$32.4B Gut Health Market: LifeVantage Acquires LoveBiome to Dominate

LifeVantage (Nasdaq:LFVN) has announced a strategic acquisition of LoveBiome, a direct sales company specializing in microbiome health solutions. The acquisition strengthens LifeVantage's position in the rapidly growing gut health market, which is projected to expand from $14.4 billion in 2025 to $32.4 billion by 2035.

The deal centers around LoveBiome's P84 product, which focuses on gut health regulation and restoration through Activation technology, complementing LifeVantage's existing portfolio including Protandim® and MindBody GLP-1 System™. The transaction is expected to close by mid-October 2025 and will be accretive to Adjusted EPS and EBITDA in the first year.

https://www.stocktitan.net/news/LFVN/life-vantage-announces-acquisition-of-love-biome-expanding-8x6xpdk9xjhy.html

Personalis New Data from Landmark Neoadjuvant Lung Cancer Trial

 Personalis, Inc. (Nasdaq: PSNL), a leader in advanced genomics for precision oncology, announced new data from an AstraZeneca phase 3 clinical trial in lung cancer (NeoADAURA). The findings demonstrate that Personalis’ highly sensitive molecular residual disease (MRD) test, NeXT Personal®, is a strong predictor of outcomes in patients with stage II-IIIb, EGFR-mutated non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving neoadjuvant therapy.

The findings, which will be presented at the IASLC 2025 World Conference on Lung Cancer hosted by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer in Barcelona, Spain on September 7 (abstract OA02.02), demonstrate that NeXT Personal can be a more sensitive and accurate measure of MRD in the neoadjuvant setting. This supports findings in other cancer types that NeXT Personal can help doctors understand how patients are responding to neoadjuvant therapy, with the potential to guide future treatment decisions.

Key findings about NeXT Personal from the new NeoADAURA analysis:

• More sensitive: NeXT Personal demonstrated significantly higher baseline sensitivity for ctDNA detection compared to another gene-mutation based test, providing a more accurate assessment of disease burden.
• Prognostic: Baseline MRD status, as determined by NeXT Personal, was a strong prognosticator of clinical outcomes across all treatment arms.
• Associates with pathological response: Pre-surgical MRD negativity and clearance on the NeXT Personal test were shown to be associated with major pathological response (MPR).
• Useful for monitoring treatment: Osimertinib-containing regimens improved pre-surgical MRD clearance vs pbo+CT, showing the utility of ctDNA for monitoring neoadjuvant therapy response.

“The NeoADAURA results are a significant step forward for patients with early-stage lung cancer,” said Richard Chen, Chief Medical Officer and EVP of R&D at Personalis. “This study from AstraZeneca shows that ultra-sensitive ctDNA detection enabled by NeXT Personal is critical for accurately assessing neoadjuvant treatment response. It also highlights how more-sensitive detection of ctDNA can unlock crucial insights in the neoadjuvant setting. We are proud to continue our productive relationship with AstraZeneca as we work to advance the frontier of cancer care.”

The NeoADAURA trial (NCT04351555) is a global, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, multi-center study of neoadjuvant osimertinib with or without chemotherapy versus placebo plus chemotherapy for patients with resectable EGFRm NSCLC.

This collaboration also builds on previous work with AstraZeneca showing the importance of highly sensitive ctDNA analysis for tracking treatment response and predicting cancer recurrence. This includes a recent publication of Phase 3 CALLA cervical cancer study results showing that NeXT Personal detected traces of cancer DNA in patients with locally advanced cervical cancer up to ~16 months ahead of standard of care imaging.

