- Investors in Donald Trump’s crypto products are at least $4.7 billion underwater, according to a Public Citizen analysis of on-chain data, blockchain analytics, and Trump’s own financial filings.
- Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure puts his personal crypto income at $1.4 billion or more, his largest income source of the year.
- The $TRUMP meme coin alone accounts for $3.2 billion of the losses. It is trading at $2.70, down 96.5% from the $73.43 peak it hit two days before his inauguration.
TRUMP is currently trading at $2.54, after reaching a 24-hour high of $2.90. The token recorded a 24-hour low of $2.24 over the same period. That collapse alone accounts for $3.2 billion of the $4.7 billion in investor losses a new Public Citizen report attributes to Trump’s crypto ventures.
The size of the gap
Public Citizen’s estimate spans five products: the TRUMP meme coin, the $WLFI governance token issued by World Liberty Financial, Trump-branded NFT trading cards, the USD1 stablecoin, and the digital-asset treasury Trump Media and Technology Group built up in 2025.
Set against those losses is what Trump earned from the same five products. His own financial disclosure, filed with the Office of Government Ethics on July 1, puts his 2025 crypto income at $1.4 billion or more, mostly from token sales and licensing fees.
| PRODUCT | INVESTOR LOSSES | TRUMP’S 2025 EARNINGS |
|---|---|---|
| $TRUMP meme coin | $3.2B | $635M |
| $WLFI governance token | $1.0B | $557M |
| Trump Media treasury | $450M | Not reported |
| NFT trading cards | $9.3M | $7.2M |
| USD1 stablecoin | $0 | $199.2M |
| Total | $4.7B+ | $1.4B+ |
The two sides of that ledger do not move together. WLFI’s governance token has lost 87% of its value since peaking last September, leaving investors roughly $1 billion underwater while Trump collected an estimated $557 million from it. The USD1 stablecoin is the exception: it is designed to hold a steady $1 value, and Public Citizen’s analysis found no investor losses tied to it at all, even as it generated $199.2 million for Trump.
Timeline
- January 19, 2025: TRUMP token hits its all-time high of $73.43, two days before Trump’s inauguration.
- September 1, 2025: WLFI token hits its own all-time high of $0.46.
- July 1, 2026: Trump’s Office of Government Ethics disclosure reports $1.4 billion or more in 2025 crypto income.
- August 13, 2026: TRUMP token hits a fresh all-time low of $1.37.
- August 27, 2026: Public Citizen publishes its $4.7 billion investor-loss estimate.
- September 15, 2026: Senate cloture vote scheduled on the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act.
A quieter version of a scandal Argentina already had
Argentina offers a preview of what a smaller version of this looks like when it happens all at once. President Javier Milei promoted the LIBRA meme coin last year, it collapsed within days, and prosecutors opened a criminal probe while lawmakers moved toward impeachment proceedings.
Trump’s crypto earnings and investor losses now dwarf what LIBRA produced, but the response so far has been limited to oversight letters from Senate Democrats, not a comparable investigation.
The difference is not that Trump did less. It is that his crypto income arrived spread across five separate products over 19 months instead of one coin crashing in a single week. A governance token losing value slowly reads as ordinary market risk. A stablecoin paying him licensing fees while producing zero investor losses reads as a clean business line.
Neither triggers the kind of singular, headline moment that turned LIBRA into a prosecutable event, even though the dollar totals here are larger. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he does not see an appearance problem in Trump’s crypto earnings, and the White House has said in the past that there are no conflicts of interest. Neither addressed Public Citizen’s specific $4.7 billion figure directly.
Where the money went, product by product
Trump’s NFT trading cards produced the smallest numbers on both sides: at least $9.3 million in investor losses against roughly $7.2 million in earnings for Trump. Trump Media’s treasury is a different kind of exposure. Public Citizen estimates $450 million in losses there, but because that money sits in a public company’s balance sheet rather than a direct token sale, there is no separate personal-earnings figure to compare it against. Any hit to the treasury’s value affects Trump’s own stake in the company rather than showing up as reported income.
That distinction matters for what comes next. The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the market-structure bill the crypto industry has been pushing Congress to pass, faces a Senate cloture vote on September 15. Public Citizen is using this report to push for ethics provisions in that bill specifically because Trump is both a participant in the market it would regulate and, as president, an influence over how strictly it gets written.
Disclaimer: Cryip's content is strictly for educational and informational purposes and does not constitute financial, legal, or investment advice. Cryptocurrency involves significant risk, and readers assume full responsibility for their own financial decisions. Asset references are never endorsements.
To make complex crypto topics accessible to readers at all experience levels, our team uses AI tools strictly to refine language, correct grammar, and simplify terminology. AI is never used to draft facts, source information, or form conclusions. Every article is fact-checked and approved by a human editor before publication. Read our full AI Use & Content Policy.
