In this episode of the Digital Gold Podcast, host JohnPaul Baric speaks with Matt Prusak, President of NASDAQ listed American Bitcoin, to explore the company's singular mandate: maximizing Bitcoin per share. Matt details their unique dual strategy, which combines low cost mining, enabled through a strategic partnership with Hut 8’s energy infrastructure, with an active treasury operation that acquires Bitcoin directly on the open market. He explains how this hybrid model accumulates Bitcoin more efficiently than ETFs or mining alone, offering traditional investors a trusted public vehicle for leveraged Bitcoin exposure. Matt is candid about the three primary risks, energy, capital markets, and policy, and illustrates how alignment with Hut 8, aggressive education, and brand expansion beyond crypto create a durable "American story" moat while compounding sats per share across market cycles.
Dive into this conversation with Matt Prusak as he walks through his journey from USBTC and Hut 8 to launching ABTC. We cover strategy, treasury, risks, and why “maximizing Bitcoin per share” is the new gold standard for mining. Here are episode timestamps:
00:00:00 Intro and ABTC mission
00:01:00 Matt’s background and shift to Bitcoin mining
00:03:00 USBTC to Hut 8 to Ionic and Cedarville turnaround
00:04:00 Why launch American Bitcoin and how Hut 8 enables 25 EH scale
00:06:00 Bitcoin per share focus and running lean with fewer than five FTE
00:09:00 Dual engine strategy mining plus treasury accumulation
00:10:00 Capital allocation and the 2.1 billion facility
00:12:00 Countercyclical discipline and timing liquid cooling
00:15:00 Hosting economics shared services and gigawatt pipeline with Hut 8
00:19:00 Going public via Gryphon and fast listing timeline
00:23:00 Why NASDAQ and the institutional adoption lens
00:26:00 Disclosure cadence and never selling sats
00:27:00 When not to add hash and blockspace upside
00:30:00 Three risks energy capital markets policy
00:34:00 Partnership with Eric Trump and company formation
00:37:00 Brand and marketing beyond crypto audiences
00:42:00 Rapid fire picks reading robotics travel cooking
00:47:00 Advice to younger self strengths and operating speed
00:49:00 One word for 2025 track record and wrap
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https://x.com/MattPrusak
https://www.abtc.com/
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Jp and Matt
Jp: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I have Matt Pza, who is the president of American Bitcoin, a NASDAQ listed company focused on one clear mandate maximizing Bitcoin per share at A BTC. He leads strategy and execution across mining, treasury, and ecosystem development.
Guiding the company's mission to harness abundant US energy resources and transform them into computing power that secures the Bitcoin network. Matt, I'm glad to have you on the show.
Matt: It's great to be here, jp.
Jp: So tell me, when was the first time you got into Bitcoin mining and what intrigued you about this space?
Matt: Sure. Yeah. So my background actually, I started out as a management consultant. So I was on the infrastructure side, financial infrastructure, and had spent a lot of time around the world working with clients on what they called the distributed ledger technology, which obviously became blockchain the programmable money.
But the more places I went, the more I started to see these different fiat currencies, each, [00:01:00] trading around, doing kind of what the whim of the central bank was in a given market. And it got more and more to the Bitcoin story. And so found myself getting passionate about what Bitcoin represented for folks that wanted as a safe star value around the world.
On the infrastructure front. After COVID, you know, I built a very large COVID testing company with some partners, and we'd built healthcare infrastructure around the United States. And when the opportunity came to start building very, very large Bitcoin mining infrastructure, it was a tremendous way to apply that skillset to a topic I was immensely passionate about.
Jp: Nice. And so, you started at US Bitcoin Corp. And what were you doing there?
Matt: Yes. So, at US Bitcoin Corp, I was the chief commercial officer, so I worked closely with my partners, Mike Ho and Asher, Gnut, on building out one of the largest private bitcoin mining companies. So we did everything from self-mining. We did some hosting operations as well, but we were in the weeds, right?
So we, we developed a very accurate, assessment of what made a good site run, and that gave us a good sense of operational [00:02:00] discipline and results delivery when it came time to go to the institutional level.
Jp: And then what was the shift for you between Bitcoin Corp to Ionic Digital? What was the jump there? And then kind of like what similarities do you see moving from Ionic to A BTC? Would love to hear that perspective.
Matt: American Bitcoin to rewind the story back to the US Bitcoin days, basically we had US Bitcoin Corp merge with Hut eight. So this was a very large merger between a public and a private. Bitcoin miner in the space. I then joined Hut eight as their chief Commercial officer. Running operations there in that process around the same time, Celsius used to be effectively a very large.
Financial services company in the crypto, industry had gone bankrupt. And in the bankruptcy, there was a pile of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of machines that, needed to be turned on. Right? This is what we call the machines in boxes problem, the MIB problem. And my role, in that transition was to step in as the [00:03:00] CEO of ionic, separate from Ade, separate from us B Corp, and execute that turnaround.
So I stepped out of the Hut 8 seat, went over to Iion. Now, ionic had, for a period of time, a operational relationship with Hut 8. So I was now working with some of my old colleagues, albeit from the Ionic, uh, chair. To deliver a very, very large, sort of trophy asset site called Cedarville in Texas.
And so, I worked with the Ionic team, which we built alongside the Hot A team, which was doing a lot of the operational work to develop their Cedarville location for Ionic. So, I did that for the better part of a year. We got that site. Cash flowing. Ultimately, I stepped away took some time off, and then when the opportunity came to kick off American Bitcoin, uh, with my team from Hut 8 along with Eric Trump, I left at the opportunity and here we are.
Jp: So, Eric comes to you, he says, you know, let's do American Bitcoin, or what is the initial starting of American Bitcoin and why does HUD eight see the need to separate it from their [00:04:00] Bitcoin mining operations into a new venture? Why would Hut 8 wanna give up their Bitcoin mining?
