By Summer Zhen
HONG KONG (Reuters) -American Bitcoin, the bitcoin miner backed by U.S. President Donald Trump's two sons, has locked in crypto and traditional investors to back an all-stock merger that will allow the firm to soon start trading on the Nasdaq, the company's largest investor said.
The unlisted firm's merger with Gryphon Digital Mining is set to be finalised shortly, and the goal is to start trading in early September, according to Asher Genoot, the CEO of Hut 8, which holds 80% of American
Bitcoin.
Anchor shareholders in the listing have already been finalised, he added.
The company's co-founder, Eric Trump, his brother Donald Trump Jr and Hut 8, will own a combined 98% of the newly formed entity, which will retain the name American Bitcoin and trade under the stock code ABTC.
"Instead of going public directly via IPO, we thought that there was a lot more advantages to financing if we had an existing company that already had access to different financing too," Genoot told Reuters in an interview at the Crypto Asia conference in Hong Kong.
Eric Trump is also in Hong Kong and will travel to Tokyo on the weekend for an event for Metaplanet, a Japanese bitcoin treasury firm, Genoot said.
American Bitcoin is hunting for crypto assets to buy in Hong Kong and Japan to build out its global business, the Financial Times reported two weeks ago.
Genoot said American Bitcoin could take stakes in companies outside of the U.S. to give people access to publicly listed bitcoin assets, as some investors were prevented from buying Nasdaq-listed stocks.
"Right now it's very early. So we haven’t been committed to anything," he said.
Hut 8 was also a crypto miner but has shifted its focus to energy infrastructure and data centers after launching American Bitcoin with Trump sons, he added.
(Reporting by Summer Zhen in Hong Kong; Writing by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