The NeoADAURA data presentation follows Personalis’ recent submission for Medicare coverage for its NeXT Personal liquid biopsy test for use in patients with lung cancer. This marks the third indication for which the company is seeking coverage for its ultra-sensitive, whole-genome-based, tumor-informed molecular residual disease (MRD) and recurrence test.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250903630415/en/Personalis-Announces-New-Data-from-a-Landmark-Neoadjuvant-Lung-Cancer-Trial-Showing-Superiority-of-Ultra-Sensitive-Tumor-Informed-MRD-Testing

Venezuela: Trump sends a message to Maduro

 

By Monica Showalter

There probably isn't a more useful policy aim for the U.S. than taking out Venezuela's socialist regime. 

President Trump has hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan illegal aliens, including many criminals who have wrought mayhem, to deported  and sending back to a democracy will be a lot easier. Venezuela's regime has served as a useful catspaw to multiple anti-American dictators, including China's oligarchs, the Russian regime, and the Iranian mullahs to keep the U.S. in check, propping up the otherwise bankrupt regime in power to harass the U.S. They've threatened and attempted to destabilize their neighbors. And close to President Trump's heart, they are the motherlode, the source orgin, of modern election fraud done on a wide scale. How satisfactory that would be to take them out for that alone and replace the regime with the one the voters voted for. 

So yesterday, we saw this, the result of Trump dispatching seven warships and 4,500 U.S. military personnel to the international waters off the Venezuelan coast:

Democrats stood down & let Venezuela's Tren de Aragua gang seize apartment complexes from landlords in Aurora & El Paso to use to sell girls, women & drugs

Democrat Colorado officials even lied to Americans to protect TdA & keep them in business

Trump just blew them away pic.twitter.com/bj5eUe2V7y

— Tara Servatius (@TaraServatius) September 2, 2025

Blown out of the water. And lefties are going into fill Abrego-Garcia mode, wringing their hands, even though past presidents, such as Barack Obama, launched plenty of strikes against civilian targets, and indeed the Navy itself has taken out drug boats in the past.

According to the Washington Post:

MEXICO CITY — U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers.

Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Mexico City.

U.S. forces launched a “precision strike” on the vessel as it traveled through the Caribbean Sea, U.S. officials said. When asked if they warned the crew, Rubio said the vessel, like others carrying drugs, posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” giving the country the right to destroy it.

Which, sure, is probably about the boat itself full of lethal cargo, but there isn't anyone out there who also doesn't think it was about the Maduro dictatorship of Venezuela, given that Nicolas Maduro has been identified by the U.S. as an actual drug lord and that a huge flotilla of ships and personnel have been sent to his front door.

His initial dilemma is whether he plays victim or strongman:

🫓 Good point. The question is whether it is convenient for Maduro to look strong or weak. While that shp may have sailed, the biggest challenge must be balancing the dangers of looking weak inwards vs. the advantages of playing the victim before the international community. https://t.co/AGLlgZgT6l

— Caracas Chronicles (@CaracasChron) September 3, 2025

But beyond that, the question is: What does Trump want? Did he really just send the Navy out to get the drug dealers at sea?

Or was he looking for the big drug dealer, Nicolas Maduro himself, who has turned his country into a socialist narcostate?

Two theories abound as to what could happen.

One, Trump plans not a war or nation-building project in Venezuela, but an extraction operation, to take Maduro out and bring him to justice, as was done with Manuel Noriega in 1990. Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe first put this idea forward several weeks ago, when the boats started appearing off the Venezuelan coast.

Two, as someone in the Post noted, Trump expects the working drug lords in his country to be mighty upset at the loss of income and personnel these blow-'em-out-of-the-water operations are wreaking. Because Maduro would be powerless at the loss of "his" people, and their drug billions, and more strikes are expected to follow, as U.S. officials say, it's possible the drug lords will take Maduro out themselves and then let what happens happen. That's a tricker solution, given the chaotic outcome, but it could be the plan now. Perhaps Argentina or another state will invade and restore order.

