Behind Trump's crypto empire: a triple game between regulation, morality and financial risks

Original title: Trump 's newest grift: Building a cryptocurrency empire while destroying its regulators

Original author: Molly White

Compiled by: Daisy, ChainCatcher

Against the backdrop of Trump's return to power, the cryptocurrency industry is experiencing unprecedented regulatory loosening. Taking this as an opportunity, the Trump family quickly deployed related industries and created a crypto empire with a market value of billions of dollars, covering platform construction, token issuance, infrastructure control and even market manipulation, with power and capital closely intertwined.

This process not only brings huge profits, but also causes serious conflicts of interest and questioning of abuse of power. From platform holdings to policy interventions, from meme coin speculation to potential insider trading, the Trump family is transforming the national regulatory system into a tool for their own profits.

This article will sort out the operational path of family crypto business, reveal how it profits from the regulatory vacuum, and explore the institutional risks caused by this "crypto empire expansion."

**Fund owners are transfusions, and the rules are loose: How crypto

capital can quickly open up the political and business channels**

After Trump returned to power, he quickly received at least $20 million in political donations from funders in the crypto industry. Among them, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz each invested $5 million, and giants such as Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, and Circle also provided millions of dollars in support.

These funders immediately received policy returns: at least eight SEC enforcement cases against crypto companies were revoked or suspended. Many companies have also been included in the new regulations and have taken the opportunity to tailor market rules for themselves in an environment where supervision is lacking, low compliance requirements and weak consumer protection.

The loosening of policies not only allowed donor companies to make substantial profits, but also cleared institutional obstacles for the Trump family's crypto expansion and laid the prerequisites for the entire set of business operations.

Source: Follow the Crypto

World Liberty Financial: The core asset of Trump 's crypto empire

In August 2024, Trump and his partners founded the crypto company World Liberty Financial. Steven Witkov, the father of the project co-founder, is a long-time ally of Trump. He is currently a special representative for the Middle East. He was recently appointed as his private envoy to visit Putin and is also a key figure in the connection with the project.

Although the platform's promotion to positioning almost revolves around Trump himself, the official website also listed his son as "DeFi Visionary" and "Web3 Ambassador" and promised 75% of the agreement's proceeds to belong to it, the family still tried to create a "stay distance" attitude in the early stage. Until Trump took office again, he officially held 60% of the shares and became the actual controller.

Source: World Liberty Financial Home Page

Although no trading platform has been launched yet, World Liberty has raised up to $550 million, and Trump personally expects to make a profit of nearly $400 million by share. The company claims to build a "financial democratization" platform and issue a stablecoin USD1, which is in a strong contrast to Trump's previous position of calling stablecoins "a government-controlled financial instrument."

It is worth noting that $75 million in the project comes from Justin Sun, a foreign crypto entrepreneur investigated by the SEC and the Justice Department for suspected fraud, who cannot donate directly to Trump. Sun was subsequently appointed as a World Liberty advisor, and after Trump took office, the SEC's lawsuit against him was put on hold.

The $WLFI issued by World Liberty is defined as a "governance token", which should theoretically give holders the right to vote, but the platform team unilaterally promotes major matters including issuing stablecoins without any votes. The token also has several regulatory evasion clauses, which are only available for purchases by non-U.S. citizens or "qualified investors" and are currently untradeable. Some investors bet that once SEC regulation is further weakened, relevant restrictions will be lifted and tokens may enter the secondary market to bring returns.

At the same time, the project has also been widely questioned for suspected insider trading. Media disclosed that World Liberty had acquired Movement Labs' tokens for about $2 million, which coincided with the latter being rumored to be negotiating blockchain cooperation with the "Ministry of Government Efficiency" led by Musk. Although both sides denied it, the market responded fiercely.

