Eric Trump, who has been running his father’s business for nine years, has no stake in any of the real estate for which the Trump Organization is known. However, he inherited something even more valuable. Over the past year, Donald Trump has taught a master class in how to turn political fame into personal fortune. Eric has proven to be the best student and is now worth an estimated $400 million, more than any of his siblings.
Most of his fortune is a stake in American Bitcoin, a company that mines and stores cryptocurrencies. At the end of September, it had 3,418 bitcoins available, worth approximately $320 million at current prices. American Bitcoin’s market cap is over $2 billion, valuing Eric’s 7.3% stake at around $160 million. “We greatly aspire to be the best cryptocurrency company in the world,” Eric boasted on television in early September. “I think you know how much we charge—we’re pretty well known for that—and we’re having a great time.”
It’s hard not to have fun when making millions of dollars, and American Bitcoin isn’t the only valuable investment Eric thinks about. His stake in World Liberty Financial, which his father launched with his sons Eric, Donald Trump Jr. and Barron shortly before last year’s election, has earned him about $135 million. Along with other new assets, the two cryptocurrency companies have increased Eric’s net worth tenfold, which he had on the eve of his father’s return to the White House.
When asked for comment, Eric disputed the assessment but declined to explain why.
Eric’s fortune with American Bitcoin began with American Data Centers, a non-transparent company he launched with his older brother in February. Just over a month later, ADC merged with Hut 8, a Bitcoin mining company, to create American Bitcoin. In May, American Bitcoin announced a merger, completed in early September, with Gryphon, a publicly traded cryptocurrency mining company. The main goal is to install enough computers to solve puzzles that unlock Bitcoins at the lowest possible price, and then watch the company’s reserves grow higher and higher.
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Eric Trump has become 10 times richer since his father’s election
The combined operation hit the public markets on September 3 under a new ticker symbol, ABTC. It hit a high of $14.52 per share, raising the estimated value of Eric’s 68 million shares to about $1 billion on paper. But the enthusiasm quickly died down: ABTC closed at $8.04 that day. It then continued to decline, including a 42% drop this week, to $2.39 per share. Eric attributed the most recent drop to the release of private placement shares for some early investors. “I hold all my @ABTC shares – I am 100% committed to leading the industry,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter.
When Forbes valued the Trump family in mid-September as part of the annual Forbes 400 ranking, Eric had an estimated net worth of $750 million, of which about $500 million was his stake in American Bitcoin. That’s down dramatically now, but it still leaves you much richer than last year. And the success of World Liberty Financial has filled Eric’s pockets with even more crypto money. His father controls 70% of the family stake in the company, according to his most recent financial disclosures. Assuming the remaining 30% is split between Eric, Don Jr. and Barron (all of whom are listed as co-founders), Forbes He estimates that Eric would have received about $80 million in after-tax cash from the sales of the coins, plus $36 million from his own tokens and $19 million from USD1, World Liberty’s stablecoin business.
All of this dwarfs Eric’s original source of income: his work for the Trump Organization, which he joined in 2006. Before cryptocurrencies filled his coffers, Forbes It was estimated that he received a salary close to 3 million dollars and accumulated more than 30 million in liquid assets. Over the years, he has invested some of that money in real estate and today owns a $7 million home in Jupiter, Florida; a $4 million penthouse in Manhattan and two other properties in upstate New York. His net worth is rounded out by more than $5 million in stock in Dominari Holdings, a opaque financial firm with offices in Trump Tower that has facilitated many of Eric and his older brother’s recent ventures, including a newly formed special purpose acquisition company seeking a merger target.
With his father back at the top of American politics, Eric has benefited from renewed foreign interest in deals with the Trump Organization. Last year, he raised approximately $3.2 million in new licensing deals in Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, and his father’s financial statements for this year will no doubt show much more revenue thanks to recently announced deals in Qatar, India, Romania and the Maldives. Forbes estimates the value of Eric’s licensing and management business at about $34 million. Meanwhile, his wife Lara, who worked for the Trump campaign and co-chaired the Republican National Committee, recently landed a weekend prime-time slot on Fox News, which, if it pays for something like Fox’s weekend host-turned-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s job, will likely net him more than $2 million annually.
With hundreds of millions already in the bank, Eric hints that he will follow his father’s example in more ways than just financial ones, and even hinted at a possible presidential run in an interview with Nikkei Asia. But for now, cryptocurrencies are your path to more permanent billionaire status. “We are incredibly lucky in life, with or without this project,” he said of American Bitcoin on the day of its launch. “But we want to win.”
With information from Dan Alexander.
This article was originally published by Forbes US.
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