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June 1, 2025 19:05-19:32 - CSPAN
26:55
Trump Sons Speak at Bitcoin Conference
Participants
Main
d
donald trump-jr
05:04
e
eric trump
09:23
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Democracy.
It isn't just an idea.
It's a process.
A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles.
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted.
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This is your government at work.
This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered.
President Trump's sons Donald Jr. and Eric spoke about the administration's plans in the cryptocurrency space and potential conflicts of interest during a conference hosted by Bitcoin Magazine in Las Vegas.
Their remarks run nearly 30 minutes.
Let them hear it, guys.
Woo!
eric trump
How are you, Las Vegas?
unidentified
take a seat gentlemen please it is amazing to be on stage with these legends Guys, promises made, promises kept.
How does it feel to be building a Bitcoin company in a Bitcoin-friendly country?
Woo!
Woo!
eric trump
Well, Las Vegas, we love you to death.
We absolutely love you to death.
Our family loves you.
Hey, guys, we're bringing Bitcoin to America, and America is going to win the crypto revolution.
That much I can tell you right now.
We finally have a competent president in the White House.
And we have a president who loves this industry and is behind this industry 100%.
Hey, guys, I'm telling you, we as a family could not be more excited about this.
And amazing things to come with this group of people on stage right now.
donald trump-jr
Listen, I agree.
It's amazing.
I know my father made a lot of promises to the crypto community, to the Bitcoin community.
When I see the growth from Nashville last year to this, you understand you're really on the precipice of something special.
And that includes all those who've been in this.
From our standpoint in the private sector, I mean, between Eric, myself, I think we can show our true level of commitment when you look at all of the things we're doing in this space.
Obviously, you have what we're doing here with American Bitcoin from the mining side.
I think you saw all the announcement yesterday.
Truth Social, TMTG, committing $2.5 billion to a Bitcoin treasury.
And then, you know, the trifecta of crypto, you have what we're doing with World Liberty and USD1 from a DeFi platform.
And so, you know, we didn't just talk about the sound bites.
We're actually executing on all of the things, and we're very long crypto.
I mean, it's a huge part of everything that we do right now.
unidentified
And, you know, so my name is Aaron Arnold.
I've millions of followers online at Altcoin Daily.
Of course, you know the Trump brothers.
I want to, and guys, anytime at any point, anybody's feel free to jump in and we're all going to have a conversation.
I want to get to know these two guys right now, the leaders of American Bitcoin, the Trump's mining company.
And, you know, tell us, you guys were working in Bitcoin mining before President Trump got elected.
You have been here for years and you're here this year.
How is it different this year?
Is it a night and day difference?
There was a chance that we would not be sitting here today.
The previous administration and their anti-crypto rhetoric, the proposed bills, the proposed 30% excise tax to miners, we wouldn't be sitting here today.
donald trump-jr
We could be an orange for Bitcoin, but it'd be an orange jumpsuit based on some of the ways they were prosecuting these.
unidentified
Absolutely.
donald trump-jr
Not exactly for me.
unidentified
And on that point, now you have regulators hosting roundtables with the industry leaders working hand in hand and trotting a path forward.
I'll give an example.
I'll give an analogy.
I'll give a metaphor.
Before, if you wanted to get from point A to point B, and you knew the path was littered with landmines, but you didn't know where they were.
And when you find out, it's too late.
That's enforcement with lawsuits.
Now imagine getting from A to B, but the regulators are there side by side with detectors.
You cross from A to B together while mapping out where the landmines are for everyone else to know how to get past safely for the next travelers.
It's truly incredible to be making America the crypto capital of the world.
I could not agree more.
You could feel it, Mike, right?
You could just feel in the air.
Things have changed, right?
We've obviously been through so many roller coasters, ups and downs, but every time the up is higher, right?
Every time is a little bit better, and the time truly is now.
donald trump-jr
I think one of the things, I don't know, everyone didn't have the benefit of doing this.
I was in yesterday and I spoke on this stage, and the vice president then had a roundtable with David Sachs, who's the crypto czar for the White House.
And I got to just sit in on the room and listen.
Obviously, some of the biggest leaders in the space, I'm sure you all know every person that was in the room.
And you could see just in the responses, it wasn't your typical DC politician.
Like, here's the four things that someone gave me sound bites that I had to read off.
And we checked that box.
You could actually see everyone in the room just breathe a sigh of relief because not only did the vice president, but obviously the crypto czar had such a fundamental understanding of the issues, of the space, invested in it themselves.
