Three days before his second inauguration, Donald Trump launched a cryptocurrency. The $TRUMP memecoin hit the Solana blockchain on January 17, 2025, surged to $75.26 within hours, and briefly carried a fully diluted market capitalization above $75 billion. Two days later, his wife Melania launched her own token. The party, it seemed, had started.
But the memecoins were just the beginning. Trump and his family are involved in a web of crypto enterprises that stretches across governance tokens, stablecoins, Bitcoin mining, publicly traded holding companies, and — as of August 2026 — a nationally chartered bank. Through which companies is the president involved? What stakes does his family hold? And what exactly do these companies do?
We started asking, and the numbers we found left us genuinely puzzled.
The Memecoins: What People Lost, What Trump Made
Let’s start with the tokens, because the numbers are stark.
According to blockchain analytics firm Nansen, 988,905 buyers of the TRUMP memecoin have collectively lost $3.81 billion through the end of June 2026 [1]. The token now trades at roughly $1.78 — a 97% collapse from its peak. A $10,000 investment made on inauguration day would be worth approximately $364 today [1]. The Melania token has performed even worse, down 99% from its peak [3]. Combined losses across both tokens exceed $4.3 billion [3].
Meanwhile, Trump earned $636 million in royalties from the TRUMP token alone [1]. His 927-page financial disclosure, released by the Office of Government Ethics on June 30, lists the payout as royalties from CIC Digital LLC, a Trump Organization affiliate, under a licensing agreement with an entity called Celebration Coins — for which, notably, no public digital footprint has been found [1].
The structure ensures the president profits regardless of what happens to the price. Of the one billion tokens created, 80% are held by two Trump-affiliated entities — CIC Digital and Fight Fight Fight LLC — released on a three-year unlock schedule [1]. Trump earns royalties and transaction fees each time the token is bought or sold. Whether it goes to $75 or to $1.78, the fees flow.
Finance expert David Krause of Marquette University analyzed the token’s structure and found that the 80% controlled by Trump-affiliated entities generated more than $324 million in fees alone [3]. For every dollar insiders earned, investors lost $20 [3].
Melania Trump’s financial disclosure lists $6 million from NFTs and $10.7 million from a documentary license [6]. The MELANIA token’s specific earnings are not clearly broken out in the disclosure. But the token launched on the eve of the inauguration, crashed 99%, and — like the TRUMP token — was structured so that Trump-affiliated entities controlled the vast majority of supply [3].
Nearly a million people lost nearly $4 billion. The Trumps made hundreds of millions. We are not calling this a scam. We are asking: does this look like a scam to you?
The Empire: What Are These Companies?
The memecoins are the flashy surface. Underneath sits a network of at least ten crypto-related entities, all following the same structural logic: the family captures the upside, investors carry the risk.
World Liberty Financial (WLF) is the flagship. Founded in September 2024 by Zachary Folkman, Chase Herro, Alex Witkoff, Zach Witkoff, and Trump family members, it sells WLFI governance tokens and the USD1 stablecoin — a dollar-pegged coin backed by U.S. Treasuries [2]. A Trump business entity owns 60% of the company and is entitled to 75% of all token sale revenue [2]. By December 2025, the Trumps had profited $1 billion on proceeds, while holding $3 billion worth of unsold tokens [2].
The family roles are something to behold: Trump is “chief crypto advocate.” Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are “Web3 ambassadors.” Barron Trump, 19 years old, is the project’s “DeFi visionary” [2]. Zach Witkoff, the co-founder and CEO, is the son of Steve Witkoff — Trump’s Middle East negotiator [2].
USD1, the stablecoin, launched in March 2025. As of 2025, it has a circulation supply of $2 billion, mostly held by Binance, which allows WLF to earn around $80 million per year by investing in government bonds and money market funds [2]. In August 2026, a WLF subsidiary — World Liberty Trust Company — received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter, allowing it to issue USD1 directly, custody reserve assets, and manage payment settlement [5]. Senator Elizabeth Warren called it “the most brazen act of self-dealing our financial system has ever seen” [5].
