Eric Trump, who is running the Trump family’s cryptocurrency businesses, on Friday gave a rousing endorsement of Bitcoin and President Trump’s role as a leading supporter of cryptocurrency at an industry event in Hong Kong.
Since the president’s election, the price of Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency, has skyrocketed. On Friday, Eric Trump said he believed a single Bitcoin would someday be valued above $1 million.
“Buy right now, shut your eyes, hold it for the next five years and you’re going to do terrifically well,” Mr. Trump told an enthusiastic audience that crowded into an auditorium to hear him speak. As he spoke, a monitor on the stage displayed the real-time value of Bitcoin at more than $110,000.
His appearance as the keynote speaker at a leading Bitcoin conference in Asia underscored how the deepening web of ties between the Trump family and the crypto industry has blurred the boundary between business and government in the Trump administration.
Mr. Trump, the president’s second son, spoke on stage with David Bailey, an influential figure in the Bitcoin industry who mobilized crypto investors to raise millions for the president’s re-election campaign. President Trump, who was once a skeptic of cryptocurrency, has become one of the industry’s most important supporters.
The president had embraced crypto because he had been shunned by banks, his son said.
“They were canceling the hell out of us, and they were going after you,” the younger Trump said at the conference, referring to Bitcoin enthusiasts. “The enemy of your enemy is your friend, and that’s how the Trump family came to this community.”
Mr. Trump and Mr. Bailey, who runs the digital currency firm BTC Inc., were both appointed earlier this year to a new strategic board of advisers for the Japanese company Metaplanet, one of the world’s largest corporate holders of Bitcoin and a sponsor of the Hong Kong conference. Mr. Trump is expected to attend a Sept. 1 shareholder meeting for the company.
Thousands of people packed Hong Kong’s convention center, overlooking Victoria Harbor, to hear Mr. Trump’s talk, titled “Bitcoin Takes Over The World.”
Other speakers at the Hong Kong event included Changpeng Zhao, the Chinese-born billionaire founder of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, which has been under U.S. government oversight since 2023 when it admitted to violating federal money-laundering laws. Binance has cultivated ties with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family crypto firm, and Mr. Zhao has repeatedly praised President Trump’s crypto policies.
World Liberty Financial offers a popular form of digital currency known as a stablecoin, which is designed to maintain a constant value of a traditional currency, in this case, the United States dollar. Last month, President Trump signed into law a bill, known as the Genius Act, that created a regulatory framework for stablecoins. The law conferred federal legitimacy on cryptocurrency and was a major win for the industry.
Mr. Zhao lauded Hong Kong’s approach to the industry. Earlier this month, a law took effect in Hong Kong regulating the use of stablecoins that could pave the way for stablecoins tied to the Hong Kong dollar and the offshore renminbi, the Chinese currency traded outside of China.
At the conference, Mr. Trump referred to China’s longstanding influence in the crypto industry.
Most Bitcoin mining — conducting the computations needed to earn Bitcoin — took place in China until 2021 when authorities banned the practice.
The Chinese government has maintained an interest in digital currency and related technologies, holding a government study session focused on blockchain technology and staging limited experiments with a digital version of the Chinese currency, the renminbi.
The United States and China were both “leading the way” on crypto, Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Bailey asked Mr. Trump if he thought his father would discuss Bitcoin with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
“I would certainly love them to talk about Bitcoin,” Mr. Trump said. “But they probably have larger things to talk about.”
Meaghan Tobin covers business and tech stories in Asia with a focus on China and is based in Taipei.
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