These are people who've been in it for years and got it.
That's such a big deal, where in Washington, the people who are making these rules, hey, crypto's big, it's sexy, so we're going to put the person who has the most tenure.
They don't have to know anything about the space.
They're going to make trillion-dollar decisions that they know nothing about.
You could see everyone in the room was like, oh, thank God, they get it.
And I think that's going to bode very well for the community.
Are we getting called off?
unidentified
They're a violinist?
donald trump-jr
Was that that bad?
unidentified
Let me ask you guys this, because I've been talking to the tens of thousands of people watching the conference right now.
And of course, there's millions and millions watching at home.
And it's very rare we get both Trump brothers to talk about crypto on the same stage.
And this is something that people have been wondering.
Which one of you got more into Bitcoin first?
donald trump-jr
I'd say Eric was a little bit earlier than me, actually.
A lot of my time for the last decade has actually been focused on politics.
And it's sort of nice to be like, hey, we've run our last race.
Now I'm fully out of that space and to get back into focus.
I think we all sort of experienced it a little bit in that, between the two of us, I think we're the most subpoenaed people in the history of the world.
I think I've done more congressional testimony than anyone.
And what we learned in those processes, as we were debanked, as we lost insurance, as people that we would have been able to call and they would have picked up the phone call in the first ring for decades no longer even answered.
We realized how many of the traditional sort of tradfi systems were actually broken.
I always likened it sort of, it was a Ponzi scheme that we were a part of that we didn't realize we were a part of.
We were just so far up in the pyramid that it just sort of worked.
And you realized how many people in America probably were getting screwed, whether it was because of political beliefs or things that they had done and they didn't have those opportunities.
So this whole notion of democratizing finance, that's not going to be done in the traditional banking set ways.
That's gonna be done in crypto.
eric trump
Every single person in here got those calls, right?
I mean, Don and I were getting these on behalf of commercial buildings, on behalf of hard assets.
Hey, guess what?
Your bank account is gone.
You know, the 600 people that you have working in the hotel that's 700 yards behind us right now that I built, You know, you no longer have a traditional bank to bank that hotel because they don't like the fact that you're wearing a hat that's red that says, make America great again.
Guys, we probably would have never found crypto had it not been for the very same scumbags that were coming after all of you.
I mean, how many people in here?
I've heard the stories from everyone.
How many people in here had Wells Fargo call them up and, you know what?
I own one Bitcoin and because of that, they found out and they canceled my accounts.
I mean, my accounts just stopped working.
And guys, you realize how corrupt the system is.
I mean, every single person was, this system was weaponized.
Traditional finance was absolutely weaponized.
And, you know, I always say, you know, the enemy of your enemy is often your friend.
That's what happened between the Trump family and the crypto community.
And I'm not sure if we would have won the same way.
I think we would have won, but I'm not sure if we would have won in the same decisive manner had it not been for this incredible community that was by our side the entire time.
and i hate using the word hate but honestly i would love to see some of the big banks go extinct because honestly they deserve it you know and the fact and the fact that they've been allowed to get away with murder for as long as they have is is honestly kind of shocking it's I use this analogy all the time, but obviously I run a very big real estate company.
Every Friday, 5 o'clock, we're waiting for a wire to come in.
The SWIFT system is broken, but not a single person outside the crypto community has talked about this system that's so fundamentally flawed.
It works 40 hours a week, barely.
You have traditional banking in this country that runs 9 to 5 with an hour and a half lunch break.
Go try and get a mortgage on your house.
It takes 120 days, of which case at the end of it, they deny you, even though they've banked you forever.
They say your money's safe when you deposit a million dollars in a bank and they keep 100,000 bucks of it and they go spend your money somewhere else.
You go try and pull out more than 5,000 bucks and you're on some terrorist watch list somewhere.
I mean, the whole system, guys, is broken.
And now all of a sudden you have crypto, which solves all the problems.
It makes everything cheaper.
It makes it faster.
It makes it safer.
It makes it more transparent.
It makes the whole system more functional.
And you wonder why these massive buildings that dot the skylines of every city around the world, you wonder why these buildings even exist.
And the thousands of people that are pushing antiquated paper in these buildings.
And guys, they're fearful of this room.
They're fearful of all of us.
And they better adapt, otherwise they're going to get run over and they're going to get run over really, really quickly.
unidentified
Let me ask the Trump brothers one more question.
And the next one's I'm going to throw it to these guys over here, the American Bitcoin team.
