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cryptocurrency
Entities Behind Trump Crypto Coin Made Up to $100 Million in Trading Fees in Under 2 Weeks
"Trump and his cronies get rich while the little guy gets fucked," said one critic.
Feb 03, 2025
Reutersreported Monday that the entities behind U.S. President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency token "generated between $86 million and $100 million in trading fees" from the mid-January launch to the end of the month, sparking a fresh flood of criticism and accusations of grift.
Trump announced the $TRUMP meme coin on the Friday night of the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C., ahead of his Monday inauguration. Its market value swiftly soared that weekend, but has since dropped dramatically. Reuters had Chainalysis, Merkle Science, and a third blockchain analytics firm whose founder requested that it not be identified review the blockchain, a public ledger that shows transactions involving the coin.
Merkle Science estimated that three crypto wallets earned $86 million in trading fees from January 17 to January 30, while Chainalysis put it at about $94 million for the same period. The third firm found that by January 29, it was roughly $100 million.
According to Reuters:
One of the entities behind the crypto coin is a company owned by Trump, called CIC Digital. The official website for $TRUMP says CIC Digital will "receive trading revenue derived from trading activities" of the meme coin. Reuters could not determine what portion of the fees so far, if any, had accrued to Trump personally, nor the ownership of the other entities behind the coin.
The creators of the meme coin receive a share of the trading fees from Meteora, a little-known crypto exchange where the $TRUMP coins were first sold, the blockchain analyses showed.
At least 50 of the largest investors in the coin have made profits in excess of $10 million each on the $Trump coin, according to Chainalysis. At the same time, some 200,000 crypto wallets, most with small holdings, lost money on $Trump on the exchange, it said.
Responding to the reporting on the social media platform Bluesky, an account called Trumpflation Tracker declared that "Trump and his cronies get rich while the little guy gets fucked, same story different year."
Software engineer Jonathan McHugh similarly said, "His entire life is one giant grift, most often of people who can least afford it."
Rodrigo Fernandez, a senior researcher at the Amsterdam-based Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), said that "the conflict of interest if obvious—but he managed to flood the zone to such an extend that this detail will go unnoticed."
The White House did not address Reuters' questions about the trading fees; instead, it sent a fact sheet about Trump's executive order on digital financial technology. The news agency noted that the president "has pledged to put his assets in a trust managed by his children on entering the White House" and his son Eric Trump did respond on behalf of the Trump Organization.
Eric Trump told Reuters that he is proud of what "we continue to accomplish in crypto. $TRUMP is currently the hottest digital meme on Earth." Echoing his previous comments on the coin, the president's son added that "we are just getting started."
Late last month, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich wrote about the $TRUMP coin—as well as the first lady's $MELANIA coin that soon followed—and tied both to the president's related executive order "protecting and promoting" the crypto industry.
"In effect, Trump is writing the rules for a business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars," he stressed. "The real significance of such blatant profiteering off the highest office in the land is what it reveals—not just about Trump but about the entire oligarchic enterprise he fronts for. It is likely to contribute to a vast wave of public alarm and disgust."
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Will Crypto’s Roaring 20s Lead to a Second Great Depression?
Crypto “bros” invested big-time in 2024’s presidential and congressional campaigns and want unrestricted access to the global banking system. What could possibly go wrong?
Jan 28, 2025
Life in the United States has never been better—if your personal fortune stretches well into the thousands of millions.
Our new year has dawned with 813 Americans cavorting in billionaire land. These deep pockets ended 2024, notes an Institute for Policy Studies analysis, with a combined wealth over $6.7 trillion. They averaged over $8.2 billion each.
Need some perspective on that $8.2 billion? The typical American worker, according to the latest U.S. Bureau of Labor stats, would have to work over 136,000 years to earn that much.
Growing linkages between crypto and the more traditional economy have expanded the economic peril.
Billionaires, of course, don’t have to actually do any labor to collect their billions. They just let their money do the heavy lifting.
That money, if invested in enterprises that provide us with useful goods and services, can add real value to an economy. But these days our billionaires and their billions don’t have to produce anything of value to climb up the wealth ladder. They can make big bucks manufacturing—at a heavy environmental cost—a product that has no real-life value whatsoever.
Welcome to the world of cryptocurrency.
Crypto emerged amid the turmoil of the Great Recession, an economic catastrophe that began late in 2007 with the bursting of a housing bubble that U.S. financial institutions had pumped up with subprime mortgages and assorted other exotic financing schemes.
Crypto’s early aficionados, notes the British economist Michael Roberts, claimed that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin would eliminate “the need for financial intermediaries like banks.” Cryptocurrencies existed only electronically, as elaborate computer code that takes huge amounts of energy to “mine.” No government guarantees backed their value, and no crypto champs sought those guarantees.