Whatever it may be, it's obvious it's just beginning. The left has been caught flatfooted by the operation and has lots to shriek about now, but it's hard to dismiss reactions like this from the regional local leaders:

Trinidad PM Persad-Bissessar praises US for hit on alleged "drug boat," which could have been heading to her country. "The pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense. I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently.” pic.twitter.com/Vti3OFLwve

— Ioan Grillo (@ioangrillo) September 3, 2025

With a direct response like that, you can bet there's a bank of support in the region for putting this plague on the hemisphere out of its misery. And Maduro at this point is sleeping with one eye open.

 Kudos to President Trump.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/09/venezuela_trump_sends_a_message_to_maduro.html

SPACs Line Up To Clear Biotech’s IPO Backlog

 

Blank check deals dwindled after a crazy 2021. Now, biotechs are starting to turn to special purpose acquisition companies again as an easy route to the public markets.

In the six months it took for BBOT’s special purpose acquisition company deal to close, there were no biotech IPOs.

“That’s quite striking,” Eli Wallace, CEO of the BridgeBio Therapeutics oncology spinout, told BioSpace in an interview.

The long IPO drought could break soon, with LB Pharma announcing plans to seek one at the end of August, but for now, the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) route to the public markets is proving more popular.

For BBOT, known legally as BridgeBio Oncology Therapeutics, it was a matter of the stars aligning perfectly, Wallace said. Although it officially came into existence only last year after splitting from BridgeBio, BBOT was mature enough and ready to go public.

BBOT was one of five biotech SPACs that have taken place this year, representing an uptick of activity in the deal type that had fallen in popularity since the heyday of 2021. These deals have represented the only path to the public markets for now, as the IPO markets have been frozen shut. So are SPACs back?

What Is a SPAC?

First, a short primer on SPACs, also known as a blank check company. Sponsors form a SPAC by collecting interest from investors and conducting an IPO. Then the investors seek out and buy or merge with a target company. This process is called a de-SPAC. These deals can be attractive because they provide a shortcut to the public markets with potentially reduced costs. During the de-SPAC process, sponsors can also raise a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, which brings in more cash for the target company.

In 2021, there were more than 600 SPACs formed across industries, according to SPACInsider. Biotech emerged as a particularly attractive target, with 22 deals happening among therapeutics developers that year, according to the data provider. At the same time, more and more biotechs were conducting traditional IPOs, too.

Biotech was ripe for SPAC action because these companies are “very cash thirsty,” according to Michal Berkner, a partner with Baker McKenzie’s corporate M&A department.

“Initially the model just worked and everybody kind of jumped on the bandwagon,” Berkner said in an interview. “It was an easy way to raise money and to go public.”

But the party ended quickly, with de-SPACs sinking by 2023 to single digits. Redemption rates—the number of shareholders who choose to cash out at the point of merger—rose so high that SPACs were no longer a cheap option to get to the market. As shareholders cash out, the amount of cash available to go into the new target company is diminished. Redemption across all industries reached into the 90% range in 2022, according to SPACInsider.

Berkner said an SEC crackdown and increasing difficulty in raising additional PIPE funds also contributed to the steep decline in SPAC deals. SPACs that did not find a deal in the heyday had to ask for extensions or return the cash.

“When this model was no longer supplying the money and was just a route to an IPO—but an IPO with no money—then it just didn’t work out,” she said.

And of course, the IPO market in general dried up. That’s where we are today. Although LB Pharma has filed paperwork to test out the market, Wallace pointed out that this step is quite different from actually IPOing. In June, Odyssey Therapeutics ended a quest to IPO that had been filed in January.

This IPO drought has pushed the SPAC track into the forefront once more, Berkner said.

Taking The SPAC Track

So far this year there have been five de-SPACs in biotech. BBOT was one of the highest profile deals of the batch when it combined with Helix Acquisition Corp. II.

Wallace, who led BBOT within BridgeBio and then took the helm of the spinout, looks back on the SPAC process “favorably.” He said there was a lot of clarity in the six-month closing timeframe and the valuation. There was no market volatility to contend with as BBOT had a guarnteed valuation during that tumultuous timeframe and the SEC review process went pretty smoothly.

