partnership has been absolutely amazing,” he said Thursday.
Aside from politics, he also realized real estate is not as liquid as bitcoin, which has better liquidity and was easier to transact, solidifying his belief in the digital currency. “I also realized, kind of, through some of that political weaponization, you know, some of the limitations of real estate. Real estate has created tremendous wealth for our family. At the same time, real estate can’t be transferred. It’s very hard to sell,” he said.
“I sold a hotel two years ago. It took me a year and a half to literally transact that hotel because you have title reports and you have managers that have to go in, and you have best proliferations. You do all sorts of things,” Trump said. “… You constantly have to manage it. You constantly have to watch operations, right? And then all of a sudden, you’ve got this kind of digital asset which you don’t need to watch, you don’t need to manage. You know, it’s easy to transact on.”
Trump is the co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, a Bitcoin mining firm founded in partnership with Hut 8 and slated to go public via a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining (GRYP).
The Gryphon partnership came about from a desire to take the American Bitcoin partnership public as quickly as possible, said Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot on stage alongside Trump to a standing-room only crowd. An existing mining business was a key part of that plan as well as getting ‘American’ and ‘bitcoin’ as part of the company name.
“American Bitcoin, to me, is everything, you know. And I we came up with the name, I said one thing. I said, Listen, it has to have the word American, and it has to have the word Bitcoin in it,” Trump said.