The Billion Dollar Crypto Man

President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion dollars from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.

Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.

The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests — many that have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The Trump business is growing abroad

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.

Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid, and other important matters.

A property in the United Arab Emirates took in $10.4 million. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.

One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.

Trump took in in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.

The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.

Trump is now the billion dollar crypto man

After taking office last year, Trump reversed the Biden administration’s tough stance on the crypto industry and pushed policies friendly to the industry.

But regulators still had some concerns. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate polices, and are difficult to value.

Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled last month for a $10 million fine. [...]

Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their meme coin holdings drop significantly. The price spiked to more than $74 in the days after its launch in January 2025, but now sells for just $1.68. Also, the value of the World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they first started trading in September.

by Bernard Condon, Seattle Times/AP |  Read more:

Image: Alex Brandon
[ed. This actually feels like a feel-good story. The sheep MAGA cultists and influence buyers get fleeced - as predicted, and as they deserve. Is this a great country or what? In other corruption news, see also: Trump is using a $500M no-bid contract to build his White House ballroom (Washington Post):]

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White House officials last year secretly awarded a no-bid contract worth up to $500 million for the construction of the East Wing ballroom in an unusual arrangement that sidestepped typical contracting procedures designed to control costs, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by The Washington Post. [...]

The estimated East Wing construction cost has tripled since July, when the project was first announced, with half expected to come from taxpayers, The Post previously reported.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the ballroom would be paid for by private donors and once said that Clark executives offered to build it for free.

“They said: ‘Sir, we’ll do it for nothing. This is the greatest honor,” Trump told The New York Times in January.

Clark’s internal cost projections show the McLean, Virginia-based company, the largest general contractor in the D.C. metro area, stands to make tens of millions of dollars from the work...

The records reviewed by The Post do not break out Clark’s estimated profit margin for the entire project, but a March document shows the company projected it would receive a total of $65 million in combined profit, overhead and daily rates for on-site staff and other costs.

[ed. But, but... Hilary's emails!]