On April 8, 2025, a memorandum issued by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche showed that the Justice Department officially dissolved the cryptocurrency investigation team and terminated all relevant law enforcement actions in accordance with an executive order signed by Trump. The move almost cuts off the path of a federal investigation into Trump's family's crypto business.

The release date of USD1 has also attracted attention: On March 25, World Liberty announced that it would issue the stablecoin. Just ten days later, the SEC stated that "specific type" stablecoins are not within its regulatory scope and companies can issue them without registration. At the same time, Congress is pushing relevant legislation by pro-Trump factions to relax regulatory restrictions on stablecoins. Behind this is the crypto industry's more than $130 million in lobbying funds invested in the last election cycle.

In addition, World Liberty is negotiating with Binance to launch USD1 on its platform. Once reached, the project will be connected to the user system of the world's largest crypto exchange, with huge potential for profits. At this time, Binance is negotiating with the US Treasury Department on compliance matters, trying to lift the regulatory agreement previously established for anti-money laundering violations, which originated from a judicial settlement reached after paying a fine of more than $4 billion.

Truth Social and Truth.Fi: Social Platforms Turn to Crypto Investment

Trump's Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), the parent company of Truth Social, has also begun to enter the crypto field in recent years. The company has been listed on the open market with a valuation of about $2 billion, and Trump holds about 53% of the shares. Recently, TMTG also applied for permission to allow the trust fund controlled by Donald Trump Jr. to sell its shares.

In January 2024, TMTG announced that it would enter the financial technology field with "Truth.Fi" as its brand and launch the so-called "America First" investment products. On March 24, the company announced a partnership with Singapore exchange Crypto.com. It is worth noting that the platform was previously under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and received a "Wells notice" in August of the same year, indicating that it will face law enforcement actions. However, just three days later, Crypto.com announced that the SEC had terminated its investigation.

Meanwhile, TMTG said it will use up to $250 million in cash reserves to invest in crypto assets such as Bitcoin. Through this move, the company - Trump himself - is expected to make direct profits from it by relying on his own words and deeds to drive the market up. Including his proposal to establish strategic Bitcoin reserves and promote government funds to purchase Bitcoin, policies such as government funds may have substantial impact on the market.

**Blockchain game planning and regulation loosening: From "monopoly" to

realistic arbitrage**

According to Fortune magazine, Trump is preparing to launch a blockchain real estate-themed game with a gameplay similar to "monopoly", but it is built on the cryptocurrency system and focuses on "play-to-Earn", attracting players to obtain actual profits through the game.

Such games have been criticized repeatedly in the past, and the problems are concentrated on economic structural imbalances and moral hazards. Rich players can "win with krypton gold", while those with poor economic conditions are even difficult to enter. The system relies heavily on new players to maintain the value of tokens, and once the growth rate slows down, it will be at risk of collapse.

Axie Infinity, which became popular in 2021, triggered the "digital sharecropper" model: the rich rent game assets to players in low-income countries, promising them to earn higher incomes than local wages through the game. This type of gameplay eventually caused widespread ethical controversy, involving minors participating in gambling mechanisms and players losing all their money after investing real money. In March 2022, the game was also attacked by North Korean hackers, with a loss of about US$625 million, and the token price has not recovered so far.

In recent years, U.S. regulators have begun to strengthen scrutiny of such projects. In suing Coinbase and Binance, the SEC accused it of unregistered securities online, including game tokens such as Axie Infinity’s $AXS, The Sandbox’s $SAND, and Decentraland’s $MANA. At the same time, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) also pays attention to exploitation in the monetization process of game coins, especially involving underage players.

However, these regulatory hurdles are being quickly removed after Trump returns to power. He promoted the relaxation of restrictions on crypto companies, including key links such as cancellation of registration, compliance, accountability and gambling mechanism supervision. The SEC recently "accelerated" the withdrawal of several enforcement actions against Binance, Coinbase and related game tokens, and announced that most crypto assets will no longer be covered by their regulatory scope, and invited industry executives to participate in the formulation of new regulations.

