Eric Trump in Tokyo for Metaplanet meeting as Bitcoin heads to Nasdaq

Eric Trump is scheduled to travel to Tokyo to attend a shareholder meeting of Metaplanet on September 1, people familiar with the plans said, a trip that follows his appearance at a major Bitcoin conference in Hong Kong and comes as a Trump-backed bitcoin miner prepares to list on Nasdaq. The Tokyo meeting will include a shareholder vote on new capital-raising measures at Metaplanet, a Japanese bitcoin treasury firm where Eric Trump was appointed a strategic adviser in March, those people said.

The visit comes as American Bitcoin, a U.S. bitcoin mining company cofounded by Eric Trump and his brother Donald Trump Jr., is set to go public through an all-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining and begin trading on Nasdaq in early September under the ticker ABTC, Asher Genoot, chief executive of Hut 8, said in Hong Kong. Genoot said anchor shareholders for the listing have been finalized and that Hut 8, together with the Trump brothers, will hold a combined roughly 98 percent of the merged entity.

Genoot described the merger as an alternative to a traditional initial public offering, saying there were financing advantages to using an existing public company as the vehicle. He said...