Matt: So, if you think about Bitcoin accumulation in 2025, there's really two layers that are now at play. First is the mining. So mining was the original way. The folks got Bitcoin for less than market price. You know, typically you or I could go on Coinbase or whatnot, we could buy spot, but if you wanted to accumulate Bitcoin with a pre-sort of a premium to your effort, mining was the path to do so.
Now, to do so, you needed tremendous energy, knowledge of infrastructure. There's a whole host of skills that go into Bitcoin mining these days to, really produce Bitcoin at a profit. So Hut 8 had, that infrastructure in place. They had the skills. Hut 8 has the team. But what would be very interesting for Hut 8 would be to pull apart the mining, assets and put that into its own publicly traded ticker.
Right? So if you think about it Hut 8 has become a very vast company. It controls energy assets in Canada, high performance computing, the Bitcoin mining venture, they have a [00:05:00] billion dollars’ worth of Bitcoin on the balance sheet. You know, Hut aid is a pretty sizable enterprise. So when we went out to the market, it became a great opportunity for us to take the bitcoin mining.
Machines now, not the literal substations of the transformers, but we took the machines, the firepower, right? That's about 25 eggs a hash. Today we took that and we wanted to pull that into a new corporate vehicle, that would be solely focused on Bitcoin accumulation. It's a win-win.
HUD eight is able to help us acquire Bitcoin cheaper than most. Through really efficient use of energy mining at a lower cost than almost anyone else in the world., This gives us an immense structural discount. We’re then able to use HUD eight's, infrastructure to become the backbone of America's.
Bitcoin ecosystem here in the US and obviously as Bitcoin becomes this global store value, it is critical that the USA becomes central to that process. So we're able to do so from here at home. And then finally, that high relationship again just gives us a unique way to win, right? Vertically integrates us without the heavy costs that you would come with us building out our own capital expenditures on substations [00:06:00] and transformers, so we get the same economic advantages that this had inside of hut. But we're faster and we're leaner, and we're able to get more Bitcoin at a cheaper price.
Jp: Yeah, and I think you mentioned it before that your mandate is maximizing Bitcoin per share. Can you define that exact formula for investors and. What behaviors it's gonna discourage. So I think one of the biggest things that have has hurt miners in the past is that bloated sg and a costs as a public company, that now the investors are kind of losing confidence that this is actually a Bitcoin accumulation vehicle. So what is American Bitcoin doing differently? To do differently.
Matt: Definitely. So American Bitcoin is built to specialize in Bitcoin per share growth. If you were starting a brand-new Bitcoin accumulation vehicle in 2025, you'd wanna pull the best of the mining companies and the best of the treasury companies. And American Bitcoin has both. So on the mining side. You'd mentioned something about how a lot of the peers in mining had over time increased sg and a.
Now there's a variety of reasons this could happen. [00:07:00] Companies could have gone into research in new topics. It could have strayed frankly, from the Bitcoin mining mission. But we came in here with Bitcoin as our north star, right? And so everything really drives back to Bitcoin per share. So if you think about the sg and a, because we have a relationship with. We're able to take a lot of those roles and put them outside of our company, or we're very lean at American Bitcoin. We can run American Bitcoin with less than five full-time employees, right? All the money that we raise, all the revenue that we generate, everything is geared towards Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, versus other projects.
Jp: And so when you have this Bitcoin per share metric, how is that superior compared to hash rate fleet X, a hash, your maybe margin to mine, Bitcoin, the hash price. Why is this the singular focus versus some of these other core metrics that Bitcoin mining companies throw around?
Matt: American Bitcoin is a Bitcoin accumulator, so we have mining's, great hash rate and cost of hash. It's it that's a north [00:08:00] star in mining, so those are important to us. Right. We do look at, obviously it's a huge competitive advantage for us to make sure that our energy costs are great. Our team is lean and that we're not putting money into anything other than the eggs hash on the mining side.
Right. Now, that being said, these days you have more than just mining in the Bitcoin industry. You've got ETFs and you have treasury companies. So the ETFs are an interesting inclusion into the Bitcoin investment opportunity ecosystem. Right. With ETFs, you had a means for folks the everyday American to gain a one-to-one.
Exposure to the Bitcoin network for their, investment. That's great. For people that want to just leave it right and have some exposure to the hardest asset. But we don't think that's the best way to gain exposure. The best way to gain exposure is to have someone who's out there accumulating Bitcoin on your behalf.
But that's not only going to be through mining. So the mining is of course important. It's a way to get Bitcoin at the structural discount, but there's also the treasury side. And so to explain the treasury side a bit, what we're building, there is a company that is able to harness the volatility. In the public markets.
[00:09:00] That comes from having a mining business that comes from having a Bitcoin stack, and we're able to effectively trade around that in amass capital. That is all routed into Bitcoin as well. That is more than what we make in terms of mining, right? So the mining generates a steady stream of Bitcoin at a structural discount to the market, and we do so every day.
On the other hand, we're able to run these financial vehicles that, allow us to accumulate Bitcoin at spot. So on one hand they've got a lever that is mining. On the other hand, we've got a lever that is, blending down the cost of spot, right? Or rather adding in increased Bitcoin from a treasury standpoint giving everyday investors exposure to both of these two engines, right?
And we believe that if you want exposure to Bitcoin and you want that exposure to grow, it makes sense to work with the accumulator like American Bitcoin. Now, if you want to use a treasury strategy, we have that. If you're more interested in the mining ethos, that's something we do well as well.
Jp: And so that $2.1 billion that you guys recently raised, how are you going to allocate it if you've already disclosed that across? Treasury and mining, or how do you view [00:10:00] allocation in general on a let's say a billion dollars of capital, hypothetically.
Matt: Yeah. As a low-cost company, we can use the capital markets to buy Bitcoin directly. Now we've got a lower cost of capital than we would've had as a private company. We have a $2.1 billion, financial instrument you've referenced that allows us to tap the markets for Bitcoin directly or go out and buy.
So every day we're really looking at what is the opportunity in hash price? What is the opportunity in firepower that we get from mining? And then what is the equivalent amount of BI Bitcoin that we could buy if we were just going to the market? And so we're attentive to the dynamics here. There are going to be quarters, days, weeks, months, where it makes sense.