BBOT’s recent experience is backed up by SPACInsider, which says that companies in any industry can benefit from a SPAC process led by an experienced team right now, as the markets are roiled by political turmoil.

“In a climate clouded by political, geopolitical, and macroeconomic uncertainty, seasoned sponsors with both industry and capital markets experience remain one of the structure’s biggest advantages,” SPACInsider wrote in a Q2 and H1 SPAC report.

BBOT ended up with a 39% redemption rate—the second lowest since 2022, according to Wallace. The transaction brought in a $261 million PIPE and Helix’s $120 million trust account, for a total of $382 million in gross proceeds. BBOT is currently listed on the Nasdaq under that ticker with a market cap of $745 million.

Wallace says the SPAC raise would represent “quite an IPO at any time but let alone in 2025.”

“The fact that no one was able to crack the market . . . leads me to believe this was absolutely the right choice for us,” Wallace said.

The BBOT team was very familiar with Cormorant Asset Management, which sponsored Helix and had been involved with the BridgeBio spinout. The biotech also had a very mature pipeline, with three assets already in Phase I, each with readouts expected over the next nine to 18 months, according to Wallace.

It helped that Cormorant’s previous SPAC vehicle, Helix Acquisition Corp. I, merged with MoonLake Immunotherapeutics in April 2022. Of the many de-SPACs that occurred in those heady two years, MoonLake is among the highest performers. The inflammatory disease biotech’s shares have risen 344% since joining Nasdaq.

Other biotechs that took the SPAC track during the peak have not been as lucky. EQRx, a biotech formed to develop cheaper drugs, folded as its mission failed. The shares had declined 71% by November 2023 compared to the company’s debut and the board called it quits, selling the remaining assets to Revolution Medicines.

“If you look at the markets, a lot of these de-SPACs have not stood the test of time,” Berkner said, adding that there are certainly market forces at play. The SPAC vehicle has ultimately proven to be an expensive way to go public, despite initially being considered a cheaper option. SPACs typically IPO at $10 per share, which can be higher than what a biotech would debut at.

Some biotech-oriented SPACs that were granted more time are still hunting for a target today, Berkner said. Across industries, the overwhelming majority of SPACs searching for a target right now are backed by sponsors who have already gone through the process, according to SPACInsider. Specifically, 80% of sponsors right now are “battle tested” serial SPACers, while just 20% are in it for the first time, according to the report.

Berkner does not expect the SPAC vehicle to return to the height it reached in 2021 this time around. But the ones that are out hunting right now are lining up for when biotechs finally start to go public again. The gap in time since the last IPO suggests there is a big pipeline of companies ready to leap when the time is finally right.

In a particularly risk-averse market like today’s, a SPAC does provide a somewhat safe place to park your money, as it will be returned in the event a target isn’t found, Berkner pointed out.

“I think on the back end, the [SPAC] sponsors are kind of selling, ‘Let’s get ready. Let’s have this back in place so that when the market picks up again, when the mood changes, we’ll be there.’”

https://www.biospace.com/business/spacs-line-up-to-clear-biotechs-ipo-backlog

Prasad Signals Steeper Requirements for COVID-19 Vaccines

 

In a series of memos last week, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad outlined the FDA’s thinking on the recent limited approvals for updated COVID-19 vaccines.

Back from his 10-day hiatus, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad is picking up where he left off: Shifting regulatory policy toward more stringent approval guidelines for vaccines.

In a series of memos dated Aug. 28, Prasad explains the recent FDA approvals for updated COVID-19 shots from Moderna, Novavax and Pfizer. The regulator signed off on four such vaccines last week for the upcoming respiratory virus season, but with key restrictions according to the patients’ age and risk profile for severe disease.

Regarding the Pfizer decision, Prasad noted that in reviewing the application for Comirnaty, the FDA questioned whether there is “substantial certainty of a net clinical benefit . . . to vaccinating healthy persons with this mRNA vaccine.” CBER, according to Prasad, decided that the answer to this question, “with best available information,” was no, suggesting that for this population, the benefits of the vaccine do not outweigh its harms.

