Trump's 25-year financial report: Family earns over $1 billion annually from crypto, retail investors still losing money on $TRUMP

Author: Claude, Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Intro: Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure shows that his crypto business brought in about $1.2 billion for the year, surpassing most of the real estate portfolio he built over decades. The money came in through two channels: World Liberty Financial raked in more than $500 million in revenue from new products such as governance tokens, while another company, CIC Digital, pulled in about $635 million in royalties from the meme coin TRUMP. At the same time, TRUMP fell from $74 at its initial listing to $1.68, World Liberty Financial’s token dropped 80% from its opening, and retail investors left holding the bag were widely trapped.

In his first year in office, Trump’s crypto business became his most profitable endeavor.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics released Trump’s 2025 annual financial disclosure report on June 30. The 927-page document shows that the Trump family’s crypto businesses brought in nearly $1.2 billion for the year. For comparison, former President Obama’s final disclosure report during his tenure was only 8 pages, Biden’s was 11 pages, and Vice President Vance’s this year is 17 pages.

When these crypto enterprises took office, they were still just startups; now their revenue has surpassed most of Trump’s real estate holdings accumulated over decades. In its report, the Associated Press directly pointed out that what drove these firms to rise was investment from several billionaire investors, along with a policy shift by Trump himself to halt the federal regulatory crackdown on the crypto industry.

Two Channels of Income: World Liberty Financial Gets $500 Million, and the $TRUMP Meme Coin Gets $635 Million

That $1.2 billion didn’t come from a single pocket. The disclosure document breaks it into two parts.

The first part comes from World Liberty Financial, a DeFi project jointly held by the Trump family and real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, co-founded with the involvement of Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. According to the Associated Press, Trump earned more than $500 million from the sale of new crypto products (including “governance tokens”) by World Liberty Financial. Governance tokens are unlike stocks—buying them doesn’t mean owning company shares. They come with voting rights on certain company matters, and they are difficult to value; before World Liberty Financial sold its tokens, regulators had issued risk warnings. The disclosure document also shows that an additional more than $290 million is classified as income from crypto wallets linked to World Liberty Financial, and a transaction of more than $65 million from the sale of equity in World Liberty Financial’s holding company.

The second part comes from a company called CIC Digital LLC, which booked more than $600 million by selling “meme coins” in the form of commemorative items featuring Trump’s image. This refers to $TRUMP, a meme coin issued on the Solana chain a few days before Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025. In the disclosure document, it is listed under “Celebration Coins,” with an amount of about $635 million, categorized as royalties.

It should be noted that the sum of these two parts—about $1.1 to $1.2 billion—is the figure commonly cited in the market. If the $290 million wallet income and the $65 million equity sale mentioned above are also included, some media outlets’ totals are higher, reaching the $1.4 billion range. The total varies depending on the accounting scope, but the assessment that “crypto brought in more than $1 billion in revenue for the year” is not in dispute.

Trump Profits Handsomely, While the Retail Investors Who Bought In Lose Money

The disclosure document reports revenue, not profit, so it’s impossible to know exactly how much Trump earned in net profit. But the price trends of tokens and meme coins settle another score for the buyers.

After TRUMP listed, it surged to above $74 within days; now it trades at only $1.68. World Liberty Financial’s token has fallen 80% since it began trading in September last year. According to independent data, the vast majority of meme coin buyers have lost money, and about 80% of TRUMP’s token supply is still held by Trump-affiliated entities under a vesting schedule.

One named buyer in that group is Chinese-born billionaire Justin Sun. According to the Associated Press, he spent $75 million on World Liberty Financial’s governance token WLFI and $200 million on the meme coin. A federal lawsuit accusing him of deceiving investors—filed last February—was temporarily paused, and settled last month with a $10 million fine. Sun has consistently denied any connection between his spending on Trump’s business and his federal case, and World Liberty Financial also denies any conflict of interest.

On one side, Trump locks in returns; on the other, retail investors get trapped.

Crypto Has Overtaken Real Estate, Becoming Trump’s Signature Business

Trump entered the White House in the name of his real estate wins; now, the rise of his crypto business has overtaken real estate—something especially worth noticing, because his real estate business also surged last year.

According to the Associated Press, last year Trump collected tens of millions of dollars in fees from a batch of new overseas hotel, resort, and apartment projects— the largest-scale real estate expansion in the history of his century-old family business. In many of these countries, negotiations with the United States are underway on key issues such as tariffs and military assistance. A property in the UAE brought in $10.4 million. In Saudi Arabia, one property (built by a real estate developer closely tied to the ruling family) sent $9 million to Trump’s company. In Romania’s Bucharest and Qatar, each sent $5 million. Domestically, Mar-a-Lago brought in $77 million last year—up 50% from the previous year when he was still a regular private citizen.

Forbes estimates that Trump’s net worth is $6 billion, higher than $2.3 billion in 2024.

White House: Trump Acts Only for the Public Interest, with No Conflict of Interest

In response to questions about conflicts of interest, the White House has repeatedly emphasized that Trump has placed his businesses into a trust managed by his sons, and that there is no conflict—that he acts only in the national interest. Trump’s umbrella company, the Trump Organization, says its overseas transactions were made with private companies rather than governments.

But the Associated Press noted that in countries ruled by authoritarians, monarchies, or single-party regimes, it is difficult to judge what qualifies as “private.” Take, for example, a new Trump resort in Vietnam: the disclosure document shows Trump earned $5 million from it last year, while the New York Times reports that Vietnam’s ruling party sent a deputy prime minister to endorse the deal and also drove farmers off their land to make way for the project.

Whether these deals actually led to changes in U.S. policy is almost impossible to verify, but these countries did receive what they wanted: Vietnam obtained tariff relief, Qatar got advanced American technology that had previously been restricted, and Saudi Arabia secured American fighter jets it had coveted for years.

This regulatory thread is still there. Before World Liberty Financial began selling governance tokens, regulators had warned about the risks of such new crypto assets. After taking office, Trump reversed the Biden administration’s hardline stance toward the crypto industry and adopted industry-friendly policies—loosening regulation with one hand, while the family raked in more than $1 billion from crypto. This disclosure document puts both sides on the same page.

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