For us to simply buy spot because that is something we believe is the cleanest way to gain further exposure to Bitcoin. There will be other times where mining makes sense, right? Building that fleet out further. Maybe go from 25 eggs ash to 30, 40, 50. Beyond. We're able to do that very rapidly again because we have that unique relationship with Hot Eight, which gives us the [00:11:00] ability to grow our energy pipeline and our infrastructure, assets, in, in response to demand we get for growth today.
Right now, we're focused on Bitcoin. We just did a tremendous deal that allowed us to grow our flute size to about 25 eggs, a hash. This has put us; in the top echelon of miners, we're out there producing coins and carry the network the same as everyone else. But we're also now looking at the accumulation side via the treasury. And so that is where my focus is today.
Jp: And so Matt, if we're thinking about the treasury and mining aspect of the business, you know when Bitcoin miners are physical derivatives of Bitcoin and Bitcoin's price, right? They're extracting so much Bitcoin from the network. One thing that we know from being in this space is that as Bitcoin price increases.
And in a rapid succession in these bull markets, the machines can actually increase in value. But then vice versa, when Bitcoin price is really low, the machines are gonna be potentially much lower and have a discounted value. [00:12:00] When are you deciding to go Bitcoin miners versus just buying Bitcoin directly knowing that?
If the price is high, you're gonna be buying machines over price. But if the price is low, it's better to maybe just to buy the Bitcoin at that time because you're gonna get more of it than the miner could have ever gotten. Even though the machines are, let's say, underpriced.
Matt: I understand American Bitcoin is positioned in such a way as to take advantage of the counter cyclical nature of Bitcoin. We've been in this in industry now for a while. We've seen the booms, we've seen the bust, and we are still here.
And that's because we have a fairly disciplined approach to risk, right? And to capital investment. And so if you've looked at past cycles. There is euphoria. I think we're all long-term believers in Bitcoin. We all believe that Bitcoin is on a steady ascent to, a much higher value. It's again, gold is a 21 trillion.
Bitcoin is around roughly two. There's a lot of headroom even on just gold. And I think Bitcoin has more to offer the world than gold does. There's a lot of headroom for Bitcoin as an asset. That being said. It is quite likely Bitcoin takes the senior group to get there, right? So there [00:13:00] will be times where Bitcoin goes up. There will be times where Bitcoin goes down, and if you are over levered as you put it in any given direction. That could very negatively impact your operations. So as American Bitcoin thinks about how to grow our stack, or grow our fleet responsibly, we are very attentive to not overpaying for things, right?
If you've seen the past few quarters, there have been other, folks in the mining industry that have chased headline growth, that have chased a very high hash number, and declare themselves the champion. And you know what? I am okay. Folks being the biggest number. I don't have to be the biggest number.
I just need to be the best miner. We need to be the miner that, from our perspective, is producing Bitcoin with the best structural advantage that you can have in the industry, and then use that to help accumulate. It's one of our two wheels. We have the accumulation through the mining, we have the accumulation through the treasury, but on the mining.
You can't get ahead by overpaying. You can get a sugar rush from a headline, from a massive fleet expansion. But to win long term, you really have to be [00:14:00] thoughtful about the ups and the downs of the cycle. So to give one example. For a long period of time, we were getting pitched heavily on flipping from a forced air cooling or sort of a fan model of mining into liquid cooling.
I think that liquid cooling in various forms, there's, there's immersion, there's mortar cooled, there's direct to chip. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity, but it had to be at the right time. And so as we sat around and we decided what would make sense for us and when would it make sense for us to make the jump from the forced air cooling, towards liquid, we waited and American Bitcoin, or at the time Hut 8 and US Bitcoin, we were under a lot of pressure to put out a release to say that we were going to be a liquid cooled company and we were doing this, but.
At the end of the day, I've always been of the opinion that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. And so we were really trying to make sure that when it came time to do that purchase, that everything was ready to go, that we would get what we were paying for, that we were not anyone's Guinea pig, and we would grow the business accordingly.
Jp: I love that 'cause you're seeing the, [00:15:00] these immersion and hydro miners cost a lot more. Don't have as good as capital paybacks as, let's say the Aircooled devices. So what is the relationship with A VTC and HUD eight in terms of hosting cost? If it's public, you know, operational SLAs you're holding them to scalability, like, do you have a first right refusal on the space that Hut 8's building out? Can you talk a little bit more in detail about that relationship?
Matt: Yes, HUD eight's advantage for American Bitcoin cannot be understated. So the A BTC partnership with HUD gives us benefits of a few kind, right? There's the back office benefits, corporate benefits, shared resources. On a team level, there's an energy pipeline benefit, and then there's, in the middle, there's operational benefits, right?
Once you've got a site up and running, keeping it going at maximal efficiency. The way that has been structured. Is somewhat of a sibling company relationship right now. Hut 8 owns a majority of the shares in American Bitcoin. We are freely trading; we have shares out in the market. Folks, can take part in the American Bitcoin story, directly.
They don't need to go through [00:16:00] hut. They can buy shares in American Bitcoin, directly through the brokerage, but we have a tightly integrated relationship with that company. What that means from a cost perspective is that we are working with them in, a structure that gives them somewhat of a managed services agreement for the energy. They're given a small fraction of sort of the overall revenue as a fee for running the site. Now they're incentivized as a partner organization. They're incentivized to charge us a fair amount of money. We've not disclosed the specific figures, of course, we're public. So you'll see more details around the nature of that relationship, as we go through our disclosure processes.
But that relationship is fair, but is value creating. And what I mean by that is that for Hot eight American Bitcoin is the best partner you can have. We are a customer or first resort. If you had a site and they're an energy infrastructure expert, if they have a site at HUD eight that could be ultimately used for ai, maybe not today but maybe longer term, there's it increased things the site would need to get there.