The Trump administration has also promoted a complete closure of CFPB, and the proposal has received public support from senior crypto-owned enterprises. Congress is also cooperating with the action. The House and the Senate have passed the abolition of the CFPB regulatory rules for crypto games, which were originally intended to strengthen protection for underage users and investors of non-game crypto assets.

The abolition case shows a clear partisan division: Democrats and non-partisan lawmakers are unanimously opposed, and all the rest of the Republican lawmakers support it except for one symbolic opposition. Currently, the bill is awaiting signing of Trump. Once written, it will not only completely end the regulatory barriers to related behaviors, but will also bring direct benefits to himself and the crypto projects involved.

**Trump 's family enters Bitcoin mining, and the doubts about transfer of

interests arise again**

At the end of March 2025, Trump's two sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., announced their investment in Bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin, and Eric became chief strategy officer.

The company was set up by mining company Hut8, which transferred "almost all" of mining equipment to a new company, sparking industry doubts. VanEck analyst Matthew Sigel commented: "I really can't understand why they exchanged only the remaining 80% of the shares of the previous 100% holding subsidiary for the price of 61,000 mining machines." Many observers believe that this is more like a "political stock exchange" - Hut8 gave up 20% of the equity to the Trump family in exchange for policy convenience and potential returns.

Eric Trump said the company plans to go public in the future and will cooperate with World Liberty Financial. He also revealed that he would retain some of the mined Bitcoin, betting that Trump once again pushed the price of Bitcoin to rise, and obtained asset appreciation gains from it.

**The Trump family cashes out hundreds of millions of dollars in meme

coins**

Just before Trump took office as president again, he launched a meme coin called $TRUMP, which even shocked some crypto supporters. Some industry insiders bluntly stated that their behavior was "naked to make money" and criticized it for being "extremely absurd and refreshing the new lower limit of stupidity."

Soon after, the family launched the $MELANIA meme coin, further causing controversy. The Financial Times estimates that as of early March, the Trump team had cashed out at least $350 million through these two tokens. On April 15, the wallet address controlled by Trump was once again suspected of cashing out $4.6 million.

Meanwhile, the $MELANIA team was suspected of selling about $4.5 million tokens from late March to early April. On April 7, on-chain analysis platform Bubblemaps disclosed that project insiders transferred about US$30 million worth of tokens from wallets marked as "community distribution" and sold them on a large scale. What is more noteworthy is that the team has been previously accused of manipulating $LIBRA tokens related to Argentine President Mile, as well as multiple insider trading of Solana-based meme coins.

During the initial allocation of $TRUMP tokens, Trump and his affiliates have up to 80% control, and a three-year linear unlocking mechanism is provided. The first round of unlocking is about to start, and Trump can sell up to 40 million tokens, valued at the current price of about $310 million. Meanwhile, a large number of early investors have suffered heavy losses, with the currency price falling from its peak of $75 to less than $5.

Despite these trading practices suspected of market manipulation or insider trading, regulation is almost absent. On February 27, the SEC made it clear that meme coins were not within its regulatory scope. Conventionally, such potential criminal acts should be intervened by the Ministry of Justice, but the department has been directed to give priority to areas such as “immigration and government procurement fraud”, while the crypto market has been put on hold.

In other words, the Trump family is using regulatory vacuum to exchange low risks for high returns in the meme currency market.

**NFT operation moves: from purchasing "unpopular works" to selling

"suspect cards"**

In addition to cryptocurrencies and meme coins, the Trump family is also actively involved in the NFT (non-fungible token) market. Back in December 2021, Melania Trump launched his first NFT series, but the market responded indifferently. The work with a starting price of about $250,000 was not auctioned, and it was eventually suspected that she had purchased it for about $170,000.

In July 2023, she launched her second series, which once again caused controversy. The project used NASA images, suspected of violating its prohibited commercial use regulations. The series also sold poorly, with only 55 pieces sold in a week and sales of less than $5,000.

