Key Takeaways:
President Donald Trump earned more than $1.4 billion from crypto ventures linked to his family in 2025, his most profitable year across any business in his multi-decade career, while roughly two-thirds of retail buyers in his meme coin lost money.
"The Trump family always wins in this playbook, but investors don't," a Reuters investigation published in June concluded, citing on-chain data and financial disclosures that traced the flow of funds from retail buyers to Trump-linked entities.
Trump's wealth report shows the bulk of his crypto gains were parked in stocks and bonds, not Bitcoin or digital assets — a striking contrast to the pro-crypto message his sons promoted to retail investors. The $TRUMP meme coin, launched days before his inauguration, lost 97 percent of its value from its January 2025 peak, according to crypto data firm Nansen. Total losses for Trump meme coin buyers reached $3.81 billion as of late June, the data firm estimated. Separately, 85 percent of buyers in one World Liberty Financial token were in the red.
The disparity between Trump's crypto windfall and his investors' losses raises questions about conflicts of interest as his administration simultaneously scaled back crypto enforcement and approved policy favors for foreign entities that invested in his family's projects. An Abu Dhabi royal's company secretly bought nearly half of World Liberty Financial for $187 million days before Trump's inauguration, and the United Arab Emirates later won approval to import advanced American AI chips.
The $1.4 billion question
The Trump family launched World Liberty Financial in the fall of 2024, after months of candidate Trump's overtures to the crypto industry. The crypto sector emerged as the top donating industry in the 2024 election cycle, and billionaire executives backed his campaign. Once in office, Trump's administration drastically scaled back efforts to police the industry and stop crypto scams, while pardoning convicted fraudsters.
The meme coin featuring Trump's fist pump after surviving the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, generated about $636 million for the president last year, according to the New York Times. Fatime Elrgdawy, a 29-year-old software engineer from California, told Reuters she lost more than $1,000 on a $TRUMP coin investment. Her $2,000 stake fell to less than $120 within five months.
Trump has described himself as being in the dark about the nature of his crypto fortune. "I could know about it," he told CNBC last week. "I didn't. There's nothing illegal. There's nothing wrong with it."
Foreign money, domestic policy
The UAE connection has drawn particular scrutiny. An employee at one of the royal's investment firms reportedly held a job at World Liberty Financial at the same time, the New York Times reported. Another of the royal's firms, MGX, which used $2 billion in a World Liberty coin investment, is now among the owners of TikTok's US operations after the Trump administration pressured the social media company to spin off an American subdivision.
Prices for Trump's meme coin and one of his World Liberty tokens have continued to slide as part of a broader decline across the crypto sector. The president's financial disclosures show that regardless of market conditions, the structure of his family's crypto ventures ensures the Trumps profit while retail investors bear the risk.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
