US President Donald Trump’s family-linked crypto ventures have left investors at least an estimated $4.7 billion underwater while generating about $1.4 billion for the president in 2025, according to Public Citizen.
Summary
- Public Citizen estimated that TRUMP memecoin investors were down a combined $3.2 billion.
- WLFI holders and Trump Media investors accounted for at least $1.45 billion in additional losses.
- Trump reported about $1.4 billion in crypto-related income for 2025.
- The watchdog urged Congress to add presidential divestment rules to the CLARITY Act.
Trump crypto losses reached an estimated $4.7 billion
Public Citizen estimated investor losses across five Trump-linked products, including the Official Trump memecoin, World Liberty Financial’s WLFI governance token, USD1 stablecoin, Trump Digital Trading Cards and Trump Media’s digital-asset treasury.
Most of the total came from TRUMP, which the nonprofit estimated had put buyers $3.2 billion underwater. World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token accounted for at least $1 billion, while Trump Media’s digital-asset treasury produced an estimated $450 million loss for shareholders.
Trump’s NFT trading cards added at least $9.3 million to the calculation. Public Citizen assigned no major loss to USD1 because the World Liberty stablecoin is designed to retain a value of $1 and has not suffered a sustained break from its peg.
The organization said its $4.7 billion estimate included both realized and unrealized losses. Buyers who continue to hold depreciated tokens have not locked in those losses, meaning the final amount could change if prices recover or fall further.
Public Citizen also said TRUMP trading had mainly moved wealth from later buyers to a small group that entered early, rather than causing the entire amount to disappear. Citing an analysis by blockchain intelligence company Nansen, the report said about 1 million retail wallets, or 65% of those studied, were underwater by a combined $3.2 billion.
Only about $400 million of the TRUMP total represented losses realized through sales, according to the analysis. The top 1% of profitable wallets captured roughly $2.7 billion, equal to about 80% of all gains, while wallets that entered during the token’s first two days collected almost 90% of the profits.
TRUMP launched on Jan. 17, 2025, three days before the president returned to the White House. Its price climbed from less than $1 to an all-time high of $73.43 as buyers entered, but later surrendered most of that value.
In July, crypto.news reported Nansen’s findings that nearly 989,000 wallets had accumulated $3.81 billion in realized and paper losses through the end of June. Different wallet filters and measurement dates can produce different totals, which explains why that analysis does not match Public Citizen’s $3.2 billion estimate.
Trump earned hundreds of millions from TRUMP and WLFI
While buyers absorbed losses, Public Citizen calculated that Trump received $635 million in licensing fees linked to the TRUMP memecoin during 2025. CIC Digital LLC, a Trump-owned company, licensed its name and brand to the token venture rather than buying the coins as an ordinary investor.
Two companies linked to the project retained 80% of TRUMP’s one billion-token supply, with the holdings scheduled to enter circulation over three years. According to the watchdog, the businesses also receive revenue from trading activity, allowing them to earn fees even when the token’s market price falls.
World Liberty Financial provided another large source of income. Trump received $527 million from WLFI token sales in 2025 after earning about $30 million from sales during the project’s first three months in 2024, bringing his estimated proceeds from the governance token to $557 million.
An equity transaction added $65.6 million, the organization said. Trump owns 70% of an entity that holds a 38.25% equity interest in World Liberty and receives 75% of WLFI token-sale proceeds after certain deductions, according to company documents, court records, and his financial disclosure.
World Liberty’s public-market buyers have experienced a different result. WLFI reached a record price of $0.3313 on Sept. 1, 2025, but Public Citizen valued it at $0.05744 when preparing its report. Buyers who entered at the peak were therefore down as much as 83%.
AI Financial Corporation, formerly ALT5 Sigma, accounted for most of the estimated WLFI loss. The Nasdaq-listed company acquired 7.28 billion WLFI tokens for about $1.46 billion in August 2025 and valued the position at $421 million by the end of June 2026, leaving it with a paper loss of roughly $1.04 billion.
Among 31,000 likely retail wallets that purchased WLFI through decentralized exchanges on Ethereum, Nansen found that 25,000, or 82%, were underwater as of Aug. 3. Losing wallets were down $54 million, compared with $24 million in gains among profitable wallets.
Centralized exchange activity was not included because the necessary account-level data is not public. Public Citizen therefore described its $1 billion WLFI calculation as a minimum estimate.
Financial disclosure showed $1.4 billion in crypto income
Trump’s June 2026 annual disclosure placed his crypto-related income for 2025 at more than $1 billion, with some calculations putting the amount near $1.4 billion. The earnings came mainly from memecoin licensing, World Liberty token distributions, an equity sale, and revenue tied to USD1.
As the financial disclosure showed, income and current holdings are separate figures. Licensing payments and token-sale proceeds record money received during the reporting period, while holdings describe assets still owned when the filing was prepared.
Trump reported a cold-wallet Bitcoin position worth more than $50 million, a smaller Ethereum holding, and ether staking rewards of about $1.8 million. The disclosure also recorded continuing exposure to WLFI and USD1, though federal ethics forms often place asset values within ranges rather than giving exact balances.
Public Citizen estimated that Trump earned at least $7.2 million from licensing fees and secondary-market royalties tied to four series of digital trading cards. About 175,000 cards were issued, and three of the collections covered by its calculation originally generated $12.3 million in sales but carried an aggregate market value of about $3 million when assessed.
For Trump Media shareholders, the organization estimated a $450 million loss connected to the company’s digital-asset treasury. Public Citizen included the equity exposure because investors bought shares in a publicly traded US company that later placed corporate funds into cryptocurrencies.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has denied that the president’s business interests create an ethics problem. She has said that neither Trump nor his family has engaged in conflicts of interest, while the White House maintains that the president does not participate in the management of his companies.
CLARITY Act faces renewed ethics demands
Following its loss estimate, Public Citizen called for the CLARITY Act to require a sitting president and immediate family members to divest from crypto ventures. The organization argued that federal digital-asset policy and the president’s private financial interests “cannot be separated.”
The bill would establish federal categories for digital assets and divide oversight between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It also contains registration, custody, disclosure, and customer-asset provisions for companies serving US investors.
Ethics restrictions remain one of the disputed parts of the Senate negotiations, alongside decentralized finance rules and rewards paid on stablecoin balances. Democratic lawmakers have pressed for limits on crypto holdings held by elected officials, while the White House has rejected claims that Trump’s ventures affect his policy decisions.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal separately asked the SEC in August to investigate whether the TRUMP token facilitated fraud or improper enrichment after its price fell about 98% from its peak. Their request did not establish that securities fraud occurred, and the agency would need to determine whether federal securities laws apply to the token before pursuing such a case.
Trump met crypto executives and federal regulators at the White House on Aug. 19, where he asked lawmakers to approve a “fair version” of the legislation. Attendees included executives from Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken, Ripple, and other digital-asset companies.
The Senate’s scheduled procedural vote is set for Sept. 15 at 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Sixty senators must support cloture to begin considering the bill, and passage of the procedural motion would still leave amendments, a final Senate vote, and reconciliation with the House-approved text.
