The Trump family has a bitcoin mining company that started trading on the Nasdaq yesterday.

Why it matters: Running mining rigs is one of the most policy-sensitive corners of the crypto industry, with its number one input cost the price of power.

Catch up quick: American Bitcoin, backed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., began publicly trading on Wednesday following a merger with a small-cap bitcoin miner, which allowed it to skip a traditional IPO process.

• It opened trading at around $8, leaping to $13 and then settling down to just under $10 by midday. At its height yesterday it had a market cap of over $7.5 billion, per the Financial Times. It's trading around $6.70 today.

How it works: According to an investor presentation, American Bitcoin has a three-pronged strategy to provide leadership in the U.S. bitcoin industry:

1. Mine bitcoin. That is, the classic giant data centers that have generated so much discussion.
2. Accumulate bitcoin. The company plans to use its capital efficient access to the public markets to buy bitcoin as well as mine it, which makes it a partial digital-asset treasury firm. It's already started buying.
3. "Amplify value via brand, audience and treasury." This is the most nebulously defined plank, but also the most familiar to Trumpworld watchers: hype.

Zoom in: Later in the presentation the company talks about building platforms and monetizing its surface area in the industry.

• This could mean entering into some sort of software as a service play, offering a way for lots of smaller miners to enhance their efficiency.

The big picture: The Trumps are entering the industry as competition has gotten fierce.

• The collective computing power that miners are throwing at the Bitcoin network has never been higher. Energy prices are costly and transaction fees are low. It's a tough business and getting tougher.

Between the lines: The cost of energy is crucial to a mining operation.

• Texas is the industry capital in the U.S. due to its cheap power and a less regulated energy market.

What we're watching: Nukes. We'll be curious to see if American Bitcoin comes out ahead of other miners in cutting deals with new nuclear plants, if they start getting permits.

• The Trump sons announced American Bitcoin earlier in March via their partnership with Hut 8 (now located in Miami ever since a 2023 merger).
• In May, the president signed an executive order to foster nuclear power expansion in the U.S., which would be a boon for data centers of all kinds.
• American Bitcoin is currently touting its partnership with Hut 8 as its source for market-beating power deals.

💭 Our thought bubble: This could be yet another play to profit off of the presidency, but bitcoin mining takes a lot more elbow grease than running a meme coin or a second-tier stablecoin.

The first few days of public trading for World Liberty Financial's token, WLFI, looks a lot like many new token launches.

Between the lines: Tokens like WLFI get sold first to investors in private sales at lower prices, and then when they finally reach the market, those investors usually end up selling lots of them at the higher price.

• This tends to lead to a short uptick in price and then a long fall.

Zoom out: Not many tokens ever recover from here, though some do.

By the numbers: Only 27% of WLFI is unlocked for trading right now.

• Typically, locked tokens can still vote in governance, even if they can't trade, which means control of the project remains with the team that created it.

The SEC and CFTC put out a joint statement on staff guidance for what is and isn't legal in crypto trading, saying various margined and leveraged products were OK.

The big picture: The statement is a response to the president's working group on digital assets report, showing it was meant as a real action plan, not a think piece.

• Recall former President Biden also released an executive order on digital assets. But that mainly generated reports rather than fresh policy.

State of play: The guidance means exchanges can now offer products where investors can borrow money or use extra leverage to buy and sell crypto, not just trade it directly with the cash they have, K&L Gates attorney Sarah Riddell explains to Axios.

• "No less than a year ago, the CFTC and SEC were taking enforcement action against digital asset platforms that were offering these products to retail market participants instead of working with platforms to come into compliance with registration requirements," she notes in an email.
• The joint statement shows the agencies are now willing to work with exchanges to offer these products which previously had triggered enforcement actions.

What they're saying: "The SEC is committed to working with the CFTC to ensure that our regulatory frameworks support innovation and competition in these rapidly evolving markets," SEC Chair Paul Atkins said in a statement.

The latest: The SEC listed a "crypto assets" rule, to cover the offer and sale of digital assets, at the proposal stage on an updated regulatory agenda posted this morning.

📉 Nasdaq stepped up scrutiny of the DAT trend, potentially adding serious friction to the boom. (The Information)

⚖️ Stablecoin infrastructure firm Utila raised $22 million (Axios Pro)

🤑 Etherealize, which is making Ethereum easier to do business on, raised $40 million. (Blockworks)

🙋‍♀️ Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) charted out a new timeline for market structure legislation in the Senate. (Emily Wilkins on X)

A new movie about Satoshi is getting made but this time, thank God, it's not a documentary.

The latest; Variety reported that freshly detattooed Pete Davidson and Oscar winner Casey Affleck will star, though no word on their roles.

• Affleck won the Oscar for another film, but don't sleep on his turn in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." It's a film with cinematography as epic as its title. This is not something to watch on an iPhone.

Flashback: Cryptocurrency hasn't been in the movies much. There was a really bad movie called "Crypto" in 2019.

• And somehow a TV show about a crypto startup lasted three seasons a bit earlier than that, but I only ever saw the first five episodes.

Between the lines: The best crypto movie ever is "The Wallet," the one Tim Dillon never actually made.

🎬 What's next: "Killing Satoshi" is scheduled for release in 2026.