While millions of investors pile into Bitcoin ETFs, Michael Ho thinks he's found something better. Call it a Wall Street hack, if you want. The CEO of American Bitcoin (ABTC) and Chief Strategy Officer at Hut8 Mining has partnered with Eric and Donald Trump Jr. to build what he describes as a new kind of crypto powerhouse—one that uses the mechanics of public markets to accumulate Bitcoin at what he claims is a significant discount.
Following its September 2024 Nasdaq debut under the ticker ABTC, after a high-profile merger with Gryphon Digital Mining, American Bitcoin is executing what Ho calls an "accumulator" strategy. The structure is straightforward: Hut 8 holds a majority 80% stake in American Bitcoin, with the Trump family and legacy shareholders owning the remaining 20%. Currently, the company holds 5,044 Bitcoins, ranking 21st among corporate holders. But Ho's ambitions stretch much further.
"I think from just the supply dynamics, Bitcoin is very well positioned to see much higher prices," Ho said in a recent interview.
His plan? Leverage the company's stock premium to buy more Bitcoin, target a largely untapped $25 trillion fixed-income market, and become one of the top five Bitcoin holders in the world. It's audacious, and it hinges on a bet that active management can outperform simply holding the cryptocurrency.
From Car Arbitrage to Energy Arbitrage
Ho's path to crypto wasn't exactly conventional. He bought his first Bitcoin back in 2013 on an exchange that probably doesn't exist anymore, then dove into Bitcoin mining in 2014. Back then, mining looked nothing like the institutional data centers operating today. Ho and his team were hitting up local electronics stores, buying gaming graphic cards, and cobbling together their first mining rigs. One of today's ASICs, he notes, is probably equivalent to about 100,000 of those early GPUs.
Before crypto, Ho was a serial entrepreneur with a passion for cars. He built a business around currency arbitrage using vehicles as the transfer medium—importing and exporting cars to exploit exchange rate differences. That appreciation for arbitrage naturally led him to Bitcoin mining, which he describes as "just energy arbitrage" at its core. Your biggest cost is energy, so the game becomes finding the cheapest sources of electricity globally and converting those electrons into digital currency.
But it wasn't purely about profits. Ho recognized early that Bitcoin empowers financial freedom, particularly in places where traditional banking systems fail. "We're very fortunate in North America, we have access to banking, we have a stable currency," he explained. "But when you look at Bitcoin adoption globally, the highest adoption rates are actually in the third world countries where they have central banks that abuse their money printing system, where someone in Zimbabwe, that gets their paycheck, by the time they can deposit into their bank account, if they have access to a bank account, they've already lost a portion of their paycheck because of how high inflation is."
The Trump Connection
The partnership with the Trump family came together quickly, Ho says, through mutual contacts and friends. But the real synergy emerged when Ho and his co-founder met Eric and Donald Trump Jr. in person. The connection made sense: the Trumps built their organization around real estate and infrastructure—tangible assets. Bitcoin mining, as Ho sees it, isn't that different. It's data centers, which are essentially real estate.
The Trumps were working on American data centers, and energy in the data center space is scarce. Ho's team had already developed a deep pipeline of energy assets—a significant advantage when securing new interconnection requests or accessing power can be a multi-year process in many states. "We've already done a ton of legwork and if we combine forces, we have an equation here that is one plus one equals 11," Ho said.
Some skeptics suggest the partnership is really about political access, but Ho brushes that aside. "We don't even think about politics," he said. Still, he acknowledges they're fortunate to be building in an environment where the current administration understands the benefits of Bitcoin mining—particularly for energy development, grid balancing, and proliferating crypto rails that create more buyers of US dollars through stablecoins, which in turn drive demand for US treasuries.
The Accumulator Strategy
American Bitcoin went public via a stock-for-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining, and being public is central to Ho's strategy. "You won't ever hear about a Bitcoin treasury company as a private company," he explained. The reason to buy an accumulator like American Bitcoin instead of a Bitcoin ETF, according to Ho, is that you're betting on active management to increase your underlying Bitcoin ownership per share.
When you buy an ETF or hold spot Bitcoin, you own a fixed ratio, minus fees. But with an actively managed treasury company, you're betting on management's ability to "monetize some of the intangibles of being a public company." Here's how it works: when the stock trades at a premium to its Bitcoin holdings, the company can issue equity and use those proceeds to buy Bitcoin. "You essentially can issue a dollar of dilution of equity, when you're trading at a premium for two, three, four dollars back in Bitcoin," Ho said.
Everything the company does, according to Ho, has one simple goal: increase Bitcoin ownership per share for shareholders. One particularly exciting avenue is the fixed-income market—a $25 trillion capital pool that remains largely untapped by crypto treasury companies. As American Bitcoin grows its holdings, Ho plans to leverage some of that collateral to design products for fixed-income investors.
Ambitious Growth Plans
Ho's aspirations are substantial. The company plans to raise $2.1 billion, with the goal of becoming one of the largest Bitcoin holders globally. "I think that we will most likely be able to be a top 10, maybe a top five holder over the course of the next few quarters or a year," he said.
The macro environment, in Ho's view, is increasingly favorable for Bitcoin. With markets pricing in future rate cuts, lower interest rates should benefit Bitcoin. More importantly, he points to supply dynamics: over 70% of all Bitcoin hasn't moved in over a year, meaning the actual floating supply is only around 30%—just under 6 million Bitcoin. Meanwhile, institutional buyers like BlackRock's IBIT have already accumulated almost $70.08 billion in assets, representing significant capital inflows. Add in treasury companies and accumulators buying supply and removing it from circulation, and Ho believes Bitcoin is well positioned for much higher prices.
When pressed for a specific price prediction, Ho kept it vague but optimistic: "I think over the course of the next 18 months, Bitcoin is again going much higher with the dynamics that I just explained."
Whether Ho's accumulator strategy can deliver on its promise remains to be seen. But with backing from the Trump family, a clear roadmap to grow holdings, and plans to tap into massive fixed-income markets, American Bitcoin is certainly making a bold bet that active management can beat passive Bitcoin exposure. In a market where everyone's looking for an edge, Ho thinks he's found one—and he's using public market mechanics to exploit it.