But like I said, I've been talking with everybody in the conference.
And something that you revealed in Bitcoin Meena, Abu Dhabi, Eric, on your speech is that you have known Michael Saylor, both of you, for 20 years.
And he, in fact, helped kind of talk to you about Bitcoin and get you to realize the value prop.
Now, Michael Saylor, he's always so tactful.
He never likes to reveal personal conversations between him and the Trump family.
Could you tell us what Michael Saylor said to you that finally got you thinking, huh, maybe there is value here?
eric trump
So Michael's been a great friend of mine.
And by the way, everybody needs to give him a round of applause because he's truly one of the greatest.
Bitcoin is so fortunate to have him.
Crypto is so fortunate to have him, but he's truly one of the great spokespeople.
But I've known Michael for 20 years, long before he even went down the Bitcoin route.
We were friends from New York.
But I was with him about a year ago.
He goes, Eric, here's the play.
You need to mortgage Mar-a-Lago right now.
You need to take $2 billion out on Mar-a-Laga right now, and you need to go long Bitcoin.
And I go, I don't know.
If I mortgage my father's house right now, I'm not sure if he's, and by the way, he's a total Bitcoin maxi, but I'm not sure if he's going to be thrilled.
But, you know, the amazing thing about Michael Saylor is he is truly one of the most pure, incredible people.
He tells everybody, including Mike, right, including Matt, including our entire team, he goes, guys, do what I'm doing.
Do what I'm doing.
There's such incredible opportunity.
I've never seen that in any other industry where you have the Titan of the industry that's literally advocating for smart people to compete against them.
And that's how much Michael Saylor loves this industry.
And I think all of us owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude because what he's done for all of us is tremendous.
unidentified
So we have the American Bitcoin team up here.
And it's been about two months since the announcement of HUT8, a Bitcoin mining company, joining up with the Trump's American Data Center.
And explain to me what's going on.
What's new since then?
And what is the business model?
You're a little bit different from a normal mining company, correct?
In that you're not just competing for the most hash rate ever, you're also competing for the most Bitcoin ever, kind of like a micro strategy.
To your first question, we've been busy stacking SAPs.
Our mandate at American Bitcoin is simple.
We want to increase the Bitcoin per share for our shareholders.
And we do this through a variety of ways.
I think I actually mined my first Bitcoin before I had my first legal drink.
I've been in the space for some time.
I've seen the industry evolve.
I've seen it scale.
I've seen it institutionalize.
We're known to be one of the most efficient, lowest cost operators.
We've been doing it for a very long time.
So we see Bitcoin mining as just a foundational layer of being able to accumulate more accretive Bitcoin for our shareholders at a discount to what the market can buy Bitcoin for, a significant discounts.
And then there's a value in the volatility of the stock.
Usually volatility carries a negative connotation, but in here, it's the volatility that allows us to raise very low-cost converts to even accelerate our accumulation of Bitcoin.
But measure our success by increasing the Bitcoin per share for our shareholders.
When you buy an ETF, it's always a ratio of one.
The value of Bitcoin will probably go up, but your ownership will always have a ratio of one.
At American Bitcoin, we're an actively managed company, and our aim, measure our success by increasing that static number year over year.
What I would say is that, you know, to Mike's point, we are looking for ways to accumulate as much Bitcoin as fast as possible, right?
So we're running lean, we're stacking SATs via our mining operations, we're going to stack sites with accumulation.
How do we maximize that balance sheet?
How do we make sure that we're a leader in the space?
How do we create data centers here in the United States?
How do we use energy here in the United States?
What can we do to make sure that if there's hash rate globally, we're making sure that at the end of the day, we're making sure the U.S. stays a category leader in Bitcoin mining and in Bitcoin accumulation.
Guys, let's talk to the average American right now.
You know, I talk to millions of people every day on my channel, and what I hear a lot is: well, Bitcoin's already over 100K.
I can't buy one whole Bitcoin anymore.
You know, I could buy maybe 0.1 Bitcoin or a fraction of a Bitcoin, but I don't know.
It doesn't seem worth it.
What would you tell to somebody that is saying, you know, should I buy 0.1 Bitcoin?
Is a fraction of one Bitcoin worth it?
donald trump-jr
I think without question, listen, I think for everyone, the second you get in it, right?
Even as a student of finance and whatever it may be, once you're vested, all of a sudden you're paying attention.
You're in the details.
You don't have to buy 100,000 at Bitcoin.
You buy as much as you can, whatever percent you can.