Fiber redundancy, power redundancy. It just doesn't have the fit and finish [00:17:00] for hyperscaler, but it's got a great energy opportunity. American Bitcoin is first in line, right? For that sort of opportunity. We are a peer them obviously I come from the company, I come from the sector. We are working hand in hand with the team at Hut 8 to develop, opportunities that could be to the maximum benefit of American Bitcoin and have that benefit ultimately flow through to the Hut organization as well.
So again, I would basically split the relationship into three components. There's a development relationship. And HUD eight has a pipeline in the gigawatts. So there's plenty to develop together. There is a operational relationship, so HUD eight, making sure that these machines which are liquid cooled, are well, maintained and processing at full speed and are really getting that efficiency advantage that puts us ahead of our peers in the Bitcoin mining category.
And then finally, there's a shared services agreement for corporate services. And this is a way for us to keep the headcount very low at American Bitcoin. Which means that for our treasury operations, you don't have a cast of thousands stable to a Bitcoin treasury, right? You've got mostly Satoshi in [00:18:00] there, and then a few staff like myself, making sure that the trains run on time.
Jp: And so Matt, like, I guess digging into it, do you see yourself having like most favored nation status with Hut 8 as the CEO of American Bitcoin, or do you think that you'll be treated like an any of their other large customers?
Matt: I think it is a special relationship. It is a special relationship that's been codified in contracts. We've got a great governance set up where there are two independent boards, right? So there is an independent board at Hut 8 that is looking at a lot of these big deals from the Hut 8 eight side.
There's an independent board, or there's a board with several, fairly senior independent directors at the American Bitcoin side that's assessing the same deals. So you've got two sets of board, you've got management, and then you've got a deal. So as we think about ways to work together, this is a situation where, of course we've got the paper in place. We can grow and we can scale and we will, but there, there are so many folks looking at these contracts that I would really wanna stress that these are deals that are to the advantage for both companies, right? American Bitcoin's goal is to build the Bitcoin infrastructure backbone in the United States. [00:19:00] Hut 8 is a brilliant infrastructure partner to do that and we can work together.
Jp: Yeah. And I think they're a great partner to scale and, you know, we've seen them grow. So let's jump into actually getting the deal done. So you guys have this idea of creating American Bitcoin. How do you identify Griffin Mining as a company to merge with? How are negotiations with their board and how does it come out where you guys have the deal that you actually get, which is where they own a very small percentage of Griffin and you guys own a larger group.
And then kind of what's happened to the assets, the s nineteens that Griffin owned previously and were hosted and do you have plans to retire those or have they already been retired? Can you talk more about those details and just trying to show the audience. What goes into putting together one of these large transactions, and how do you go from private idea to public company in such a short order?
Matt: American Bitcoin has always been geared towards giving the public markets an accessible way, in a trustworthy way to gain exposure to Bitcoin ecosystem, right on [00:20:00] the path to a public listing. There were a few key steps that needed to take place. First was the launch of the American Bitcoin vehicle. So this meant pulling it out of HUD eight as a separate company.
So, we started with about 10 eggs, a hash of HUD eight machines that were pointed to the American Bitcoin vehicle. We combined that with the management team. We combined that with Eric Trump as Chief Strategy Officer. We created this NewCo that would serve as the way to get the public more invested in the American Bitcoin story.
Second to that. needed to find, the proper partner to go into the public markets, right? So if we wanted to be publicly accessible, we needed to work with a company that we could get a deal done that would be beneficial to our shareholders that would make sense for their team. That would be ideally NASDAQ listed, public markets listed that would give retail and institutional investors' confidence in the final company. And as you think about Griffin, which was ultimately our target, there was also a nice synergy because this was a team that knew mining, right? We've [00:21:00] seen in the space a lot of mergers between asset companies and whatever. Girls left at the ball, right?
To try and try and get things going for a Bitcoin treasury company. This is slightly different from our approach, right? We were working with a team that knew mining inside and out that had a good sense of the Bitcoin accumulation. And so we were able to come to terms on a deal fairly rapidly, right?
So from the date we launched, which was April, first 20, 25 to the day we listed, formally closed the deal with Sarah, which was September 3rd. About five months, two days. Griffin presented a terrific counterparty to get that deal done. So we sat down with the team. We negotiated a split, so they received a piece of the float of the final company once we were able to become public.
But by and large, this was a collaborative exercise. You'd mentioned what happened to some of their assets, right? So that, has been worked through. And we'll see as we get through our disclosure processes and things like that, you'll find out the ultimate fate of a lot of their infrastructure and their equipment.
They had some mining assets that we are accounting for, and we're gonna [00:22:00] work on how to make sure that our shareholders received the maximum amount of upside for those investments. And yeah, I really expressed my gratitude right to the Hut 8. And Griffin Teams and the American Bitcoin teams, there were a lot of parties involved with this to get a deal done,
Jp: And I guess, what was the main learnings that you took from the Ionic digital deal to the, this new deal with Griffin? Was it. Being on a NASDAQ listed exchange versus pink sheets was a huge thing. Like what else? There comes to mind that really made you guys do it differently and made it obviously successful?
Matt: Traditional capital markets in the United States gives you a lot of tools in the toolbox, right? There are public listings, there's S ones, S threes, s fours, form tens. There's RTOs. There's SPACs. There are a lot of tools in the toolbox in the capital markets in the United States. Now you layer defi on top of that you've got token generation events, and you've got launchpads and you've got all sorts of different ways in the defi ecosystem to also tap into the capital markets.
And the chaos theory spirals [00:23:00] into some fantastic and interesting combinations. At the end of the day though, for us, our mission's very simple. It's given the everyday American exposure to Bitcoin as an asset class in a way that accumulates Bitcoin. So a public listing for us made sense from day one.
This is the bridge between Tradify and Defi on the Tradify side. There are enormous pools of Americans who are interested in Bitcoin. They're hearing about it. They are curious about its role in the digital economy from an asset’s perspective, from a gold perspective. But they're not yet setting up Coinbase accounts.