By contrast, Trump himself has more business returns on the NFT program. He launched the first batch of "digital trading cards" in December 2022, intending to downplay the "NFT" label. This set of cards creates an ideal image through illustrations - muscular, young and handsome, wearing superman or jeans, with an exaggerated style and detached from reality.

One of Trump's "digital transaction cards" (from OpenSea)

The subsequent series goes a step further, directly focusing on Trump's suspect registration photos, and setting up an "upgrade reward" mechanism for buyers, including fragments of the suits worn by the registration photos, and even the opportunity to have dinner with him during his New York criminal trial.

**Coin holding is unknown, words and deeds are linked: Trump 's family's

crypto assets hold has attracted attention**

Although the Trump family's crypto assets holdings are still not transparent, public financial returns and on-chain records provide some clues. In August 2024, Trump's declaration of holding Ethereum (ETH) worth between $1 million and $5 million is basically consistent with the balance of about $2.28 million in his wallet at that time. Since December of that year, the wallet has begun to sell ETH on a large scale and has now sold most of its holdings.

The holding of currency of other members of the family has not been disclosed, but it obviously has the opportunity to make direct profits from market volatility under the influence of policies. Some people even take the initiative to "influence the market". For example, Eric Trump posted in February this year saying: "Now is a good time to increase his holdings of $ETH, remember to thank me in the future." Almost at the same time, World Liberty Financial, led by the Trump family, transferred large amounts to ETH to Coinbase, triggering doubts from the outside world about the behavior of "shouting orders and cooperating".

What is even more worrying is that there may be insider trading risks in Trump’s cronies. They are aware of Trump's style of conduct and may also have non-public information. Trump's many sudden policy decisions have had a severe impact on the market.

A recent example is particularly typical: after Trump announced the "Liberation Day" tariff policy, which caused the stock market to plummet, there were signs that some people familiar with the matter bought at a low level and left the market after the policy suspension was released. Similar operations may also happen in the crypto market. The prices of assets such as Bitcoin fluctuate violently. If you grasp the policy trend in advance, it is very easy to make significant profits through information gaps.

**The ultimate form of power monetization: from regulatory disintegration

to systemic risk**

The Trump family's conflict of interest in the cryptocurrency field has long exceeded the "salary clause" dispute during their first term. By laying out multiple projects, Trump has built a complete set of power profit-making paths: profit directly from tokens and enterprises, promote regulatory policies that are conducive to his own investment, involve in suspected insider trading, and provide external forces with channels for "investment" to exchange for political influence - if converted into campaign donations, these behaviors will constitute illegal.

At the same time, the regulatory system is being systematically demolished. Trump continues to weaken the constraints on the crypto market, exposing ordinary investors to fraud and manipulation risks, while he and his funders are almost unsubstantively scrutinized.

Despite the increasingly obvious signs of abuse of power, the current checks and balances mechanism is still in vain. Although some Democratic lawmakers have sent letters to the SEC inspector general, senior Justice Department officials and several state attorneys generals, calling for an investigation into the conflict of interest between Trump and his team, no substantial progress has been made public so far.

What is even more vigilant is that the continued collapse of regulation is causing the president's personal financial interests to overlap with national policy powers, and the crypto market has gradually become arbitrage: high-risk lending projects are disguised as "financial democratization", fraudulent behaviors are packaged as technological innovation, and meme coins have evolved into tools to "pull up shipments".

In this process, ordinary investors are marginalized and have no way to protect their rights. And the risk of this deregulation experiment is spreading to the traditional financial system. With bank exposure expanding and pensions and retirement funds involved, the entire society is quietly bearing the systemic costs that may be profitable by a very small number of people but will be paid by the whole people. Once the bubble bursts, it will be the victims not only the speculators, but also the ordinary people who have never participated.