Trump Notched Nearly $1.2 Billion in Crypto Revenue Last Year, Locking In Profits As Investors Plunge Into Losses, Federal Filing Reveals

A mandatory annual ethics disclosure released Tuesday by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics shows sitting President Donald Trump pulled nearly $1.2 billion in total revenue from his cryptocurrency ventures over the past year, securing massive personal gains even as ordinary investors who bought into his projects have suffered steep value drops.

What were no more than unproven startups when Trump took office last January have already outearned most of his sprawling real estate portfolio, the decades-built asset base that made him a household name. This explosive growth was fueled by billionaire backers and a deliberate policy shift from the Trump administration that rolled back a planned federal crackdown on the crypto industry.

Per the filing, Trump took home more than $500 million from his crypto firm World Liberty Financial via sales of new digital products, including "governance tokens." A second Trump-owned crypto venture, CIC Digital LLC, generated more than $600 million in revenue from selling meme coins: souvenir-style digital tokens printed with Trump’s likeness. Both types of crypto assets have crashed in value since their initial public sales.

Beyond crypto, the disclosure documents another unprecedented break from past presidential norms: Trump earned millions more last year from sales of Trump-branded consumer goods, including Bibles, signature sneakers, and other small merchandise. Sales of Trump-branded watches alone generated $4.7 million in revenue.

At 927 pages, the disclosure paints a stark, if incomplete, picture of the rapid growth of Trump’s personal wealth since he took office, built across a tangled web of business interests. Many of these ventures have directly benefited from policy actions taken by Trump’s own administration. While Trump claims his sons oversee all day-to-day financial decisions, his current arrangement discards the strict conflict-of-interest protections put in place by every recent U.S. president before him. Forbes now estimates Trump’s total net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The outsize rise of crypto relative to Trump’s core real estate business is especially notable: Trump first launched his political career campaigning on his record as a successful property developer. What makes the shift even more striking is that his traditional real estate business also boomed last year. Trump pulled in tens of millions in fees from a flood of new hotel, resort, and condo deals across the globe, marking the largest expansion in the 100-year history of the Trump family business.

Critically, many of the foreign countries hosting these deals were negotiating high-stakes policy matters with the U.S. — including tariffs, military aid, and other national priorities — at the same time the Trump family was closing these business agreements. A Trump property in the United Arab Emirates generated $10.4 million for the president’s business last year; a Saudi Arabian development led by a developer with close ties to the Saudi royal family paid $9 million to Trump’s company; projects in Bucharest, Romania, and Qatar each delivered $5 million in revenue.

Trump’s flagship domestic property, Florida’s Mar-a-Lago resort, also saw double-digit growth last year. The club pulled in $77 million in revenue, a 50% jump from the prior year (when Trump was a private citizen), as heads of state and top business leaders flocked to the property after his return to office.

Notably, the disclosure only reports total revenue, not net profit after expenses, so it is impossible to calculate how much Trump actually cleared from these ventures.

After taking office, Trump reversed the Biden administration’s tough regulatory stance on crypto and implemented a slate of industry-friendly policies. Even so, federal regulators issued public warnings ahead of World Liberty’s governance token launch, noting that unlike traditional stocks, these tokens do not grant buyers any ownership stake in the company — they only offer limited voting power on minor corporate decisions, and are extremely difficult to value.

Buyers ignored the warnings anyway. One Chinese billionaire spent $75 million on the governance tokens and an additional $200 million on Trump’s meme coins. A federal lawsuit accusing Trump of defrauding investors was put on hold last February before settling for a $10 million fine. That billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his investments in Trump’s businesses had any connection to his own federal legal case, and World Liberty has dismissed all claims of conflict of interest.

For rank-and-file investors, the results have been devastating. The price of World Liberty’s tokens has fallen 80% since they began trading last September. Trump’s meme coins, which spiked to more than $74 apiece in the days after their January 2025 launch, now trade for just $1.68.

The White House has repeatedly defended the structure of Trump’s business holdings, arguing that Trump placed all assets in a trust managed by his sons, plays no role in operational decisions, and faces no ethics questions. “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 Trump Organization has also noted that its foreign deals are with private companies, not foreign governments.

Even so, separating private and state interests is often unfeasible in authoritarian regimes, monarchies, and one-party states where most large business is tied to ruling elites. For example, the disclosure shows Trump earned $5 million last year from a new resort project in Vietnam. As The New York Times has reported, Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to formally approve the deal, and forcibly displaced local farmers to clear land for construction.

While it is nearly impossible to prove Trump’s business deals directly shaped U.S. policy to benefit these nations, each secured the key outcomes they sought from the Trump administration: Vietnam received tariff relief, Qatar gained access to advanced U.S. technology previously banned, and Saudi Arabia acquired the U.S. fighter jets it had pursued for years.