AI Financial Corp (formerly Alt5 Sigma) is a Nasdaq-listed company that was once a recycling firm, then a biotech, then a crypto exchange. In August 2025, it raised $750 million selling shares and used $717 million to buy WLFI tokens [9][10]. The Trump family earned roughly $500 million from the transaction [10]. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. rang the Nasdaq opening bell to celebrate. The stock then collapsed 93% — from $8.97 to 66 cents — and the company has warned it may not survive [10]. It is on its third CEO and third outside auditor since the deal [10].
American Bitcoin is a Bitcoin mining and treasury company backed by the Trump brothers. Formed by combining Hut 8’s mining business with American Data Centers, a company backed by Eric and Don Jr. [8]. The brothers received their stakes at no cost [9]. The stock fell from $11 to $1.15 — a 95% decline — wiping out more than $200 million for outside investors [9]. Eric Trump’s stake was still worth $70 million at one point, because his cost basis was zero [9].
Trump Media & Technology Group spent roughly $2 billion purchasing Bitcoin near market peaks and reported a $405.9 million loss in the first quarter of 2026 from unrealized markdowns [1]. Stablecoin Holdco generated $197 million from an equity sale tied to stablecoin operations [8]. DT Marks DEFI LLC, the entity contractually entitled to 75% of WLF token sale proceeds, generated approximately $987 million for the family [9].
The Asymmetry: What Investors Make vs. What Trump Makes
Here is where the picture becomes difficult to look at.
Reuters examined the full scope of Trump family crypto ventures between November 2024 and April 2026 and found that they generated roughly $2.3 billion in pretax income [9]. That figure surpassed Coinbase’s $2.1 billion over the same period [9]. It exceeded the earnings of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF business, Circle, Galaxy Digital, and IREN — the largest Bitcoin miner by market value — combined [9].
Meanwhile, more than one million buyers absorbed roughly $2.25 billion in losses across these same ventures [9]. The breakdown: WLFI token buyers lost approximately $674 million. TRUMP memecoin buyers lost more than $700 million (as of April; later updated to $3.81 billion through June). ALT5/AI Financial stock investors lost about $675 million. American Bitcoin investors lost more than $200 million [9].
Dollar for dollar. Gain for loss. The family deployed minimal personal capital — in several cases, zero — and captured massive upside through token sales, founder allocations, and equity stakes. Investors deployed real money and absorbed the collapses [9].
What are retail investors making from these ventures? Essentially nothing. The WLFI token has declined since becoming publicly traded [2]. The TRUMP token is down 97%. The MELANIA token is down 99%. AI Financial stock is down 93%. American Bitcoin is down 95% [1][3][9]. Trump Media lost $405.9 million on its Bitcoin purchases in a single quarter [1].
There is no version of this story where the retail investor wins. The structure does not allow it. The family takes its cut upfront — through royalties, revenue shares, and free equity — before the market even has a chance to set a price. By the time retail buyers enter, the family has already been paid. Everything that follows is someone else’s loss.
The Insider Trading Question
Which brings us to the question that sits at the center of all of this.
Trump makes policy announcements — tariffs, crypto regulation, semiconductor export decisions — that move markets. His family controls crypto entities that stand to benefit from those announcements. He knows what he will say before the public does. People around him know. And through the companies described above, the family profits from the market movements those announcements create.
During the first three months of 2026 alone, financial firms acting for Trump made more than 3,600 stock trades with a combined value between $220 million and $750 million, including trades in Nvidia, Boeing, and Oracle — companies directly affected by his administration’s policies [4]. The Trump Organization says trades are executed by “third-party financial institutions” with “no advance notice of trading activity” [4]. Even if that’s true, the president is buying and selling individual stocks on a daily basis while simultaneously making policy decisions that affect those stocks’ values.
Is this insider trading? We genuinely don’t know. But we are puzzled.