Nevertheless, the regulator agreed that for at-risk patients, the risk/benefit equation came out in Comirnaty’s favor.

Prasad’s comments also put the use of immunogenicity as an outcome measure under the spotlight. Many companies use this endpoint, which measures the body’s capacity to produce antibodies against the target virus, as the basis for their regulatory submissions.

“Make no mistake,” Prasad wrote in his memo to Pfizer, “antibody titers are a surrogate endpoint.” He concedes that they “can and do” indicate clinical outcomes in certain cases, “but not all circumstances.” Concluding that a vaccine has a net clinical benefit because it increases antibody levels in patients “is not gold standard science,” Prasad stated.

The CBER director’s memos for Moderna’s mNEXSPIKE and Spikevax and Novavax’s Nuvaxovid were shorter, each just two pages in length. In all three cases, the FDA has required post-marketing commitments from the companies, which requires them to conduct additional trials to confirm the clinical benefit of their vaccines, as well as beef up their safety evidence.

According to Prasad’s memos, the three vaccines were granted approval under CBER’s “prior standard,” which was to accept “small immunogenicity studies using human sera.” Prasad argued, however, that this can only capture “numerical improvements” in the production of antibodies against the virus. “These studies lacked formal statistical prespecification and power to test a clear scientific hypothesis,” he said, claiming that companies have used such studies to justify updating strains for their vaccines, “even while there has been substantial uncertainty” that such changes are needed.

Moving forward, “CBER will demand studies roughly 5 to 10 times larger than historically accepted,” Prasad wrote.

Prasad’s memos fall in line with the broader changes that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been pushing for regarding COVID-19 vaccination. In May, Kennedy officially removed these shots from the CDC’s routine immunization guidelines for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. Then, last week, The Daily Beast reported that Kennedy and President Donald Trump could completely ban COVID-19 vaccines from the U.S. “within months.”

In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump requested that pharma companies release data pertaining to the success of the COVID-19 “drugs” in order to “clear up this mess” at the CDC. The mess to which Trump is referring is very likely the firing of director Susan Monarez last week and the subsequent resignation of three other senior level CDC officials.

https://www.biospace.com/fda/prasad-signals-steeper-requirements-for-covid-19-vaccines

SEC seeks records from officers of John Ruiz’s MSP Recovery in probe

 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed four officers from lawyer John Ruiz’s insurance claims recovery business this summer as part of an ongoing investigation into the Coral Gables-based company’s practices, according to a financial filing in August. 

Two rounds of SEC subpoenas were issued in June and July “requesting additional documentation” from the four officers who work for Ruiz’s publicly held company, MSP Recovery Inc., according to the quarterly report filed with the SEC. The officers were not identified in the report.

 MSP Recovery has been under investigation by the securities agency for potential securities violations since 2022 over a host of issues, including its financial projections, investor agreements and the data analytics platforms and algorithms underpinning the company’s business model. The company tries to collect insurance payments that were paid by one party, instead of another.

 MSP Recovery disclosed in its recent SEC filing that it has received subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in connection with a grand jury investigation in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, according to the company’s recent SEC filing.

 Prosecutors most recently issued a subpoena last summer seeking corporate documents related to a press release. Ruiz declined to be interviewed for this article, and a spokesperson for the company would not identify the names of the four MSP Recovery officers who recently received subpoenas from the SEC, saying it would be “inappropriate."

MSP Recovery’s lead litigator, Janpaul Portal, referred the Miami Herald to the company’s SEC filings when asked about its financial health. But in an interview, Portal said: “MSP Recovery Inc. is doing business as usual.” 