And once you have that vesting, you're all of a sudden committed.
You're paying attention to the details.
You're understanding the game a lot more.
You figure it out.
I mean, people have said, hey, Bitcoin's too expensive.
They said it at 1,000.
They said it at 10,000.
They said it at 50,000.
This is a story that's pretty old right now.
This has been going on for over a decade where it's too much.
So I think it's just important to get people in the game to start understanding that, to utilize the other platforms, to be able to figure out DeFi.
I think the more you do that, the more people are vested.
The further away you get away from the traditional finance systems.
And I think the whole community grows accordingly.
eric trump
Guys, there's one other aspect about this.
I mean, all of us travel all over the world.
Don and I travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year.
I'm telling you right now, everybody in the world wants Bitcoin.
I don't care where you are.
I don't care if you're royal families.
I don't care if you're the biggest financial institutions.
Everybody wants Bitcoin.
Everybody is buying Bitcoin.
If you go back 12 months, there were probably less than 100 companies that were treasuring Bitcoin that really had any.
And now every single day, it's another sovereign wealth fund.
Look what GameStop just did.
Look what Truth Social did.
Every single day, people are allocating billions and billions of dollars to it.
0.1 Bitcoin is going to be worth an absolute fortune.
And look at the OTCs.
The OTCs have the least amount of Bitcoin ever on their books, right?
I mean, the arrow is going straight down as the price of Bitcoin is going straight up.
I've got a dear friend.
He spoke on the stage before, Simon from MetaPlan.
And I asked him, what's the hardest problem?
And he goes, honestly, we're running out of Bitcoin.
It's hard to find on the exchanges.
I mean, guys, everybody wants it.
No one wants to get rid of it.
Everybody wants it as a balance sheet item.
Every family, and this isn't America.
This is the entire Middle East.
This is Africa.
This is all of Asia.
This is Fortune 500.
unidentified
I mean, this is the biggest private offices.
eric trump
Everybody wants it.
No one wants to get rid of it.
And it's incredibly powerful.
And I think you're going to see the value skyrocket.
So don't be afraid of the integer.
You don't need to buy things in whole integers.
You can buy things in fractions of integers.
And I think that's actually how Satoshi designed the system to actually be designed to buy in fractions of integers.
We just are so early to the game that some of us have been lucky enough to buy full Bitcoin or many full Bitcoin.
unidentified
Pizza purchase.
RIP.
It wasn't that long ago that it took 10,000 Bitcoin to buy just two pizzas.
0.1 Bitcoin at that time would maybe equate to a crumb.
0.1 Bitcoin today is like 1,000 pizzas.
Take that into perspective.
0.1 Bitcoin today, 1,000 pizzas.
Tomorrow, someday in the future, a luxury car, a house, a plane.
It's not about the ownership of Bitcoin.
It's just the love for Bitcoin is so clearly growing and spreading across everyone.
Just start accumulating.
Just start accumulating one stat, 10 Satoshis, 100 Satoshis.
It's never too late.
Totally agree, and that's worldwide, right?
You just got to get off of zero, Mike.
Just get off of zero.
That's it.
Start one Satoshi at a time, stack the stats, get off of zero.
All right, guys.
You know, one of my final questions.
Listen, we could talk about the intricacies of Bitcoin mining.
We could talk about policy.
Let's get to what you guys really want to know about.
Bitcoin price outlook.
Right?
Now, Don Jr. said the other day he believes Bitcoin's going to the moon.
Eric said about six months ago in Abu Dhabi he believes Bitcoin eventually hits one million dollars.
Let's take it on a little bit of a smaller time frame.
I want to make some headlines guys.
Let's think about one year from today when all of us are back on stage for Bitcoin 2026 and thinking about what we hope will happen by then.
Stable coin bill will get passed.
Market structure bill will get passed.
Maybe if we're lucky Bitcoin Act bill will get passed.
Certainly the ETF adoption will have grown.
Certainly sovereign wealth adoption will have grown.
So one year from today, and I want to get answers from all of you, finish this sentence.
Bitcoin clears at least this price by 2026.
donald trump-jr
The moon.
unidentified
Really, the moon.
All right.
eric trump
I think it clears 170,000.
That's my prediction.
unidentified
Don, what do you think about that?
170?
donald trump-jr
I was going to say between 175 and 150, somewhere in there.
unidentified
Okay.
Well over 200,000.
Look, guys, I think Bitcoin's in the six figures, and if we do things right, it's going to seven.
Got to put that out there.
And of course, none of this is financial advice.
