Key Takeaways
- American Bitcoin (ABTC) has fallen 95% from its $139.65 peak, cutting Eric Trump’s 6% stake by $600M.
- Rivals Riot, MARA, Cipher and Terawulf are up over 60% on average in 2026 after pivoting toward AI deals.
- Lookonchain spotted dueling 30,000 ETH bets on Hyperliquid, a 20x short against a 10x long, $53.49M each.
A 95% Collapse in the Trump Family’s Mining Bet
American Bitcoin Corp. (Nasdaq: ABTC), the mining company co-founded by Eric Trump, has slumped more than 95% from its peak, wiping over $600 million from the market value of his roughly 6% stake in about 10 months. The stock debuted on Nasdaq in early September 2025 through a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining and peaked days later, closing at a high of $139.65 on Sept. 9.
The decline has been relentless ever since, with shares down about 77% this year alone. The slide forced the company into a 1-for-15 reverse split to preserve its Nasdaq listing, a maneuver that changed the share count rather than the underlying value.
As crypto prices fell over the past nine months, investors rewarded U.S. miners that leased computing capacity to artificial intelligence (AI) customers. Riot Platforms, Cipher, MARA Holdings, and Terawulf have all announced data center deals and are up an average of more than 60% this year. American Bitcoin, a majority-owned subsidiary of Hut 8, stuck to pure-play mining and bitcoin accumulation instead, building a treasury that has crossed 7,500 BTC while its equity bled out.
Eric Trump, who serves as the company’s chief strategy officer, has shown no sign of retreat. “The stacking continues,” he said in response to the losses, consistent with his standing prediction that bitcoin will eventually reach $1 million per coin.
Critics see the episode differently, as fresh ammunition for the argument that Trump family crypto ventures (from the TRUMP memecoin to World Liberty Financial) have enriched insiders while public buyers absorbed the drawdowns.
A $107M Standoff Over Ether’s Next Move
While the Trump mining bet deflated, speculators elsewhere were adding risk. Blockchain tracker Lookonchain flagged two wallets taking exactly opposite sides of the ether trade on decentralized perpetuals exchange Hyperliquid, writing:
“The battle between ETH bulls and bears is on.”
According to the tracker, wallet 0xe069 opened a 20x leveraged short against 30,000 ETH (a $53.49 million position) while wallet 0x7fba opened a 10x leveraged long on an identical 30,000 ETH. Combined, the two traders have $107 million staked on opposite outcomes for a coin trading near $1,783.
The same trader previously closed three winning long trades on BTC, ETH, and SOL, banking $444,000 in total profits. The setup echoes a pattern Bitcoin.com News has tracked on Hyperliquid this year, from a whale running $48 million in shorts against bitcoin, solana, and ether to a trader shorting crypto while going long on tokenized stock indexes. Onchain perpetuals have become the arena where the market’s biggest directional convictions collide in public view.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that the two stories land on the same theme from opposite directions. One is a slow-motion drawdown (à la a politically branded equity that rode the 2025 treasury-company boom up and has now round-tripped) while the other is fast-twitch leverage, where nine figures change hands on a single coin’s next few percentage points.
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