“The Trump family is all freaking in on cryptocurrency. And by the way, America is going to lead the way in terms of crypto,” Eric Trump told a crowd of hundreds Thursday at this week’s Blockchain Futurist Conference held at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.
Eric Trump introduced American Bitcoin as a push to bring financial freedom back to veryday Americans. He said he co-founded the company after the Trump family was “debanked” by multiple institutions due to their political views. “There is nothing that the big banks do that can’t be done better, cheaper, faster and more transparently based on blockchain technology,” he said.
American Bitcoin focuses on a U.S.-based, transparent, and compliant mining and financial infrastructure, using a dual strategy to acquire Bitcoin by purchasing existing coins on the market and generating new ones through its mining operations. The company says it mines BTC well below market price, roughly 50 cents on the dollar, not because it uses less energy per coin, but because it locates its mining operations in areas with some of the lowest electricity prices in the country, such as West Texas. By mining at lower cost, the company creates immediate value versus buying on the open market, then adds those mined coins to the company’s treasury so each share represents more bitcoin over time.
To Trump, bitcoin is “digital gold” and can provide financial freedom, especially to people living under unstable or devaluing currencies. He noted that over the past decade, bitcoin has dramatically outperformed other asset classes, and its overall adoption is roughly comparable to the internet’s in 1990. “I think we’re gonna have monumental growth. I believe in it with every ounce of my soul,” he said. “I truly believe that cryptocurrency is financial freedom to the masses.”
Mass adoption was a throughline at the conference, and many companies described how they’re making it happen. Coinbase, for example, is pushing blockchain into the mainstream by hiding complexity and meeting people where they are. On the consumer side, it acts as a simple front end for decentralized finance, letting users trade and lend or borrow on-chain and access millions of assets without learning new tools. On the enterprise side, it powers banks, brokers and fintechs with infrastructure so they can offer the same on-chain services to their customers.
Onchain’s founder and CEO, Jason Dominique, says he built his company to cut out the middleman. “TradFi is permissioned; you have to ask for access to your own money,” he said. By “TradFi,” he means the traditional finance stack. “We’re building a permissionless system where you just do it.” To get there, the team created the Onchain Network Protocol (OPN) and a consumer gateway that lets anyone buy long-tail tokens — the smaller, newer, niche assets that usually aren’t listed on big centralized exchanges — using familiar payment options like Apple Pay or a credit card. The goal is to skip the gatekeepers, keep the user experience simple and add smart guardrails (real-time liquidity and contract checks) so newcomers can enter DeFi safely and instantly. “Click. Pay. Done,” as Dominique put it.
That same “make it feel normal” philosophy showed up on the culture side, too. NBA championship-winning athlete Tristan Thompson has shifted his focus to tech as co-founder of Basketball.fun, a platform built on the Somnia blockchain that gives fans a bigger role in the game. The sports prediction-market app lets people make live game predictions, collect tokenized moments, and earn instant rewards. “I saw basketball as a great opportunity to be a disruptor in the prediction-market space,” Thompson said. “You gamify, you make it more fun. It’s actually great for live sports because it forces fan engagement to tune in.”
Unlike legacy sportsbooks or fantasy apps where you’re locked in until the final buzzer, Basketball.fun runs on live, tradable shares that update in value as the game progresses, allowing users to cash out early based on changing odds. Built for millennials and Gen Z, the platform ties engagement directly to the action, turning spectators into participants.
This year’s conference, held on Nov. 5 and 6, made one thing clear: Blockchain isn’t fading — it’s getting practical. The focus has shifted from speculation to usability, and the next wave is about making crypto feel invisible. Judging by the conversations at the conference and throughout Miami, that future is already taking shape.
Pictured at the top of this post: From left, Tom Bilyeu – CEO of Impact Theory; Asher Genoot – Executive Chairman of American Bitcoin; Mike Ho – CEO of American Bitcoin; Eric Trump – Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of American Bitcoin.
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