They're not creating wallets. They're not going out there, they're not bridging into tokens. They're not ready for that, or they're not interested in it. They don't need the hassle or the headache. So the traditional capital markets for what we were trying to do made a lot of sense. However, if we were going to go into traditional capital markets. We needed to do so in a way that would convey the level of confidence and responsibility that we have in our business, right? So using best of class auditors, working with all sorts of folks to, to [00:24:00] tell the story in public documents that are out and available now to really help get institutional investors confident in the American Bitcoin story.
It makes all the differed. One thing that I believe made it so important for us to go through this process this way is that an institutional adoption narrative, right? Retail, the average investor, has kind of come around on Bitcoin, right? Either they were early, or I think we're still early, but they're more recently involved, in crypto assets.
But the institutional crowd for the past while has not really gained much exposure. I think they've wised up to it. They're attending events I'm meeting with. Sovereign wealth funds, family offices buy-side, hedge funds, pensions, RIAs, these are really thoughtful capital allocators, and they are coming around to the Bitcoin story and they want to gain exposure.
And so for us to have a simple NASDAQ listed vehicle. With a means of articulating how we are accumulating Satoshi's per share. Bitcoin per share. They love it. They love that confidence. They love the idea of a [00:25:00] company where they say, Hey, in a way Bitcoin mining part of our business has lemonade stand economics.
Alright, this is a power in. Coins out operational business, we can get our minds around that. Your dollar cost, averaging your Bitcoin makes a lot of sense for us. Right? On the treasury side, a lot of 'em are sophisticated investors. They understand the rules of volatility, volume, liquidity, the having a ticker, what that means, quarterly disclosures, fair disclosures.
They like that side as well. And so when you combine. This very simple lemonade stands economics business with exposure to Bitcoin as an asset class, growing double digit percentage every year. You can see why institutions are excited about American Bitcoin.
Jp: And will you be putting out, guidance on the ATM usage? Because I know if your goal is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. MicroStrategy did a good job with M Nav and in disclosing when they're gonna use the ATM, do you guys plan on doing something similar?
Matt: Yes, we do plan on doing lots of disclosures surrounding our activities. I think that's [00:26:00] a pro of being public. They talk about. Oh the reporting headaches and the stuff that comes with being public, it's all very real. There's a lot of paperwork if you want to go down this path, but for us, there's also a lot of opportunity to be transparent.
And so one of the main ways that we're going to be transparent is announcing a lot of our, buys. Right? And so you can see from our purchase pattern, the continued confidence. Obviously, we're long-term holders, we're not selling a single Satoshi. We never have, by the way, sold a single Satoshi, right? So we're long-term holders of Bitcoin. We're going to channel sort of the energies of the capital markets into that accumulation. We're gonna be very public about those buys. Whether it's on the mining side, the operations, what we're doing, why we're doing it, giving that rationale, speaking with folks like yourself about.
The story behind those operations or on the treasury side, why we're buying Bitcoin? What makes us the hardest asset in the world? You know what our tempo is for those buys? We have the technology to do them. We have the, we have both the operational acumen to win, and now we have the financial tools and the [00:27:00] toolbox to, capture some of that value. And we are going to use these instruments, right? In fact, we're already in the markets. We're already trying to think about what is the way to accumulate as much Bitcoin as efficiently as possible today.
Jp: And as you're thinking about those ways, when would you not grow your hash rate, even if capital is available?
Matt: For us growing hash rate comes back to rate of return versus buying Bitcoin directly, right? There will be times where it makes sense to focus on hash rate, and there will be times where it makes sense to focus on Bitcoin. So if you think about hash rate globally. There's been a steady ascent of difficulty.
It's gone up. It's gone down in different periods, but directionally more hash rate is entering the market. For us, though, the operational complexity of Bitcoin mining is fine. It's something we grew up with. It's something that we have a lot of skill with. We've got great relationships with all of the chip manufacturers worldwide. We have a great sense of what makes for a good Bitcoin mining site, and so we're going to be opportunistic. There are times where, to your point, if Bitcoin climbs rapidly. There's going to [00:28:00] be some interesting opportunities on the machine side to try and capture some of that, that growth. Right?
If you think back to that, the having right. There were a few days sort of surrounding that event where transaction fee volume spiked. It was a really great opportunity to be a minor in that case. Right. We were effectively exposed to what I view as the future swift network right to this transaction of values on the block space.
It is still early days. You're not seeing. Massive use of the block space yet, but to me, that block space presents opportunity Miners will gain a lot of the opportunity that comes from that block space gaining value. And so for mining, we're very attentive. Now, to your point, what about a down or a down cycle, right? What happens, you know, when the tide goes out? That's where historically our team has always excelled. If you look at the track record of the HUD eight team, and before that, when we were the US Bitcoin Corp team, we've always. Excelled at, you know, kind of swimming against the tide in those moments because we're high conviction.
When everyone else says, oh you're an expert in the industry. How many times have you seen headlines decline the death of Bitcoin? Right? I [00:29:00] mean this is something that you see the headlines. Folks have their confidence shaken they put down their tools and they go home and you stand firm and you plant your feet and you think very thoughtfully about what you're doing and why you're doing it.
And you see an opportunity in that crisis. And so when we've been faced with these decisions in the past. We've always stepped up to the occasion, and so going forward, if there'll be other times where there are folks over-levered, right? Too much debt, too large an operation too soon, things like that, we can come in as a steady hand and we can find ways to create value out of those opportunities in Bitcoin mining. There have been plenty of times in the past where there have been bad deals with good bones, but our team has always been very attentive to finding ways to turn those around and make the best of them.
Jp: And I would agree with you guys have done a great job growing and, you know, succeeding in these bear market environments as, different operational teams. How are, what are like three risks that your, that are material to A BTC over the next 12 months and how are you hedging them if their policy insurance, financial ops [00:30:00] related. Knowing that you have a lot of, I guess, success and learnings under your belt already, why should you, why are you viewed as a seasoned operator versus a new bitcoin mining company?
