At the start of Donald Trump’s first term, he promised that he and his family would never do anything that might even be “perceived to be exploitive of office of the Presidency.” By contrast, his second term looks rapacious. He and members of his family have signed a blitz of foreign mega-deals shadowed by conflicts of interest, and they’ve launched at least five different cryptocurrency enterprises, all of which leverage Trump’s status as President to lure buyers or investors. Ethics watchdogs say that no other President has ever so nakedly exploited his position, or on such a scale. Trump recently explained to the Times why he cast aside his former restraint: “I found out that nobody cared.”
Is Trump right about the public’s nonchalance? Last summer, I tallied how much money he and his immediate family had made off his high office. My method was conservative. It seemed unfair to begrudge Trump the profits from the many businesses he owned before entering the White House. So I excluded from my calculation preëxisting hotels, condos, and golf courses, along with plausible extensions of those long-standing businesses. Likewise, Trump is hardly the first President to trade access or potential influence for political fund-raising, and he generally cannot spend such money on personal expenses, so I set that aside, too. Lastly, I left out funny-money assets he couldn’t readily cash out without setting off a fire sale that would eviscerate their value, such as his shares in the company behind Truth Social, his social-media platform.
Even excluding all that, by August, the Presidential profiteering reached $3.4 billion. (You can review my judgments in the article, “The Number.”) And since then the First Family has kept busy. The end of Trump’s first year in office seemed an opportune time for an update. Did the family business slow down or speed up for the Trumps?
AMERICAN BITCOIN REDUX
Many investors and consumers understandably distrust cryptocurrency and digital finance. Crypto heists are alarmingly common, and the best-known uses of digital currency are money laundering and casino-like financial speculation. President Trump himself, before his most recent campaign, maintained that Bitcoin “seems like a scam” and that crypto “can facilitate unlawful behavior.” But an association with a sitting President can furnish a valuable credibility boost. Think of the premium that investors will pay for U.S. Treasury bonds compared to notes from some little-known bank. That appears, in a nutshell, to be the Trump family’s strategy with crypto.
The Trumps’ first windfall since my August tally occurred through American Bitcoin, a company that mines new bitcoin with the intent to hoard it. (Under the algorithm that created bitcoin, miners get paid in new tokens for the computer work of tracking digital transactions.) Last spring, Eric and Donald Trump, Jr., contributed their family name—and nothing else of obvious value—to a complicated series of transactions that yielded them approximately a thirteen-per-cent stake in American Bitcoin. Eric, who is now listed as its co-founder and chief strategy officer, has become the company’s public face. If Eric and Donald, Jr.,’s father had lost the 2024 election, surely no one would have handed them such a large stake in a business that they had virtually no experience in and to which they had contributed so little—so their stake should be categorized as Presidential profit. In August, I calculated that the brothers’ thirteen-per-cent stake in the company’s computer hardware alone added at least thirteen million dollars to the family’s profiteering tally.
In September, the company floated shares on the stock market, capitalizing in another way on the cachet of the Trump name. American Bitcoin merged with a penny-stock bitcoin miner as a way of going public without the cost—or scrutiny—of an initial public offering. And the stock market, as expected, has put a far higher price on the company, in part because it owns a stockpile of bitcoin. The brothers’ stake now appears to be worth around two hundred million dollars. A caveat: Eric Trump, as a large and active investor in American Bitcoin, must report any sale of shares, and that might trigger a selloff. So it seems excessive to add it all to the Presidential-profit ledger. I will add only the approximate value of Donald Trump, Jr.,’s stake: about a hundred million dollars.
The number in August: $3.4 billion
Additional profit: $100 million
New total: $3.5 billion
WORLD LIBERTY FINANCIAL, BINANCE, AND PAKISTAN
The Trumps have made even more money since August through World Liberty Financial, a digital-finance startup heavily linked to the family. Its website lists the President as a “co-founder emeritus” and displays his photograph prominently; Eric, Donald, Jr., and Barron Trump are all listed as co-founders. Steven Witkoff, the President’s old friend and diplomatic envoy, is also listed as a co-founder emeritus, and his son Zach is C.E.O.
In May, World Liberty began selling a form of crypto known as a stablecoin. Unlike digital currencies such as bitcoin, which rise and fall in price, a stablecoin is supposed to hold a fixed value in dollars. Before July, when President Trump signed the first legislation regulating stablecoin, some of the best-known examples, such as TerraUSD, had turned out to be Ponzi schemes. (In December, a New York court sentenced TerraUSD’s co-founder to fifteen years in prison.) But World Liberty promised that its stablecoin, USD1, will always be worth exactly one dollar. Buyers can transfer USD1 to move money or make payments, and any holder can redeem USD1 for dollars. In between, while USD1s are circulating, World Liberty invests the cash that it is holding in U.S. Treasury bonds, in much the same way a savings bank might invest deposits. At current interest rates, World Liberty can expect to earn more than four per cent annually on the volume of USD1 in circulation.
