US President Donald Trump took in nearly US$1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released on Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.
Mere start-ups 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. Fuelling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.
Trump got more than US$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 US$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 US$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 of which 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 US$6 billion, up from US$2.3 billion in 2024.
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 US over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.
A property in the United Arab Emirates generated US$10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company US$9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him US$5 million each.
One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.
Trump took in US$77 million from the property, a 50 per cent 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 said on Wednesday that most of his gains last year came from the stock market and he’s just riding along with everyone else.
“We’re all profiting,” he said. “I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”
But crypto was clearly the big revenue generator last year, in part due to his own moves since taking office — pushing policies friendly to the industry and reversing a Biden administration regulatory crackdown.
The regulators are still worried. 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 policies, and are difficult to value.
Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent US$75 million on the tokens and US$200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a US$10-million fine.
The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.
The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80 per cent since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than US$74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for US$1.68.
The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions, and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.
“Neither the president nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.
Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.
For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in US$5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.
Whether the deals played any role in changing US policies in ways these countries sought is nearly impossible to know, but the countries did get what they wanted.
Vietnam got tariff relief. Qatar got access to advanced US technology previously off limits, and Saudi Arabia got US fighter jets it had coveted for years.
AP