Matt: On the Bitcoin side, so taking the accumulation and breaking it down into mining. In this specific case, there are three areas that I'm always checking the dials on to, to see what our risk tolerance is, right? The first is energy. The second is global capital markets, and the third is public policy.
So first talking about energy. Bitcoin mining, again, only part of our business. We're also got a treasury vehicle in operation, but on the mining side, we are exposed to energy prices. So we are constantly thinking about our energy rates, our machine efficiencies, the markets that we wanna expand into what does the future of global energy look like in a year?
What does energy look like at the state level, the local level, the federal level, the international level. It comes down to the electron. And that is why for us having this headache relationship is fantastic. With a pipeline in the gigawatts, with an experienced team of energy operators, [00:31:00] around the world now.
We've got a perspective on energy that is fairly mature, right? It puts us in the league of many of these large-scale energy producers more so than a small mining shop. Right? And so on the energy side, I think the increased adoption of renewables has created some volatility around energy.
Miners have always excelled in volatile energy environments. we can curtail we can speed up, we can speed down, we can adjust efficiencies, and we've proven ourselves quite inept at that. But the first risk bucket, I would say is energy. The second risk bucket that everyone should be thinking about when it comes to accumulation beyond mining, this applies to treasury overall, is going to be capital markets, right?
What is your cost of capital? How much does money cost? That's the billion if not trillion-dollar question. So this is where I spend a lot of time looking at reports. I look at the CPI, I look at all the inflation metrics. I think about the Fed meetings. I read their remarks. I've done a lot of global macro work in past life, and I find myself actually really channeling that now, thinking about what do capital markets look like [00:32:00] this week, this month, this quarter, this year, next year?
Because it impacts our business. Both from the performance of our equity, which is public, as well as the performance of our, our cost of capital, right? If we wanna get into development, if we wanna do things like that, what is the money going to cost? So that is a bucket that I'm very attentive to as well. The third and final bucket of risk that we should talk about is politics, right? There's an old line that you may not be interested in politics, but politics are very interested in yield mining and Bitcoin in general are now at that scale. We are no longer a bunch of gentlemen in our basements mining coins, securing the network.
We are industrial power consumers, and that has attained a lot of interest, or you might say, curiosity from policy makers again at the local. State, federal and international level, and so for us to perform well. We need the chakras to align politically across these different groups. The current administration has been a tremendous sea change for the cryptocurrency industry. We have our first Bitcoin president. We've got a team of very capable folks on the energy side. We've got a team of capable folks in the [00:33:00] financial side, the SEC, the Fed groups like that. They're attentive to the markets. They wanna be supportive. always a bit of a, a shock when I meet with these policy makers and they say things like, how can I be helpful?
That is fantastic. That is really what you want to hear when you're building a business in the United States, that the policymakers are asking how they can help you. So the policy risk is still real. We have to be constantly doing education. There are, if you add up all the senators and the congressmen, there are hundreds of people not all of them are yet orange peel, but they're getting there. One congressional session at a time. So meeting with regulators, meeting with representatives, and then at the state level meeting with. Folks in that government, the states kind of bridge some of the high-level federal policy and the local politics. It's really important to engage with the different states ensure Bitcoin is protected. And then at the local level, you get into things like zoning, you get into things like permits. And for our very tangible mining assets. It's very important that we stay in close contact with our communities. We engage them, and again, we do a lot of education. So when it comes to the [00:34:00] political risk, education to me is one of the most important parts of ensuring that we are not caught off sides with the regulators.
Jp: And Matt, I think you, you highlighted one thing we really haven't talked about, but I would love to hear. More insight into in color, which is the relationship A BTC has with Eric Trump. Now, how did it come about and what was this $2.1 billion raise? How did that work? How did that look? How many dinners at Mar Largo you had? You know all, let's gimme some of the juicy details
Matt: Yeah. Taking a step back, we co-founded this company. Eric Trump is one of the co-founders. He's on the management team. We've got Don Junior's an investor as well. So we've got involvement, from both of them. This relationship started a while back, right? My partner Mike, had met Eric, at a conference.
They'd started a discussion. You have to understand that Eric's superpower, his background has a lot of, it's been in real estate, right? I mean, , the Trump organization has done tremendous amounts of development all over the world. Right. And when you come into Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining specifically, [00:35:00] there's actually a lot of carryovers from the real estate world into what we do. In a sense we're doing commercial real estate, industrial real estate, 10 x you know, with the express purposes of the energy bill. His line item of a building a Trump organization property. It's got a thousand items or a thousand things that he's worried about for us. We need to make sure that there's a lot going on there too.
But it's really, the energy bill is where the rubber meets the road in Bitcoin mining. So when Eric got looped in with the team, a lot of really productive conversations happen around the real estate side, around data centers as well. Something that they were very interested in around Bitcoin as this tremendous asset that's growing double digit percentage every year and how to best gain exposure to that.
And the thing with Bitcoin, and as someone who's done mining and you've done mining as well, is. Why buy it when you can make it, right? The only way to accumulate Bitcoin at a structural discount is through money. So that's a great place to start if you wanna build a category leader in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
With Eric joining, we brought him aboard, co-founded the company, trying to find the ways that we [00:36:00] could best channel his superpowers in the capital markets, in communication, in articulating our mission, our vision, and really just demonstrating how serious we are about building a marquee business here in the United States.
Having a member of the first family involved he's a private businessman. There's not overlap, but he's a private citizen, but he articulates the American story so well that for us, it was a no-brainer to find ways to work together and create the marquee organization, combining the operational execution ability of Hut 8 and the sort of brand articulation and strategic mindset from Air Trump.
So that led to the company formerly launched in April one. He's actively involved in the business. We're speaking constantly. You'll see him around you'll see him go on podcasts you'll see him in the media, but you really also see him behind closed doors, right? This is a relationship that extends far beyond just the soundbites, and he's been a great partner to have.