Last spring, a company owned by the rulers of the United Arab Emirates bought two billion dollars’ worth of USD1. The transaction raised alarms about the appearance of a payoff—because the U.A.E. was simultaneously seeking approval from the Trump Administration to acquire sensitive American artificial-intelligence technology. (President Trump soon granted that approval.) The Emiratis immediately used the stablecoin to invest in Binance, the largest crypto exchange, which has its own interest in influencing Trump. In 2023, Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, known as C.Z., pleaded guilty to violating anti-money-laundering laws, served a brief prison sentence, and agreed to stop running the company. At the time of the two-billion-dollar stablecoin payment from the U.A.E., he was petitioning Trump for a pardon. Binance, as the holder of the stablecoin, can determine how long World Liberty continues earning four per cent a year on that two billion dollars. In other words, Binance controls how much profit the Trumps will make from the two-billion-dollar stablecoin sale. In October, Trump granted C.Z.’s request for a pardon. (David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty, told me that Binance cannot “exert control or influence over World Liberty Financial.”)
Binance is currently seeking to end federal monitoring that had been imposed when he was convicted for violating anti-money-laundering laws. Now the company is goosing the Trumps’ stablecoin profits in another way. On December 11th, Binance dropped its fees for certain crypto trades if they were conducted in USD1. Then, on December 23rd, Binance began paying users of its platform to hold USD1: Binance announced that, for the next month, it would give users a bonus equal to about 1.7 per cent on up to fifty thousand dollars’ worth of USD1 holdings. If this return rate were annualized, it would yield an eye-popping twenty per cent. And, on January 23rd, Binance announced a combination of new giveaways to USD1 holders which roughly extended that offer. Many users leapt at these opportunities. In the months preceding Binance’s maneuvers, the total volume of USD1 in circulation had held steady at about two billion dollars. On December 25th, shortly after Binance announced its first giveaway, World Liberty announced that USD1’s volume had crossed three billion dollars. It has now climbed to roughly five billion, and most of that expansion appears to have taken place on the Binance platform.
Representatives of Binance and World Liberty both denied any wrongdoing. They told me that Binance and its competitors have often paid holders of other stablecoins in order to attract traders, and that several smaller exchanges also provide benefits to holders of USD1. A Binance spokeswoman said in a statement that the services it provided to World Liberty “are available to other projects on equal terms.” A spokesman for World Liberty said that USD1’s growth “reflects genuine market adoption.” But Molly White, a computer programmer who is a prominent critic of the crypto industry and tracks such offers, told me that crypto exchanges have seldom, if ever, paid stablecoin holders as high a return rate as Binance is providing for USD1, or offered bonus returns on such large quantities. She said that Binance “seems like they are just giving away free money,” and that the company’s enrichment of the Trumps, through World Liberty, looked like “a very blatant quid pro quo” for the President’s pardoning of C.Z. (In response to detailed questions about my reporting for this article, Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, told me, in an e-mail, that “the failing liberal media is only pushing the same old garbage narratives” and that “President Trump has always put—and will always put—the best interests of the American people first.”)
Last spring, the government of Pakistan reportedly enlisted C.Z. as an adviser on the use of crypto. And, on January 14th, Pakistan—which has its own interests in influencing the Trump Administration—signed an agreement to incorporate USD1 into an officially regulated digital-payment system. A spokesman for World Liberty told me that, at the moment, Pakistan is only exploring the potential use of USD1 in handling “international remittances,” and that the country’s interest in USD1 “has nothing to do” with its relations with the Trump Administration. Still, it is hard to imagine that, without the imprimatur of the U.S. President, such a novel stablecoin would be embraced so quickly at the highest levels of the Pakistani government. So this deal, too, depends on Trump’s Presidency.
Now that World Liberty has seen an increase of three billion dollars in the value of its stablecoin in circulation, it can reasonably expect to earn four per cent a year on that extra sum—three hundred and sixty million dollars, if that circulation holds up in the three years Trump has left in office. According to the fine print on World Liberty’s website, a company affiliated with the Trumps is entitled to about thirty-eight per cent of that interest, which would come out to about a hundred and thirty-six million dollars in additional Presidential profit.