Ruiz made a name for himself thanks to the millions of dollars in endorsement deals his company, then known as LifeWallet, signed with University of Miami athletes soon after these kinds of deals became legal in 2021. Ruiz also floated proposals to build a new football stadium for the university’s football team, which have not come to fruition. MSP Recovery CEO John H. Ruiz at his house in Coral Gables, Florida, Dec. 8, 2021. Pedro Portal Miami Herald fi

 Ruiz’s company first revealed issues with its financial disclosures in the spring of 2023, but the company did not publicly disclose the federal civil and criminal investigations until the Miami Herald published a story revealing their existence in July 2023.

 “Based upon the disclosures in the [MSP Recovery] company’s filings, it appears the SEC’s investigation is continuing with pace, which could signal an escalation,” said Chase, a South Florida lawyer who has defended individuals in securities cases for more than 25 years. 

The federal investigations aren’t the only legal issues confronting MSP Recovery, and the SEC disclosures come as the company acknowledged that its ongoing financial challenges could force it to file for bankruptcy. John Ruiz rings the bell to celebrate his company, MSP Recovery, being listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in May 2022. In August, the SEC subpoenaed four officers from the firm as part of its investigation into the Coral Gables-based company.

Miami Jury awards millions to software developer; company to appeal In August, a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court jury awarded about $12.7 million against an MSP Recovery subsidiary in a contract dispute to the founder of a company that was acquired by MSP Recovery. According to the lawsuit, Ruiz, on behalf of the companies, reached an oral agreement in October 2021 to pay $12.5 million to buy the technology platform, software, trademarks and other intellectual property related to a “LifeWallet” app that was developed by computer engineer Norberto Menendez. 

The dispute boiled down to the nature of the oral contract. Ruiz claimed he offered $12.5 million in stock shares of the public company, MSP Recovery, as payment to Menendez. The software engineer, who had once worked for Apple, claimed that he had a choice between shares or cash – and chose cash. Menendez, who worked for MSP Recovery after selling the LifeWallet name and technology to the company but eventually resigned, claimed in a suit filed in 2023 that he was not paid. 

While the jury ruled in favor of Menendez on a breach-of-oral contract count against a subsidiary of MSP Recovery, it decided a half-dozen other counts in favor of Ruiz and the parent company. “We think it was a major victory because there was no wrongdoing found by the jury,” Portal, a lawyer with the MSP Recovery Law Firm, told the Miami Herald. The company plans to appeal the judgment. But Menendez and his legal team strongly disagreed. This week, Menendez posted a message on his LinkedIn account, saying the trial was like the “David v. Goliath” battle. 

His lead attorney, Scott Dimond, said: “This very sophisticated jury took an exceedingly difficult and messy litigation and reduced it to a simple and decisive conclusion: A deal is a deal.” MSP Recovery and a Miami-based financial company that brought it public have each been sued in Delaware lawsuits brought by an MSP shareholder named Virginia Stanley, who has requested financial records from the company and its directors. Revenue declines, deficit reported 

Those legal developments come as the company admitted in its quarterly filing that it’s in a precarious financial position. For the first six months of this year, the company reported $1.37 million in revenue, roughly one-fifth of the $6.3 million in revenue it reported in the first six months of last year. That’s quite different from the lofty projections the company presented to investors when the company was first publicly traded in 2022, with a valuation of more than $32 billion. 

In a May 2022 letter to stockholders, the company that brought MSP Recovery public shared projections showing that MSP would bring in more than $6 billion in revenue from its primary business of recovering wrongfully paid insurance claims, netting the company more than $4.3 billion after taxes. Instead, the company said in the latest quarterly filing that it had accumulated a “deficit” of $710.8 million through the end of June. 

Earlier this year, the company said that it was embarking on a restructuring plan with two of its significant funders. But in its quarterly SEC filing this month, MSP Recovery said one of the two funders pulled the plug on the restructuring plan, leading the other lender to follow suit. 

