Donald Trump was dubbed the “Crypto President” before he even took office early last year, as the 45th and 47th President of the United States promised to do everything from establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve to removing perceived crypto villain Gary Gensler from the SEC. Trump has largely followed through on many of his crypto-focused promises, with multiple related executive orders signed early in his second term and the passage of the GENIUS Act, which created regulatory clarity for the crypto industry’s dollar-pegged tokens, known as stablecoins.
And while all this was happening, the Trump family’s own crypto businesses were flourishing. That’s according to a new report from Bloomberg, which claims crypto boosted the Trump family wealth by $1.4 billion over the past year. In fact, crypto is now said to account for roughly 20% of the family’s $6.8 billion fortune.
It would almost be impossible to name all of the various crypto businesses that are affiliated with the Trump family at this point, but their three most notable crypto ventures are decentralized finance (DeFi) firm World Liberty Financial, the TRUMP memecoin, and bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin. According to Bloomberg’s analysis, the Trump family earned $390 million from selling World Liberty Financial’s WLFI tokens alone.
A major purchaser of those tokens was crypto entrepreneur and Tron founder Justin Sun, who has had his SEC case stayed after Trump took office. Three House Democrats from the financial services committee recently reached out to the SEC regarding this apparent conflict of interest between Sun and the executive branch, and it’s not the only time there have been accusations of a crypto pay-to-play scheme in Trump’s second term.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who is the founder and former CEO of crypto exchange Binance, received a pardon from Trump following a business deal that involves Binance holding $2 billion of World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin, netting tens of millions of dollars of annual revenue for the crypto company. Notably, two privacy-focused bitcoin developers who, like Zhao, were charged with crimes related to money laundering have not yet received a pardon from Trump. These two developers do not have any known business arrangement with any Trump-affiliated crypto business.
According to the Trump family, it was originally their own debanking experience that led them to crypto. “Having been canceled by banks, out of political malice, led us to many incredible opportunities, as we redefine the future of finance,” Eric Trump said in a statement quoted by Bloomberg.
Over the weekend, President Trump claimed he was going to sue JPMorgan Chase over this debanking issue within the next couple of weeks.
Despite all of this profiteering in the crypto game, the Trump family fortune did not budge much in terms of its overall value. This was largely due to the poor performance of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp, which has seen a 66% drop in value over the past year. Notably, Trump’s social media company, which is behind the Truth Social platform, attempted to offset some of its poor financial performance last year by adding a $2.5 billion “bitcoin treasury.”
While the crypto market was actually down on the year for 2025, much of the initial traction gained by the price of bitcoin and other crypto assets occurred once it became clear Trump was going to win the presidential election in early November 2024. The bitcoin price is still up around 33% since before the election winner was clear. What happens next is anyone’s guess, as there is currently a debate amongst crypto analysts over whether bitcoin’s usual four-year cycle around its halving events is coming to an end.
With the brazen profiteering and corruption allegations associated with Trump’s crypto presidency, it would be appropriate to label this the shitcoin presidency, at least so far. There is still the potential for various protections for crypto developers and users to be signed into law via the CLARITY Act, but the focus on stablecoins and other centralized aspects of the crypto industry are disheartening to many Bitcoin purists.
Read the full article here
