A private Chinese company is giving preferential access to its technology and providing unusually beneficial payment terms on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of specialized equipment to a firm partially owned by Eric Trump, according to industry sources and Securities and Exchange Commission records.

The company, Bitmain, has faced concerns over the potential national security risks of its technology, with one Republican congressman asking the treasury department to review some of its business dealings in the United States.

American Bitcoin Corporation was founded in March, just two months after Donald Trump’s inauguration. Eric Trump currently has a 7.5% stake in the company, SEC filings show. Created through a daisy chain of mergers, and majority owned by a company called Hut 8, American Bitcoin went public with overwhelming publicity on 3 September on the Nasdaq exchange. Though the phenomenal stock profits of the Trump venture have been previously reported, the fact that Bitmain appears to be providing preferential access and payment terms to the operation has not been previously reported.

Filings by American Bitcoin with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that the company is purchasing more than 16,000 advanced mining machines – servers that process complex math problems to earn Bitcoin – from Bitmain.

The SEC filings indicate that American Bitcoin is paying Bitmain in “pledged” bitcoin – rather than cash – which could be redeemed up to two years from now, at a current price. An industry expert said he was briefed on the American Bitcoin deals and that Bitmain was offering the company unique and favorable terms, with little money down, and such a long period of time for redeeming their collateral.

‘Business of politics’

In May, at a Las Vegas bitcoin conference sponsored by Bitmain, the president of American Bitcoin, Matt Prusak, underscored the political nature of the bitcoin industry. “If you think you’re in the energy business or compute business or bitcoin business you’re half right,” he told the audience. “Underneath it all you’re in the business of politics, in the politics business.”

Favorable treatment by Bitmain is a main ingredient of the American Bitcoin venture. “Preferential access” to the technology it buys from Bitmain is “central to American Bitcoin’s ability to maintain a structural cost advantage”, according to an American Bitcoin press release last month.

In a statement to the Guardian, Bitmain said “technical cooperation” with American Bitcoin’s majority owner Hut 8 was specific to one type of mining machine, and was with Hut 8 rather than American Bitcoin. Hut 8 and American both list the same address in Miami on filings with the US government, and Hut 8 handles all of American Bitcoin’s operations and infrastructure.

Bitmain, in its statement to the Guardian, said it offers “pledged bitcoin” to other customers. But in a May announcement the company said it would offer a six-month redemption period for these pledges, not a 24-month term, as it offers American Bitcoin.

Experts say American Bitcoin’s special access to Bitmain’s technology and financing terms raise concerns that the Chinese entity views business with the Trump sons as an opportunity to try to influence the Trump administration on a variety of issues: crypto regulation, energy, or China policy.

“The disclosed terms are pretty unusual,” said James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “It’s one thing to extend credit. But the weird part is: ‘you have the option to buy back when you’re mining at a discount,’” he said. “If the president’s family was involved it brings up the obvious question of whether Bitmain is trying to get special treatment.”

Even the appearance of impropriety can be problematic, said Eric Chaffee, a professor of law at Case Western, who cautioned that at the same time all the facts are not known. “This does look a bit like a sweetheart deal where the reason they are doing this is to curry some influence with the Trump administration,” he said. “This looks bad but at the same time there could be underlying facts that make it a fair deal.”

A spokesperson for Hut 8, Gautier Lemyze-Young, did not dispute the financing terms involved bitcoin with a 24-month window but said the terms were agreed to “in September 2024 long before the launch of American Bitcoin”.

The transaction at issue, though, was done by American Bitcoin, and was revealed in August 2025.