Trump Made $1 Billion on Crypto Deals While His Fans Lost a Fortune
Wall Street Journal
July-01-2026
Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire.
Instead, the value of those tokens tanked. While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week.
“In crypto, people say a game is a game,” the digital-asset entrepreneur said. “He played a better game than I did.”
It has been clear for some time that President Trump’s forays into the crypto world have been lucrative, but the stunning disclosure that those ventures earned him some $1.4 billion last year underscored the different reality the president is living in from many of the investors who have embraced digital assets alongside him.
The president raked in cash by issuing new assets—World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto. Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.
Roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch. Many fans spent a few thousand on Trump coins while the biggest spenders shelled out millions for the token. Nansen’s analysis of 26,663 wallets shows that 85% of World Liberty’s $WLFI token buyers in the secondary market are underwater.
Trump, who in 2021 described bitcoin as a “scam” threatening the U.S. dollar, now leads a White House that has pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” As his administration lightened regulation of the notoriously boom-and-bust sector, the Trump family’s sprawling crypto business reached into nearly every corner of the industry, drawing conflict-of-interest concerns from ethics watchdogs. Bitcoin prices also plunged.
That has frustrated some of the president’s most ardent supporters and crypto industry allies alike. On Trump Media-owned Truth Social, where many users discuss Trump-linked investments alongside rocket-ship emojis, some individuals on Wednesday turned cynical.
“My investment is trash now,” one user said of WLF tokens.
But in the crypto market, where memecoins can quickly evaporate in value and “rug pulls” are a constant threat, other investors are resigned to their losses.
Vincent Deriu, a 28-year-old consultant and crypto enthusiast in New York, said he initially bought the $TRUMP token at launch and accumulated more to secure a spot at the inaugural memecoin dinner. After selling roughly half of them toward the end of 2025, he still owns more than 8,000 coins.
“No one forced anyone to go and invest in any of these tokens. People purchased it at their own risk,” said Deriu. “More politicians should take note, and they should be more transparent about how they’re making money in their business ventures.”
Days before his inauguration, Trump launched his memecoin, $TRUMP, which surged to a peak market capitalization of nearly $15 billion before plunging 97% to about $400 million today. In September 2024, Trump and his sons helped launch World Liberty Financial, the family’s flagship crypto venture.
That project subsequently released a dollar-pegged stablecoin shortly before Trump signed the Genius Act into law, establishing a regulatory framework for such dollar-pegged tokens.
White House officials say those actions don’t constitute conflicts of interest. “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
The surge in Trump’s crypto earnings last year came in addition to booming income from his family’s traditional hotel business and golf courses, as well as swelling holdings in stocks such as Nvidia and Meta, disclosures show.
Trump played down the windfall, attributing his earnings to a stock market that has repeatedly notched records in recent months. “You know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market is going up,” he told reporters Wednesday. “We’re all profiting. I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”
The disclosure could complicate already turbulent negotiations over legislation that would establish rules regulating various cryptocurrencies, a priority for many crypto companies that have spent millions of dollars on lobbying.
Many Democrats and some Republicans are insisting that the bill include provisions barring the president and elected officials from profiting from crypto activities that would benefit from the regulations they oversee—a sticking point that could become more intractable following the disclosure.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.), a sponsor of the bill who is negotiating with the White House and Democrats on the ethics language, said the legislation will include strong provisions and is the best way to address the concerns. The bill would need some Democratic support to get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. It already has passed the House.
“That needs to be resolved, or else I don’t think they’re going to have the votes,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), one of the Democrats who has indicated he would support the bill if the ethics provision is included, said after the legislation was approved by the Senate Banking Committee in mid-May. Gallego said Tuesday on X that Trump is making billions off the presidency while raising costs for working people.
Christensen, the founder of airdropalert.com and owner of a “substantial sum” of WLFI tokens, also bought $TRUMP memecoin to secure invitations to Trump’s memecoin events. While he was surprised by Trump’s windfall last year, he harbored no bitterness toward the president.
“It looks like it was a great monetization vehicle for him and his family, and he’s taking care of his own,” Christensen said.
July-01-2026
Morten Christensen made a big bet on digital tokens sold by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial last year, hoping that a surge in value might be enough to help him retire.
Instead, the value of those tokens tanked. While Christensen and many like him lost big, the president made a fortune, netting $800 million from that crypto project, according to a financial disclosure he filed this week.