Running total: $3.5 billion
Additional profit: $136 million
New total: $3.64 billion
FROM APPLIANCE REPAIR TO CRYPTOCURRENCY
The Trumps have also received a windfall from World Liberty through a different form of crypto that it has sold: digital “governance” tokens, which provide buyers a loosely defined right to vote on the company’s future. Unlike stablecoin, these tokens carry no promise of redemption for any fixed amount of dollars; you can sell one for a price that rises or falls like a stock. Yet, unlike a stock, these digital tokens do not entitle a buyer to any equity in World Liberty; nor to any share of its profits, raising many questions about why an investor might want to own them—other than for World Liberty’s connection to the Trumps. Some purchasers may hope that, if the Trump Administration further loosens security rules, the tokens will eventually become a form of ownership. Others may be seeking to buy influence.
After my August tally, World Liberty found an improbable new taker for its tokens: a company that had gone public, in 1991, as Appliance Recycling Centers of America. In 2019, it made a radical transition into biotechnology, declaring that it would attempt to develop a nonaddictive alternative to opioids. In 2024, it transformed again, adopting the name Alt5 Sigma Corporation and shifting its focus to processing digital payments.
In August, Alt5 Sigma refocussed yet again—to buying World Liberty’s digital tokens. It agreed to trade the leadership of its board (and a substantial minority of its stock) to World Liberty in exchange for a pile of digital tokens, then said to be worth about seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Zach Witkoff became Alt5 Sigma’s chairman, and the company announced that it would appoint Eric Trump as a director.
As part of the same convoluted transaction, the new Alt5 Sigma—cashing in on the Trump name and the broader crypto boom—also sold about seven hundred and fifty million dollars’ worth of new shares to outside investors expressly for the purpose of buying even more World Liberty tokens. Alt5 Sigma didn’t name the buyers; a securities filing said only that the investors included “a select number of the world’s largest institutional investors and prominent crypto venture-capital firms.” After this transaction, Alt5 Sigma’s stockpile of World Liberty tokens rose to about 7.5 per cent of all the tokens in circulation, and its share had a nominal value of about $1.5 billion. Alt5 Sigma is pitching its stock as an easy way for ordinary investors to indirectly own World Liberty tokens—essentially turning its common stock into a bet on the Trump family’s future endeavors in crypto. White, the crypto critic, noted that top executives of World Liberty were now running a second company whose mission appeared to be buying World Liberty’s own governance token. These sales enrich the Trump and Witkoff families. She called the arrangement “a mind-boggling conflict of interest.” (Wachsman, the World Liberty spokesman, told me that Alt5 Sigma’s original board had independently decided to stockpile the governance token before Witkoff became chairman; Wachsman added that World Liberty’s USD1 business “aligns with” Alt5 Sigma’s payment processing “roadmap.”)
It’s unclear what kind of due diligence the Trumps or Witkoff had done. Alt5 Sigma failed to file its required third-quarter financial report on time. In October, the company, also without explanation, announced that its C.E.O. had been “removed of his duties.” A month later, Alt5 Sigma said that it had “determined to conclude” the employment of its chief financial officer, who had acted as interim C.E.O. Then, in December, the company switched to a new auditor, and—following questions from the Financial Times about that firm’s checkered record—replaced it, too. Recently, it emerged that in May—months before the deal with World Liberty—a Rwandan court found a subsidiary of Alt5 Sigma criminally liable for money laundering, among other violations. Stock-market regulators, for unspecified reasons, also forced the company to replace Eric Trump with another World Liberty executive as a director on its board—although Eric remains a board observer and a strategic adviser. Alt5 Sigma’s stock, after rising to more than eight dollars on the news of the deal with World Liberty, has now tumbled to about two dollars a share. In an e-mailed statement, Alt5 Sigma said that it remains “excited about our future and our ongoing partnership with World Liberty Financial.”
For the Trumps, though, the Alt5 Sigma deal has already paid off. According to the fine print of World Liberty’s website, after deducting certain expenses, seventy-five per cent of token sales go to a company affiliated with the Trump family, and seventy-five per cent of seven hundred and fifty million dollars comes out to five hundred and sixty-two million.
Running total: $3.64 billion
Additional profit: $562 million
New total: $4.2 billion
A BAD BET ON BITCOIN
In fairness, I will note that the decline in the price of bitcoin since August may have lowered my previous calculation of the Trumps’ Presidential profits at Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company behind Truth Social. Although the social-media platform has yet to demonstrate any profit, it has capitalized on its anomalously high share price by quietly selling large sums of stock to institutional investors (who could flip it after a jump in its volatile price). By August, the company had used the proceeds to stockpile about $3.1 billion in cash and bitcoin. Since the President then owned about forty-two per cent of Trump Media, I previously estimated that his interest in those assets added $1.3 billion to his Presidential profits. Judging from the amount of bitcoin and cash on Trump Media’s balance sheet in its most recent quarterly report, that number may have fallen by about a hundred and fifty million dollars, to $1.15 billion.