Jp: And I mean, a great partner. Are bringing together a bunch of amazing people. I mean, I saw a photo of you and him and Brian Johnson. I mean, how was that meeting? Was that a party? Was that a planning session? [00:37:00] Talk to me more about that photo with the team there.
Matt: Every good planning session turns into a party at the end of the day. No, but the reality for us is that we want to build a brand. People get excited about. Bitcoin. It's a $2 trillion jump ball. There's anonymous founder. There's tons of great teams working on interesting aspects of it.
People doing the defi, people updating the development code, people working on the energy arbitrage. Bitcoin is, it's like the story of the blind men feeling the elephant. It's a little different to everybody, right? But for us. Bitcoin is an exciting American story. It combines self-sovereignty, it combines freedom, it combines hard work. All of these core American values wrapped into a new currency, a way for folks to exit from the fiat ecosystem. Bitcoin really represents something that to me is very quintessentially American. So, as we think about, what we want to do to engage people, we're going above and beyond just the crypto community.
I love speaking to the crypto community. I'm from the crypto community at a certain point though, you are preaching to the converted right? And you need to go out there. And if we want to become a multi-trillion [00:38:00] dollar asset, if we want to become a global reserve store of value, you need to find. New groups of people to get excited about the story on their terms.
And so to the photo you're referencing, you, folks like Eric Trump, myself, Brian Johnson in there, you know, who knows more about compounding than Brian Johnson? I mean, the man wants to live forever, right? And so if you're living forever, compounding is gonna do a lot of good financially, right?
So we, we brought in all kinds of interesting folks to hear about the story and to potentially get involved, in different ways. It starts with the meeting, it starts with, again, education. There are a lot of. Conversations that need to be had to get Bitcoin to be the asset that we all want it to be, but they're going to involve folks that you wouldn't necessarily expect day one.
You would be surprised. I've spoken about Bitcoin from everybody, from country singers to folks that are working in Walmart, to central bankers, to soften wealth. There is something in the Bitcoin story for everybody. So, as you think about the industry, not surprisingly, you're going to see more and more photos [00:39:00] of more and more unique groups of people with strange bedfellows, but Bitcoin United all.
Jp: And let's kind of end on this marketing question. So A BTC, you've sponsored some conferences the Wyoming one and a few other ones. What is the marketing strategy? Do you have anything that is outta the box or is it to your point, get people in different verticals that have an audience, tell 'em the story, share with them the vision. And get them on the team.
Matt: Brand matters. So, as we build American Bitcoin into a great company, to me being part of being a great company is having a great brand. And you can have a great brand operationally. You can have a great track record; you can be proud of what you do and how you build and how quickly you operate and your discounts.
But you also want people to kind of where the brand on the sleeve right there's some benefit to having. Almost a lifestyle aspect to your business to having a story people wanna get involved with. At the end of the day, every good business to me is a good story. So, while we were building American Bitcoin, we're always thinking about how does this [00:40:00] tie into all sorts of other stories?
There's the story of the story value. There's the story of transactions. There's the story of self-sovereignty and freedom, and so it creates a lot of opportunities for us to engage above and beyond crypto. You've seen us at conferences, we're very active or marquee brand in the Bitcoin industry.
That's only gonna grow. But you may start to see us in places that are actually not crypto native. And that's okay because similar to you, I was not crypto native when I first came to the industry. I had to learn same as everyone else. It's about getting folks off of zero and having a great brand is a fantastic way to get people curious, wearing A-A-B-T-C hat in the airport and having folks say, hey, I've seen you on Robin. What are you wearing there? And telling that story, that conversation never gets old. And to me, the story of Bitcoin is a story of successive conversations. And so if we can spark more conversations around American Bitcoin and what we bring to the table, the better off the industry will be.
Jp: So I love it. What's the async you got behind you?
Matt: Oh, this is [00:41:00] vintage. This is an old forced air ant miner, behind me. And that's nine. Yeah, we're proud of our roots, right? As you, you've got obviously the Minecraft pick, ag Diamond, of course. Gotta be the elite. But we need to be proud of where we've come from as an industry. Like every industry Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining have heritage. That's the sort of heritage that we want to bring you to the brand story. Yes, we'll go do trad find there's much better things to come in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but we're not gonna forget our roots.
Jp: No, and I want to do a quick, rapid-fire question with you, Matt, just. Coming, out of necessarily the A-B-T-C-C-O hat, more into just Matt himself. So here's some quick questions to run through. First one is, what book do you think every Bitcoin should read that's not a Bitcoin book.
Matt: Every Bitcoin should read the book, the True Believer by Eric Hoffer. And the reason why is Eric Hoffer was a philosopher, with a good understanding of psychology, who wrote extensively around mass movements. And Bitcoin, to me, is a mass movement. It's a great mass movement. It's a mass movement for good.
It's a mass movement for economic security. But if you wanna understand Bitcoin, you [00:42:00] can't just understand the economics. The economics of Bitcoin are super important, but you also need to understand belief. What it takes to truly have conviction in something. And so I find so many lessons from psychology, right?
Bitcoin exists in this sort of Venn diagram between two of humanity's oldest technologies, currency and religion. And with Bitcoin's fervor, you see the sparkle in people's eyes. It is a mass movement. And so the book, the True Believer by Eric Hover is a fantastic way to learn more about the psychology of what it takes to get people excited.
Jp: I will definitely have to check that out. That sounds exciting. What's your favorite way to recharge outside of work?
Matt: Outside of work to unwind, I love to read. I love to read because those lessons can be applied back to the workplace, but it actually goes the other way as well. There's stuff that I may be struggling with in work.
New problems we're trying to untangle, and there are so many lessons I get from other thinkers and other writers. We may be dealing with new, combinations of old problems, but the story of the economy is not new. The story of belief is not new. And so for me, we're reading is such [00:43:00] a enriching way live a more textured life. I'm already living my life. I might as well just go from an inch deep to a mile deep on the topics I love and get more out of it. And reading's been a great way to blow off some steam and
Jp: I definitely agree on that. If you weren't in Bitcoin mining, what industry would you be in today?
