On the morning of January 20, 2025 — hours before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second time — a new cryptocurrency called $TRUMP appeared on the market. By the end of his first year back in office, that single token had generated $635 million in royalties for the president under a licensing agreement, according to a 927-page disclosure released by the US Office of Government Ethics. Combined with nearly $550 million tied to World Liberty Financial (WLF), a crypto startup co-founded by his sons and a business associate of his Middle East envoy, Trump's total cryptocurrency income for the year reached approximately $1.2 billion.

The consequence for his personal fortune has been dramatic. Forbes estimates that his net worth rose from $2.3 billion to $6.5 billion between 2024 and 2026 — a near-tripling that is attributed primarily to his crypto activities.

WLF issued its own token, WLFI, whose initial sale raised $550 million; since the coin became tradable in September 2025, however, its price has collapsed from 46 cents to roughly 6 cents per unit, a fall that illustrates how volatile — and unevenly rewarding — such ventures can be. Critics across the political spectrum have argued that a sharp conflict of interest lies at the heart of these gains. While Trump's administration has moved decisively to deregulate the cryptocurrency sector — a policy that helped push asset prices higher — he and his family have held substantial financial stakes in that same sector. The charge is not merely procedural: it raises the question of whether executive policy has been shaped, at least in part, by private profit.