American Bitcoin (ABTC) hit an all-time low on Wednesday. The Trump family-backed crypto miner sank 8.4% to close at 62 cents a share.
Here’s the trigger: a 1-for-15 reverse stock split set to kick in after the market closes Thursday. The move aims to keep ABTC on the Nasdaq. Every 15 shares get folded into one. That brings the total count from over a billion shares down to about 73 million.
Reverse splits aren’t great news. They’re what struggling companies do to prop up a stock price. ABTC needs to stay above $1 to meet Nasdaq’s minimum bid rule. Thirty straight trading days below that line, and the exchange can boot it.
The stock’s down 63% this year. Down 92% since it started trading in September.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump co-founded the company last year. They merged it with Gryphon Digital Mining to go public, and together with Hut 8, they own roughly 98% of the new entity.
The wider crypto market isn’t helping. ABTC lost $81.7 million in Q1. Bitcoin itself is hovering around $60,000, down 32% for the year and more than half off its October peak of $126,000.
Other crypto firms are doing the same dance. Nakamoto, a Bitcoin financial services company, pulled a 1-for-40 reverse split in May after its stock hit 16 cents.
Shareholders approved ABTC’s split on June 22. Nothing’s guaranteed. The split keeps the stock listed for now, but the company still has a lot of ground to make up.