Matt: If I were not in bitcoin mining and I cannot be in energy technology and I can't be doing things with energy development, which is something else I love, I would be very interested in robotics, and the reason why I think robotics is so interesting is because you're turning electricity into labor, and it's been fascinating to see with Bitcoin, electricity being turned into currency and with AI seeing electricity being turned into intelligence.
But the next wave I foresee is going to be turning electricity directly into labor, and that is going to open up all sorts of fascinating new industries. It's going to create tremendous opportunity to build. Infrastructure to manufacture things that at scales we've never seen before. And so for me, robotics [00:44:00] is a fascinating area,
Jp: I can't wait to have those mining techs be robots. It's coming. What's the most memorable place you've visited thanks to Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining?
Matt: part of building. Successful business is to go anywhere and do anything that you really believe is gonna responsibly create value for the shareholders. And so a few years ago, I was on a quest to find the best electrical engineering technologies I could for our business. And in the process of chasing down some new electric cables, I actually found myself in the Arctic Circle.
Finland, believe it or not, has a fantastic. Culture of engineering and science. Obviously, it's the birthplace of Nokia. So there, there's tremendous technology, , in Finland at all places. And I found myself in the Arctic Circle in Ula, which is Northern Finland with a bitcoin miner, under each arm, meeting with some very smart Finnish scientists talking about electrical.
Now the technology's still too early, so I won't get into the details of their projects, [00:45:00] but I will go anywhere and meet with anybody that will find ways to deliver energy efficiently. To me, it's a fascinating opportunity for us and it is taking me to some unexpected places.
Jp: No, I love that it's the travel around the world for the cheap electron, usually with Bitcoin miners. What's a habit of routine that keeps you sharp under pressure?
Matt: When I'm under pressure, I actually think a lot about cooking. Cooking is a funny thing because, it's creative. It's a way to express yourself. There's a reward at the end, hopefully if you do a good job with your cooking. But there's a lot of time pressure in cooking. There's a lot of things going on at once.
You're almost literally spinning a lot of plates. Things are on fire, or hopefully not too on fire, but you're doing a lot in cooking to make sure that the results are good. So for me, I think I actually take a lot of lessons from cooking into building companies. Right. In cooking, there's something called Meison Place.
How you set up your station before you start work. It's very important in cooking. You don't want to be halfway through a recipe. Things are boiling, other things are in the oven. You don't wanna be cooking and not know where your knife [00:46:00] is. It would be very bad. And so for me, as I think about starting my workday, I actually put a lot of thought into make sure that my caffeine is not too far out of arms reach.
I love a good cup of coffee or two or three, right? my phone is nearby, so I'm not totally ignoring that either. But that everything is really set up. So that I'm able to operate under pressure and deliver results for folks.
Jp: I love it. I love it. Cooking is something that I am getting into, but I'm still just the eggs guy. Every morning for breakfast and the coffee, you get that staple breakfast, right?
Matt: do you know the story about the eggs? There's an apocryphal story about how you, the chef's hat with the ruffles, in each fold of the white chef's Hat's supposed to represent a different way you can prepare eggs. So I think you've got plenty going on there.
Jp: I didn't know that. Okay. Two more. What's one piece of advice you'd give your younger self before entering the Bitcoin space as you were slaving away as a consultant?
Matt: Advice I would give my younger self entering the Bitcoin space. It would be never stopping learning. You're never going to master everything in your area, but there's always gonna be new things to learn as well. [00:47:00] So get good at what you're doing, bring your weaknesses up to par. Don't let your weaknesses override your ability to focus on your strengths.
But you don't need to be the best at your worst trade. You wanna spend time leveling up your weaknesses. You know, whether it's making sure you're in a structured enough environment, whether it's making sure you're a good interviewer, you there are skills you want to get up to par. Once you're up to par, focus on your strengths. Be spiky in what you enjoy. It's way more fun than trying to get above average and things you're not good at. But definitely get the skill sets that are, you're rusty up to par. And so, for, if I were talking to younger Matt, I would say, Hey. Get those basics, get that financial modeling up to par. Maybe, your financial modeling skills. You're not a macros guy. You can, you're savvy with an Excel, but you don't need to be a savant. Get that up to par and then really focus on what makes you excited.
Jp: So what are your strengths, Matt?
Matt: I think my strengths are urgency, speed, working with folks on new projects. And so I think when you combine speed and curiosity, you see things happening.
And you ask, why is that happening? And then you sprint towards making sure it can happen [00:48:00] even better. I think that's a skillset that I've really enjoyed. in cryptocurrency, in Bitcoin, accumulation, mining, treasury. We've had that opportunity six months ago. Treasuries, were very, very new.
It was really Michael Sailor against the world building out a new category of assets. That was something that made me intensely curious. And then with a fantastic team, you know, Azure, Mike from Hut as well, being able to sprint together towards that new opportunity. That is something, I don't know if it's a superpower, but it's something that I enjoy.
Jp: No, it's amazing. I think you guys have done a great job getting to the finish line of going public in a very short order. So, congrats to you and the team. And last question is what's one word you would use to describe American Bitcoin in 2025?
Matt: Track record. We'll make that one work compound. Now, the reason why I say track record is because with American Bitcoin, you're combining the Hut 8 track record, operational excellence, ruthless cost efficiencies, focus on scale. There's a production superpower over there, and you're combining that track record with this Bitcoin treasury track [00:49:00] record, which we're still building. And that's something you're gonna see week after week, month after month. So we've got the track record from the past, which is great on the operation side, and you're gonna see the new track record going forward on the accumulation side. And that is a way that I think we're really gonna stand out.
Jp: Well, I can't wait to see the A BTC tracker, the Bitcoin tracker
Matt: It's coming.
Jp: the orange dots on the screen as Michael Saylor has kind of pioneered. Well thank you again, Matt, for coming on the podcast today. I appreciate you sharing a little bit more insight into this newly formed American Bitcoin company. One of the. Biggest and best miners to come and remember guys to mine on.