Here is the law: Title 18 U.S.C. Section 208 — the federal conflict-of-interest statute — prohibits executive branch employees from participating in any action that directly affects their financial interests [4]. When George W. Bush nominated Hank Paulson as Treasury Secretary in 2006, Paulson was required to divest $500 million in Goldman Sachs stock because of this law [4].
But the law does not apply to the President or Vice President [4].
Prior to 2016, presidents acted as if it did. Jimmy Carter put his peanut farm in a blind trust. George W. Bush sold his stake in the Texas Rangers [6]. Trump has placed his fortune in a revocable trust managed by his sons — who are themselves running crypto companies that intersect directly with government policy [4].
Richard Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush, told the BBC: “Of course it’s a conflict of interest” [6]. He told The New Yorker he could think of no historical parallel: “Nixon had his issues, but I don’t think there is anything like this” [4].
So here is the puzzle. If Trump were not president — if he were a private citizen — 18 U.S.C. Section 208 would apply to him. His crypto activities would be subject to SEC oversight and DOJ enforcement. The memecoins, the token sales, the bank charter application — all of it would face the full weight of regulatory scrutiny that any other citizen would face.
Instead, the presidency shields him. He is exempt from the conflict-of-interest law. He appoints the regulators. He can pardon anyone. And his family’s crypto companies continue to operate, continue to sell tokens, continue to earn hundreds of millions — while the people who bought those tokens lose billions.
The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, created the first federal framework for stablecoins but contained no provisions addressing memecoins or tokens issued by elected officials [1]. Senator Gillibrand’s proposal to ban elected officials from issuing crypto tokens was stripped from the final bill [1]. Two House bills aimed at closing the gap have stalled [3].
We are not accusing anyone of anything. We are asking: does this look right to you? Because from where we’re sitting, the president of the United States is operating a family crypto empire, issuing his own currency through his own bank, exempt from the conflict-of-interest law that applies to every other government employee, while nearly a million people who bought his tokens have lost nearly $4 billion.
We are genuinely puzzled. Does this look right to you?
References
[1] Dina, C. (2026). Nearly a million investors lost $3.8 billion on the Trump memecoin. Trump made $636 million. The Next Web. https://thenextweb.com/news/trump-memecoin-investors-losses-636-million-payout
[2] Wikipedia. (2026). World Liberty Financial. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Liberty_Financial
[3] Belanger, A. (2026). Investors lost billions on Trump’s memecoin. Another gala won’t fix that. Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/investors-lost-billions-on-trumps-memecoin-another-gala-wont-fix-that/
[4] Cassidy, J. (2026). Can anything stop Donald Trump’s corruption? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-financial-page/can-anything-stop-trumps-corruption
[5] Peterson, M. (2026). Trump family-backed crypto firm World Liberty gets conditional bank charter approval. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/14/world-liberty-trump-occ-bank-charter-stablecoin.html
[6] Hays, K., & Hoskins, P. (2026). Trump made more than $1bn from crypto in first year back in office. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgmv98ez3zo
[7] O’Donnell, A. (2026). The definitive guide to Donald Trump’s crypto ventures in 2026. CoinMarketCap. https://coinmarketcap.com/academy/article/trump-crypto-billion-dollar-business
[8] Johnson, C. G., & Shaw, A. (2025). Todd Blanche shut down crypto enforcement while holding crypto assets. ProPublica. https://www.propublica.org/article/todd-blanche-crypto-doj-trump
[9] Adejumo, O. (2026). Trump family’s $2.3B crypto windfall matched by $2.25B in investor losses, Reuters finds. CryptoSlate. https://cryptoslate.com/trump-familys-2-3b-crypto-windfall-matched-by-2-25b-in-investor-losses-reuters-finds/
[10] Peterson, M. (2026). Trump family Alt5 Sigma crypto venture left investors with steep losses. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/09/trump-world-liberty-financial-crypto-alt5-sigma.html
AI Disclosure: This post was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The ideas, analysis, and opinions expressed are my own — AI was used to help compose, structure, and refine my personal notes and thoughts into the final written content. Images and video featured in this post were also generated using AI tools, based on my own creative prompts and direction.
