The president of a Trump-backed Bitcoin mining firm has departed for an artificial intelligence infrastructure company, while the same miner has revealed it pledged nearly 40% of its Bitcoin holdings to buy new equipment. Matt Prusak stepped down from American Bitcoin, a mining operation tied to Eric Trump, to take a role at Giga Energy, a company specializing in power solutions for AI data centers. This move underscores a broader industry trend: mining executives are increasingly being lured by the booming AI sector, which demands the same load-balancing, thermal management and energy-procurement skills honed in crypto mining.
While Prusak's exit grabs attention, American Bitcoin's financial disclosures reveal another layer. A Q2 filing showed the company ended June with 8,002 BTC. Of that, 3,090 BTC—equivalent to 38.6% of its reserves—had been pledged to Bitmain to secure mining equipment. The pledged coins remain on the balance sheet because American Bitcoin retains redemption rights. It can pay cash before each redemption window closes to keep the coins; if a window expires, the BTC is used for the purchase and removed from the balance sheet. The carrying value of the pledged Bitcoin was $184.9 million on June 30, while a non-current miner-purchase liability of $371.7 million was booked, reflecting the complex accounting behind the deals.
The arrangements span multiple tranches from 2025, totaling 2,776 BTC, each with a roughly 24-month redemption window. A February 2026 agreement for 11,298 miners priced at about $49.4 million involved a pledge of 314 BTC toward 80% of the price, with the remaining 20% due a year after shipment and payable in cash, Bitcoin at an agreed floor, or both. None of these windows are triggered automatically by Bitcoin’s price movements, but a weaker market would dent the reserve's value and alter the economics of paying cash to keep the coins.
American Bitcoin also reported a $57.2 million GAAP loss in Q2, driven by a $71.2 million digital-asset loss, though it raised $33.6 million from an at-the-market share sale. Despite the loss, Bitcoin holdings grew 14% quarter-over-quarter and satoshis per share rose 11%. With Bitcoin trading near $62,600 on August 3—about 50% below its October 2025 peak—the pledged pool’s value sat around $193 million, while the remaining 4,912 BTC were worth roughly $307 million. The situation leaves American Bitcoin at a crossroads, with competitors increasingly converting capacity to high‑performance computing hosting and the Trump‑branded miner yet to announce a significant AI diversification strategy of its own.
