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On the campaign trail last year, then-candidate Donald Trump promised the crypto industry that he would become the first president to embrace blockchain technology. At the time, he didn’t reveal that he also planned to make crypto a cornerstone of his growing business empire.
On Friday, the White House released Trump’s first financial disclosure report as president, revealing new details on his web of business venturesincluding his golf courses, sponsorship deals, and publicly traded media group. Notably, the report also provided a window into Trump’s crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which his sons announced last summer.
According to the disclosures, Trump has earned over $57 million from token sales on the platform and holds nearly 16 billion of the governance tokens—the crypto version of voting shares—launched by World Liberty. Based on earlier sales of those tokens to accredited investors, which valued them between 1.5 and five cents, Trump’s holdings could be worth nearly $1 billion, though the token is not currently trading. Bloomberg recently estimated his total net worth at around $5.4 billion.
As government watchdogs argue that Trump’s ventures in the crypto industry represent a conflict of interest with Congress debating blockchain regulation, the new report provides the first substantial look at the president’s increasing entanglement with digital assets.
The first crypto president
Before his third run for president, Trump had expressed skepticism of crypto, describing Bitcoin as a “scam” just a few years ago. But he increasingly embraced the blockchain industry on the campaign trail last year as companies such as Coinbase and Ripple poured tens of millions of dollars into donations—a reaction to the Biden administration’s crackdown on the sector.
Trump not only touted the technology at industry events, including a Bitcoin conference last summer, but also began to explore his own ventures in the space. Trump had previously launched a series of NFTs, but the newer projects represented a full-blown move into the crypto business, primarily through the vehicle of World Liberty Financial.
The platform, first announced by his son Eric last August, promised a “new era of finance,” though its exact function is still unknown. In the ensuing months, World Liberty has launched a series of products. That has included the governance token, as well as a dollar-pegged stablecoin called USD1, which an Emirati investment firm used to invest $2 billion into the leading crypto exchange Binance in May.
While the exact ownership structure of World Liberty, as well as Trump’s potential profit from token sales, remained largely opaque, the financial disclosure report offers the first details on the president’s profit, including the $57 million earned off token sales. World Liberty offered WLFI to accredited investors, including the Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who had previously faced charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission that were dropped after Trump took office.
The report does not include details on Trump’s other major crypto project—his memecoin, also called Trump, which he launched the weekend before his inauguration. While Trump’s memecoin has plummeted in value since its release, dropping from a market capitalization of $9 billion in January to around $2 billion today, it has remained a source of potential profit—and controversy—for Trump, whose organization likely owns around 80% of the total supply. Trump hosted a dinner for the top holders of the memecoin in May, drawing criticism from lawmakers across the aisle and even industry lobbyists.
Trump continues to advance crypto industry priorities, including legislation in Congress that would establish regulation for stablecoins and token issuance. But even as real estate dominates his holdings, Friday’s financial disclosure report demonstrates the increasing importance of crypto to his business empire.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