Even with that setback, though, the Trumps have made a net total of about six hundred and fifty million dollars from crypto since August. That pushes his total gain since he first sought the Presidency to more than $4 billion.
Running total: $4.2 billion
Fluctuation in bitcoin value: -$150 million
Over-all gain from crypto: $646 million
New total: $4.05 billion
NUCLEAR FUSION, BANK SHAKEDOWNS, AND A MALDIVES RESORT
The Trumps have also continued to cash in on the Presidency in other ways—often while engaging in stark conflicts of interest. But it is premature to quantify those profits.
On December 18th, for example, Trump Media used its bags of cash and bitcoin for a stunning new gamble on, of all things, nuclear fusion. Trump Media agreed to merge with TAE Technologies, a privately owned company, founded in 1998, that is one of several firms attempting to develop the first economically viable power plant using nuclear fusion. When the deal closes, Trump Media shareholders will own half of the joint company. The President will be the largest shareholder, with more than twenty per cent of the stock. Devin Nunes, the chief executive of Trump Media and a former Republican congressman, is expected to become one of two co-chief executives.
For TAE, the merger provides badly needed capital. The company has already raised and spent $1.3 billion in its quest to make fusion work, and, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump Media said that it has agreed to pay TAE up to three hundred million dollars before the merger is finalized. The conflict of interest here is glaring: the President himself will be deeply invested in a company that is competing for federal-government permits and funding.
For the Trump family, this could be the most profitable deal of his Presidency, if TAE turns out to be the outfit that solves the daunting challenges of supplying energy from fusion. At the very least, reducing the company’s identification with Truth Social could make it easier for Trump to cash out some of his shares. On the other hand, if fusion does not become viable for decades, Trump Media may end up squandering that pile of cash and bitcoin.
After squeezing tens of millions of dollars out of several major media companies last year to settle legally tenuous lawsuits, President Trump this month filed a new suit—against JPMorgan Chase. He is demanding five billion dollars, alleging that the bank acted out of political bias when it closed his accounts after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol. Last year, the Trump Organization filed a smaller suit making similar allegations against Capital One. Both banks have called the claims meritless. But, like the media companies, both banks are regulated by his Administration, creating an incentive to settle.
In real estate, the Trumps continue to profit from a partnership with Dar Al Arkan, a major Saudi developer with a history of close ties to the royal family. On November 17th, the Trump Organization announced an agreement to license its name to Dar Al Arkan for a planned Trump International Hotel Maldives, which is to include about eighty “ultra-luxury beach and overwater villas.” Emanuel Schreiner, the chief executive of RVS Hospitality, a consulting company, told me that the demand for privacy in the luxury market often drives the rental rates for such villas in the archipelago above ten thousand dollars a night during the peak season, and the Trump Organization’s fees might range from two to ten per cent of revenue—a hefty sum, although the specifics remain to be seen. The Trump Organization added that it planned to finance the project by selling digital tokens that would allow buyers to participate in the profits—an idea that would appear to violate U.S. securities laws.
The next day, Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s ruler, to the White House. It was the prince’s first visit since his agents killed and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi—the Saudi dissident, Washington Post columnist, and Virginia resident—inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in 2018. At a press conference, an American journalist asked about the murder. Trump berated the questioner for daring to “embarrass our guest.” As the prince stared down at his hands, Trump, contradicting U.S. intelligence agencies, declared that bin Salman “knew nothing about it.” The President deprecated Khashoggi as someone “a lot of people didn’t like.” Trump also announced that he intended to sell advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, that he intended to approve export licenses to sell advanced computer chips for artificial intelligence to the kingdom, and that the U.S. had even taken a step toward providing nuclear technology.
More Saudi deals followed. Earlier this month, the Trump Organization said that it was licensing its name to Dar Al Arkan for a new golf club, a luxury hotel, and a number of mansions in Diriyah, near Riyadh. The Trump Organization also sold the use of the President’s name for a Trump Plaza development in Jeddah which will include townhouses, condos, office space, retail stores, a Trump Grill, an artisanal bakery, and a health club (featuring a cigar bar). Ziad El Chaar, the chief executive of Dar Al Arkan’s international arm, DarGlobal, told Reuters that the two Trump projects would have a combined value of ten billion dollars. Extrapolating from the President’s disclosures about similar deals, the Trumps stand to make tens of millions from each of these projects.