The company said that a third funder, Yorkville, is its only source of additional money to pay for short-term operational costs and that if Yorkville is “unwilling or unable” to provide additional funds, “the Company may be forced to initiate an insolvency proceeding or seek protection under U.S. bankruptcy laws.”

 Earlier this week, in a separate SEC filing regarding the Miami-Dade County jury verdict, MSP Recovery noted: “The jury verdict in the Menendez Litigation has contributed to uncertainty regarding the Company’s financial condition and prospects and may negatively impact its ability to raise additional capital or to continue as a going concern.” 

On Friday, MSP Recovery issued a press release saying it “entered a non-binding term sheet” spelling out conditions “for a new secured” loan up to $55 million. 

“The agreement ... would provide the Company and its affiliates significant working capital and additional operational funding aimed at driving future growth,” the release said. But the company did not disclose the name of the new lender and did not provide that information when the Herald requested it. 

“As stated in the company’s 8K [filing with the SEC] and press release, we are unable to disclose the lender’s identity due to an existing non-disclosure agreement,” MSP’s spokesperson, Diana Diaz, told the Herald Saturday.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article311902272.html

American Bitcoin listed on Nasdaq

 American Bitcoin, a bitcoin mining and treasury company backed by President Trump's sons Eric and Donald Jr., listed on the Nasdaq on Wednesday morning under the ticker symbol ABTC.

It's the second crypto venture listing for the Trump brothers this week.

"Our Nasdaq debut marks a historic milestone in bringing Bitcoin into the core of U.S. capital markets and advancing our mission to make America the undisputed leader of the global Bitcoin economy," Eric Trump, American Bitcoin’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, said in a press release statement.

First launched as a subsidiary of publicly traded bitcoin mining firm Hut 8 (HUT), American Bitcoin began trading at $6.90 per share through an all-stock merger with Gryphon Digital Mining (GRYP).

The stock surged as much as 90% in its first hour of trading before settling back. Its was up over 40% by 11 am New York time.

American Bitcoin shareholders, including Eric Trump, his brother Donald Trump Jr., and Hut 8, own 98% of the company, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"By combining Bitcoin mining, opportunistic market purchases, and the backing of Hut 8's energy and digital infrastructure, we have created a vehicle designed to drive rapid, efficient Bitcoin-per-share growth," American Bitcoin executive chair and Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot said in a statement.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose Wednesday morning to $111,500 per coin. It's up 19% year to date and has traded between $108,00 and $123,000 for the past two months.

The listing kicks off the second major event the Trump brothers have headlined this week in bringing crypto to the capital markets.

On Monday, the token for a crypto venture called World Liberty Financial (WLFI-USD), which has ties to Donald Trump's family, listed on crypto exchanges.

The token's price spiked and then fell on major crypto exchanges, a fairly common reaction for small and newer crypto tokens. It fell roughly 5% Wednesday and is currently the 27th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to Coinmarketcap.

Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric as well as Baron, were all named initial co-founders of the project though the president retired from the role once taking office, according to World Liberty's website.

In exchange for promotion the Trump family, including the president, control a little under a quarter of all World Liberty tokens (22.5 billion) through a shell corporation known as DT Marks DEFI LLC.

At current market prices, those holdings are worth $4.8 billion, making World Liberty tokens one of the Trump family's most valuable assets.

The shell company gets a large share of trading revenue from these tokens, “75 percent of $WLFI token sale proceeds after deduction of agreed reserves, expenses and other amounts," according to World Liberty's initial plan document. Other World Liberty executives including CEO Zack Witkoff, who is son of Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, also receive a portion of those proceeds.

The Trump family's financial ties to crypto, which now spans everything from World Liberty tokens to the president's official meme coin (TRUMP) as well as various partnerships and product offerings by his namesake media company, Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), have drawn serious attention.

Crypto is "probably the most rewarding venture of my entire life," Eric Trump said last week before a bitcoin conference in Hong Kong.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/american-bitcoin-backed-by-president-trumps-sons-listed-on-the-nasdaq-141359243.html