Got to hold these guys' feet to the fire to get an answer.
But then besides price, like just, you know, nothing to do with price.
Just as this industry is changing, and you guys are like 100% full in this industry now, and you guys have been for a while, like what are your predictions for how this industry does change, whether it has to do with Bitcoin adoption, crypto adoption in the U.S. specifically or around the world?
What are you guys seeing?
eric trump
I think you're going to have an industry that, you know, if you look at the maturity of this conference, it's unlike any that I've been to before.
This is the most mature conference that I think has been held in crypto.
And if you go back even a year, right, it's very different.
You have an industry that for the first time has a lot of really beautiful voices, a lot of really strong voices.
You have an industry that's self-policing itself.
You have an industry that's trying to focus on hospitality and user experience.
You never had that before in crypto, and those were all kind of hindrances of the industry.
And so the maturity of what's taking place, you know, and by the way, the antis can no longer deny what's happening out there.
I mean, every single day you had CNBC that was shitting on all of us and everything that we believed in.
Now all of a sudden they're embracing it for the first time.
I mean, isn't that a really beautiful thing?
You had Jim Cramer going out there and saying that Bitcoin was going to go to zero before it was going to go to 200,000, and now all of a sudden...
donald trump-jr
Inverse Cramer, baby.
Inverse Kramer.
eric trump
Now all of a sudden they're kind of biting their tongues.
And so I think the best days of this are ahead of us.
There's no question we're in the dial-up mode right now.
The next 10 years are going to be absolutely parabolic.
And the people that get in on the ground floors, I think, are going to make an absolute fortune.
And I think just, you know, if I could quickly say, you know, on behalf of this group, the ABTC group, you know, it's not even just getting in at par.
You know, these guys, based on how good they buy energy, are literally mining Bitcoin at $40,000 a coin, $41,000 a coin.
There's no commodity in the world.
Gold, you go out and mine gold right now.
You're pretty much buying, you know, you're mining gold at par and you're selling it using complicated options and things like that to make small little spreads.
What commodity in the world can you mine at this kind of margins if you do it the right way, if you have the backbone that HUD 8 has, if you have the power grid, if you have the cheapest energy in the world, which we're doing in the United States, in the great state of Texas, which the Trump family absolutely loves.
And so it's so cool.
It's like, you know, you're able to go out physically build these buildings, physically mine, use American energy in America to grab, you know, one of the greatest assets the universe has ever seen that's appreciating at 50 or 60% year over year and acquire it for 30 cents, 40 cents on the dollar.
To me, it's like the coolest business model ever.
And I've never been more proud to be part of something than we are with these incredible guys.
So had a lot of fun.
Consider these guys unbelievable friends.
And sky's the limits for American Bitcoin.
unidentified
And then final thoughts.
We love you.
Thanks, Eric.
So, I would say a decade ago, the crypto community was, we were seen as the misfits.
It wasn't mainstream cool.
It wasn't.
But now that rhetoric is completely flipped.
It's completely flipped.
Now we're on par with where the sentiment of gold was 50 to 100 years ago.
It was everyone's dream to own a nugget, a gold bar.
Crypto has so much room to run, so much room to go.
Bitcoin today is only $2 trillion.
There is, I think, $400 trillion in the world across asset classes.
It doesn't take very much.
It doesn't take very much.
And I have to say, there are no two better people than the brothers on the stage here to bridge worlds.
From hard assets to strategic finance, from private markets to capital markets, and to have a common tongue with so many different groups of people, from traditional finance to the crypto community and to the general public that haven't orange pilled yet.
We're so excited to be on this mission with you guys.
donald trump-jr
Likewise, man.
And we're excited to help bring those people there.
Like I said, I mean, relatively speaking, compared to the people in this room, we were late adapters, but we were pushed there out of necessity.
We were pushed there because the conventional options were literally rugged from underneath us.
And once we commit to something, though, we go all in.
We are innovators.
We're not just adapting this.
We're adapting this out of necessity.
And I think there's a lot of other people that perhaps don't have our platform or the ability to get it out there that way that have been under those same pressures.
And we're doing this for them.
unidentified
It is ridiculous that Bitcoin Conference only gave us 30 minutes for this panel.
We need 30 minutes per person.
But guys, this was it.
Give a big round of applause for Matt, Mike, Eric, and Don.
donald trump-jr
Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Vegas.
eric trump
We love you.
donald trump-jr
Let's go.
unidentified
Guys, let's stand up on the front of the stage for pictures.
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