- The self-styled crypto president is regulating the very industry in which he is expanding his businesses.
- The Trump family is invested in a broad swathe of crypto ventures.
- The market value of Trump crypto firms is falling fast.
Donald Trump slaps his name on pretty much anything: cologne that’s a “rallying cry in a bottle,” gold-embossed sneakers, and even porterhouse steaks.
Now, the 47th president and his family have cranked up their ambition, building a crypto empire even as Trump’s administration plans a regulatory and legislative overhaul of the industry.
Political experts say the unprecedented situation raises clear conflict of interest concerns.
There are memecoins, a DeFi app, NFTs, and a newly launched investment business called Truth.Fi, which says it plans to manage crypto in accounts for clients with the help of Charles Schwab, the giant brokerage.
A DL News analysis maps out the entities and people that control the various enterprises and holdings that, taken together, are valued at about $15.6 billion. But in recent days investors have been shedding Trump crypto coins at a rapid clip.
The White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
Memecoins
What better way for a US president to ring in his inauguration than with… a memecoin?
“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!,” he posted two days before he was sworn into the nation’s highest office on January 20.
The market value for TRUMP soared to $15 billion, making it the third-highest-valued memecoin ever, according to CoinGecko.
Since then, the token has lost three-quarters of its market value. His wife, Melania, launched her own memecoin shortly afterward, and it has dropped 87%.
The memecoins triggered blowback from many in crypto who decried the move as “radioactive” and a “cash grab.”
Two companies, CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC, collectively own 80% of Trump’s token, which has a paper value of over $14 billion, according to his memecoin’s website.
Trump wholly owns CIC Digital, according to his 2024 financial disclosure.
CIC Digital jointly owns Fight Fight Fight with another firm called Celebration Cards LLC, which is registered in Wyoming by Andrew Pierce, a corporate paralegal for Wyoming LLC Attorney.
Pierce’s firm specialises in setting up anonymous shell companies and asset protection planning, according to its website. Pierce did not respond to a request for comment.
Because Celebration Cards is set up through a third party, little is known about its ownership or financials.
Several other companies connected to Trump’s businesses, such as his line of sneakers, are also registered in Pierce’s name and are similarly opaque.
The company structure behind Melania’s memecoin is simpler.
It’s issued through Florida-registered MKT World LLC, a firm run by the First Lady, according to Florida’s business registry.
In 2023, MKT World notched between $1 million and $5 million in income, per Trump’s financial disclosures.
World Liberty Financial
In September, Eric Trump and Donald Jr unveiled World Liberty Financial.
The DeFi app is yet to launch, but the brothers plan to issue a stablecoin as well as let users lend and borrow crypto assets.
Sales of WLFI, the project’s governance token, have generated around $385 million.
While Trump and his family don’t directly own World Liberty Financial, they do receive funds from the venture.
The protocol keeps the first $30 million raised through WLFI sales, per the project’s documentation. Anything raised after that goes to three separate entities.
🦅🇺🇸 Big news! @WorldLibertyFi public sale starts Oct. 15th, open to everyone who qualifies through the whitelist. Join us for a Twitter Spaces on Oct. 14th at 8 AM EST to learn more. Stay tuned for updates!
— WLFI (@worldlibertyfi) October 11, 2024
The first, DT Marks DEFI LLC, is owned and controlled by President Trump and members of his family, including Eric, Donald Jr, and Barron.
The second firm is owned by Chase Herro and Zak Folkman, World Liberty Financial’s co-founders.
Herro once called himself the “dirtbag of the internet” in a since-deleted YouTube video. He and Folkman founded the DeFi protocol Dough Finance, which shut down after a $2.1 million hack.
The third entity is a vehicle for Trump ally Steven Witkoff, a real estate investor and developer, and his sons Zach and Alex, who are also co-founders of World Liberty Financial.
NFTs
In 2022, Trump made his first foray into crypto when he released NFTs depicting him as a muscled superhero, a gun-bearing hunter, and other comic book-like images.
The idea came from Bill Zanker, a confidante who co-authored a book with Trump in 2007, who approached the then-presidential candidate on launching his own NFTs, reported Bloomberg News.
His wife Melania also got into the game and launched her own NFTs.
Like with Trump’s memecoin, the Trump-owned firm CIC Digital is behind his NFT trading cards.
CIC Digital licenses Trump’s name to the firm NFT INT LLC, which isn’t owned by Trump himself, according to his website.
NFT INT is registered in Delaware through a firm that obscures a business’ ownership.
Trump has made somewhere between $7.3 and $8.2 million off of his NFT collection, per his 2023 and 2024 financial disclosures.
Melania, meanwhile, has made between $1 to $5 million off of her NFTs, per Trump’s 2023 financial disclosure. His 2024 disclosure did not list Melania’s income from her NFT sales.
Breaking down the value
Calculating the value of the Trump family’s crypto businesses is a moving target — the market is volatile, and memecoins, in particular, routinely make double-digit swings.
Trump or Trump-controlled entities will receive 80% of his memecoin’s total supply. At $17.60 a token and with 1 billion total tokens in existence, that values his memecoin trove at $14.1 billion.
Similarly, Melania controls 65% of her memecoin holdings, according to her project’s documentation. Her stash is worth about $1.1 billion.
Onchain records show World Liberty Financial holds around $385 million in crypto.
The project has used money it brought in from sales of its WLFI token to buy various crypto assets, including Ether, wrapped Bitcoin, and Tron’s TRX token, onchain records show.
And finally, Trump’s NFTs are worth about $14.5 million in total, according to DappRadar.
The above estimates — especially the value of the Trump family’s memecoins — are very loose.
The vast majority of the Trump family’s current crypto wealth comes from Trump’s memecoin. If the 47th president were to cash out large portions of his holdings, the sudden surge in supply would tank the token’s price.
The same applies to Melania’s token. And compared to their hypothetical memecoin riches, the value of the Trumps’ NFT collections is negligible.
Still, Trump’s crypto holdings make him a nominal crypto billionaire. And if that’s a vast overestimate, at least, when it comes to Trump, there’s precedent.
Ben Weiss is a Dubai-based reporter and Tim Craig is a Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent for DL News. Got a tip? Email them at tim@dlnews.com and bweiss@dlnews.com.