Before the 2024 election, Donald, Jr., who has little business experience outside of the family’s real-estate holdings, sat on the board of directors of only one company: Trump Media & Technology Group, where his father was chairman. Since the election, however, about half a dozen other companies have rushed to enlist him as an adviser or director. Some are startups at which his compensation has not been made public, such as BlinkRx, an online pharmaceutical retailer. He is also an adviser to two competing prediction markets, Polymarket and Kalshi. (He has invested in Polymarket, but the company has said that it does not pay him any additional compensation.)
At other companies he has joined, Donald, Jr., already appears to be making millions. GrabAGun, an online weapons retailer, gave him stock that is currently worth nearly a million dollars, if he still holds it. (At the time of my calculations in August, the stock was worth about two million, and he has been under no obligation to disclose any sale.) A penny-stock brokerage called Dominari Securities granted Donald, Jr., and Eric shares with a current market value of more than six million dollars. PublicSquare, an online marketplace often described as “anti-woke,” gave Donald, Jr., shares with a current value of about a hundred and thirty thousand dollars. A company called Mixed Martial Arts Group Limited named him a strategic adviser and paid him options with a current value of about $1.3 million. Unusual Machines, a startup drone manufacturer, named Donald, Jr., to its advisory board shortly after the 2024 Presidential election; factoring in a steep discount on a private placement of shares, the company gave him stock with a total current value of more than five million dollars.
Arthur Schwartz, a spokesman for the President’s son, told me that “the premise that Donald Trump, Jr., would not be financially successful if not for his father’s political success is dumb and does not pass the smell test.” Still, the financial health of several of these ventures—including the prediction markets, the pharmaceutical retailer, the online weapons seller, and the drone manufacturer—will depend, in no small part, on decisions made by the federal government. This past October, for example, Unusual Machines announced that its drone parts were included in a major order from the U.S. Army, and critics have asked whether the family connection to the Commander-in-Chief played a role in the contract. Donald, Jr., and all of the companies he works with have repeatedly said that he does not advise about regulatory matters or lobby his father’s Administration. But he may not need to do so. Allan Evans, the chief executive of Unusual Machines, recently likened Donald, Jr.,’s advisory role to Oprah Winfrey’s former position on the board of Weight Watchers. “What does Oprah need to do? Not a lot,” Evans told Bloomberg News. The Trump name alone, he said, provides “credibility to rise above the noise.”
THE LOSERS
The drone contract made Unusual Machines a rare bright spot for investors who bought what the Trumps have been selling during the President’s first year back in office. Unusual Machine’s stock briefly tripled to eighteen dollars a share in late 2024, on the news of Donald, Jr.,’s affiliation, and then fell back down to below five dollars a share. But after the Army announced its drone order Unusual Machines eventually regained that peak for a short time, vindicating bets on the value of the Trump family connection.
The other five publicly traded companies that made Donald, Jr., an adviser or director have so far disappointed investors. Shares in the parent company of PublicSquare have fallen to about a dollar from a peak of above seven dollars when it signed up Donald, Jr. GrabAGun has tumbled to around three dollars a share from more than thirteen. Dominari Holdings soared from around three dollars a share to eleven dollars last February on news of its affiliation with the Trump brothers. Those shares currently trade for less than four dollars a share. Shares of Mixed Martial Arts Group soared to $1.80 a share when he signed on in September; they now trade for less than half that.
Last July, excitement about Dar Al Arkan’s partnership with the Trumps helped propel shares of the Saudi developer’s stock—which trades in London under the name of its international subsidiary, DarGlobal—to a peak of more than ten dollars a share. But concerns that overbuilding in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf markets may create a glut of luxury hotels and residences have now dragged DarGlobal’s shares back below eight dollars.
The share price of Trump Media & Technology Group has fallen by more than sixty per cent since Trump’s Inauguration. Trump non-fungible tokens, the digital cartoons that were his first dabble in crypto, have fallen in value by eighty per cent, and the $TRUMP meme coin—the kind of crypto he hyped last spring by offering its biggest holders an exclusive dinner and a tour of the White House—has lost about about ninety per cent of its value. World Liberty’s digital tokens, which started trading this past September, have fallen in price by about a third, and shares in American Bitcoin have plummeted in price by about eighty per cent since their début, also in September.
Indeed, for most Trump investors, the year has been brutal. But, if you’re someone who can trade your family name for an interest in a business, you still come out ahead—no matter how it fares. For the President and his family, the money-making shows no sign of slowing.
THE NEW NUMBER: $4.05 billion ♦
