'Devastating consequences': Ethics experts sound alarm at Trump family's latest venture

A new bitcoin-mining company is receiving an investment boost from President Donald Trump’s two oldest sons – a move that is also raising a new round of ethical questions from critics raising conflict of interest concerns.

That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported on Monday that a merge would occur between Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.’s American Data Centers and American Bitcoin, a mining company owned by Hut 8.

Their goal is to create “the world’s largest miner of the digital currency, with designs on building its own ‘bitcoin reserve,’" the report added. The latest venture is part of the Trump family’s “all-out crypto blitz” since Trump reemerged at the White House in January.

“In a matter of months, the Trumps started a decentralized-finance, or DeFi, project called World Liberty Financial, said their social-media company would invest in bitcoin and other digital assets, launched meme coins to capitalize on the popularity of the president and his wife and announced plans to issue a World Liberty dollar-backed stablecoin,” the Journal reported.

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Trump also vowed to make the United States the “crypto capital of the world.”

But the new Trump family business dealing is raising fresh ethics concerns by some critics who cite the Trumps’ recent crypto investments as potential conflicts of interest.

“At least in the last term, it was all golf courses and hotels, whereas now he’s getting into crypto, which could have a systemic effect on the economy,” Richard Painter, a former ethics attorney for President George W. Bush, told the Journal. “This is an area where conflicts of interest, whether the Trump family or anybody else, could have devastating consequences.”

The president earlier in the month signed an executive order authorizing the United States to establish a strategic reserve of cryptocurrency as the “ultimate celebrity endorsement."