“In crypto, people say a game is a game,” the digital-asset entrepreneur said. “He played a better game than I did.”
It has been clear for some time that President Trump’s forays into the crypto world have been lucrative, but the stunning disclosure that those ventures earned him some $1.4 billion last year underscored the different reality the president is living in from many of the investors who have embraced digital assets alongside him.
The president raked in cash by issuing new assets—World Liberty tokens and memecoins. But those who bought them at high prices had to suffer as their value went belly up, part of a wider crash in crypto. Political followers and crypto true believers who bought into the Trump brand were left holding the bag. A crypto summer for the president was a crypto winter for them.
Roughly two-thirds of investors in Trump’s memecoin are currently in the red, according to crypto data provider Nansen, which tracks 1.48 million crypto wallets that bought the token since its January 2025 launch. Many fans spent a few thousand on Trump coins while the biggest spenders shelled out millions for the token. Nansen’s analysis of 26,663 wallets shows that 85% of World Liberty’s $WLFI token buyers in the secondary market are underwater.
Trump, who in 2021 described bitcoin as a “scam” threatening the U.S. dollar, now leads a White House that has pledged to make America the “crypto capital of the world.” As his administration lightened regulation of the notoriously boom-and-bust sector, the Trump family’s sprawling crypto business reached into nearly every corner of the industry, drawing conflict-of-interest concerns from ethics watchdogs. Bitcoin prices also plunged.
That has frustrated some of the president’s most ardent supporters and crypto industry allies alike. On Trump Media-owned Truth Social, where many users discuss Trump-linked investments alongside rocket-ship emojis, some individuals on Wednesday turned cynical.
“My investment is trash now,” one user said of WLF tokens.
But in the crypto market, where memecoins can quickly evaporate in value and “rug pulls” are a constant threat, other investors are resigned to their losses.
Vincent Deriu, a 28-year-old consultant and crypto enthusiast in New York, said he initially bought the $TRUMP token at launch and accumulated more to secure a spot at the inaugural memecoin dinner. After selling roughly half of them toward the end of 2025, he still owns more than 8,000 coins.
“No one forced anyone to go and invest in any of these tokens. People purchased it at their own risk,” said Deriu. “More politicians should take note, and they should be more transparent about how they’re making money in their business ventures.”
Days before his inauguration, Trump launched his memecoin, $TRUMP, which surged to a peak market capitalization of nearly $15 billion before plunging 97% to about $400 million today. In September 2024, Trump and his sons helped launch World Liberty Financial, the family’s flagship crypto venture.
That project subsequently released a dollar-pegged stablecoin shortly before Trump signed the Genius Act into law, establishing a regulatory framework for such dollar-pegged tokens.
White House officials say those actions don’t constitute conflicts of interest. “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged—or will ever engage—in conflicts of interest,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people.”
The surge in Trump’s crypto earnings last year came in addition to booming income from his family’s traditional hotel business and golf courses, as well as swelling holdings in stocks such as Nvidia and Meta, disclosures show.
Trump played down the windfall, attributing his earnings to a stock market that has repeatedly notched records in recent months. “You know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market is going up,” he told reporters Wednesday. “We’re all profiting. I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”
The disclosure could complicate already turbulent negotiations over legislation that would establish rules regulating various cryptocurrencies, a priority for many crypto companies that have spent millions of dollars on lobbying.
Many Democrats and some Republicans are insisting that the bill include provisions barring the president and elected officials from profiting from crypto activities that would benefit from the regulations they oversee—a sticking point that could become more intractable following the disclosure.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R., Wyo.), a sponsor of the bill who is negotiating with the White House and Democrats on the ethics language, said the legislation will include strong provisions and is the best way to address the concerns. The bill would need some Democratic support to get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate. It already has passed the House.
“That needs to be resolved, or else I don’t think they’re going to have the votes,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), one of the Democrats who has indicated he would support the bill if the ethics provision is included, said after the legislation was approved by the Senate Banking Committee in mid-May. Gallego said Tuesday on X that Trump is making billions off the presidency while raising costs for working people.
Christensen, the founder of airdropalert.com and owner of a “substantial sum” of WLFI tokens, also bought $TRUMP memecoin to secure invitations to Trump’s memecoin events. While he was surprised by Trump’s windfall last year, he harbored no bitterness toward the president.
“It looks like it was a great monetization vehicle for him and his family, and he’s taking care of his own,” Christensen said.
