Day 2 of the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium produced its most arresting soundbite yet when Eric Trump suggested a sovereign had quietly accumulated a nine-figure trove of Bitcoin. “Let me give you the sovereign wealth…they are all buying bitcoin right now, in massive ways,” he said from the main stage.
Did A Nation Buy 200,000 Bitcoin Secretly?
He added: “Or, you know, our country just bought 200,000 Bitcoin and we did so very quietly. We don’t want anybody to know about it, but that’s how much we believe in the asset.” Trump offered no name, timeline or documentation, and framed the remark as an anecdote from conversations with global leaders. The figure — 200,000 BTC, roughly $22 billion at recent prices — instantly ricocheted across social platforms and crypto trading chats.
Trump’s broader narrative fused a personal conversion story with a muscular forecast for the asset. “Guys, I am a hard-asset guy…I always joked [to Michael Saylor] if I can’t feel it, if I can’t touch it, if I can’t see it, it kind of wasn’t for me,” he said, recounting how a wave of debankings against his family’s businesses and crypto operators pushed him into the industry.
“I probably spend over 50% of my time in crypto,” he added, calling the current backdrop “the best [regulatory environment] it’s ever been” and declaring that BTC is “on the one-yard line,” with growth over the next six months “explosive” and the next decade “amazing.” While calling himself a “Bitcoin maxi,” he reiterated his price targets: “There is no doubt about Bitcoin reaching $1 million,” adding that “it is expected to reach $175,000 by the end of this year.”
Pressed on geopolitics, he described a “digital land grab” by sovereign wealth funds and corporates moving to add BTC to treasury reserves. “In ways that you can’t even imagine,” he said, before recounting a Greenwich private-banker friend who once derided BTC as “funny money” but later called asking how to buy — at triple the price.
Trump argued that the convergence of debanking risk, inflation stress in emerging markets and the frictions of the legacy payments system is accelerating institutional and retail adoption: “We could pop up a wallet and I could transfer $100 million of Bitcoin…in two seconds,” he said, contrasting it with a year-long commercial real-estate sale process.
The “200,000 BTC” number is especially charged because it echoes — but is not the same as — estimates of government-controlled wallets already in public view. It is estimated that the US government’s seized holdings have hovered around that magnitude and have been discussed in the context of the administration’s strategic bitcoin reserve framework.
American Bitcoin In The Focus
The panel also focused on an inside look at American Bitcoin, the Trump-backed mining-plus-treasury vehicle being carved out with Hut 8. Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot laid out the operating math: last quarter, he said, energy cost to mine a bitcoin averaged about $37,000, with all-in cost near $57,000, positioning the operation at a steep discount to spot purchases.
Hut 8 currently manages around a gigawatt of capacity with additional sites under exclusivity and a multi-gigawatt pipeline, he added, arguing that vertical integration lets American Bitcoin “be this pure-play mining business that gets vertically integrated economics without the overhang of a large fixed management team.” He emphasized discipline over scale for scale’s sake, likening capital allocation to oil and gas: if new rigs (ASICs) don’t beat simply buying BTC over the machine’s life, they don’t buy.
American Bitcoin’s go-public plans were another throughline. Hut 8 has already disclosed that its majority-owned subsidiary intends to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ABTC via a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining, with shareholder votes slated for late August and closing targeted for early September, subject to approvals. The company’s filings and subsequent coverage frame the vehicle as a “premier bitcoin accumulation platform,” with Hut 8 retaining a controlling stake. Recent investor materials have also highlighted that American Bitcoin purchased 1,726 BTC in Q2 as it ramps its treasury strategy.
At press time, BTC traded at $113,845.