Within this frame, crypto values spent a dozen years bouncing mostly upward. By mid-2024, the crypto world had turned into a speculative colossus worth some $2.5 trillion. But crypto’s biggest players were doing little celebrating. The industry seemed to be losing its big-time momentum.
Just two years before, a spectacular crypto crash had cost the sector’s founders and investors a combined $116 billion. By the end of 2023, some 20 nations had banned banks from dealing with crypto exchanges, and critics were blasting the crypto industry for pumping ever more fossil fuels into the atmosphere “to solve complex mathematical problems that have no productive purpose.”
Early in 2024, Pew Research polling found the American public exceedingly “skeptical” about cryptocurrency, with almost two-thirds of the nation’s adults having little to no confidence that cryptocurrencies rated as either reliable or safe. Only 19% of Americans who had actually invested in crypto, Pew found, deemed themselves “confident” with the industry’s “reliability and safety.”
Last June, one of the nation’s most influential financial market analysts, Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler, gave cause for even more public unease. In congressional testimony, Gensler described the crypto market as a “Wild West” that has investors putting “hard-earned assets at risk in a highly speculative asset class.”
“Many of those investments,” Gensler added, “have disappeared after a crypto platform or service went under due to fraud or mismanagement, leaving investors in line at bankruptcy court.”
In the battle for public opinion, crypto kings realized, they were losing. Their response? Crypto’s big guns moved to lock down as much political help they could buy. They spent last year flooding millions upon millions of dollars into primary and general election races against lawmakers who had dared to support meaningful moves to regulate crypto’s digital highways and byways.
“It’s time to take our country back,” roared one deep-pocketed crypto mover-and-shaker, Tyler Winklevoss. “It’s time for the crypto army to send a message to Washington. That attacking us is political suicide.”
In no time at all, the Lever’s Freddy Brewster notes, this new crypto offensive had lawmakers in Congress, from both sides of the aisle, signaling their openness to minimizing any serious attempts at crypto regulation. The November elections would go on to generate a substantial crypto-friendly majority in the House and a Senate almost as crypto-committed.
Helping to produce this smashing crypto triumph: over $250 million in campaign contributions from the three top cryptocurrency political action committees.
No one would ultimately jump on the 2024 crypto political bandwagon more dramatically than Donald Trump. Up until then, the former president had been a pronounced crypto skeptic.
“I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, which are not money, and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air,” Trump announced on social media in 2019. “Unregulated Crypto Assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.”
But Trump would eventually come to see the potential in crypto campaign dollars and turn himself into the political world’s most visible crypto booster. In May 2024, Trump became the first major presidential candidate to accept donations in cryptocurrency. In July, he gave a fawning keynote address at one of the crypto world’s premiere annual conferences.
Trump saw something else in crypto as well. The industry, he ever so accurately perceived, could turbocharge his own personal wealth, to levels far outpacing his old-school investments in office towers and classic hotels—and all without engaging in any sort of real risk.
So Trump did that crypto engaging. By Inauguration Day, thanks to the release of his own “red-hot” crypto token, Trump had more than 90% of his personal net worth in crypto assets.
To protect that investment, Trump will undoubtedly put his signature on legislation—first introduced by Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis—designed to force the federal government to buy up a national stockpile of cryptocurrency as a reserve just like the gold in Fort Knox. Getting crypto reserve status, cheers billionaire MicroStrategy executive chair Michael Saylor, would rank as a truly noble 21st-century “Louisiana Purchase.”
But independent analysts see “no discernible logic” to any move in that direction.
“I get why the crypto investor would love it,” observes Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Other than the crypto investor, I don’t see the value, particularly if taxpayers have to ante up.”
Turning crypto into a reserve currency, explain other analysts, would “prop up” cryptocurrency prices. Reserve status, noteWall Street on Parade editors Pam and Russ Martens, would enable crypto billionaires to sell their crypto “without driving down” cryptocurrency prices—because these billionaires would have “a perpetual buyer on the other side of their trade.”
Having the government buy up crypto, as Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research recently toldThe Nation, has “literally no rationale other than to give money to Trump and Musk and their crypto buddies.”
Not surprisingly, conventional financial institutions—outfits ranging from Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to BlackRock and other big asset manager funds—would like to share in that money harvest. They’ve all begun entering the crypto “fray,” points out the economist Ramaa Vasudevan, and institutional investors “are also banging at the door.”
Crypto, adds Vasudevan, is “turning on a spigot of financial fortune-hunting.”
That sort of hunting, historically, has almost always ended in crashes that left average people the hardest hit. In our new crypto age, that could easily happen again.
The various crypto crashes we’ve seen over recent years, as the Lever’s Freddy Brewster noted last month, have “mostly affected” people already invested in cryptocurrencies. But the growing linkages between crypto and the more traditional economy have expanded the economic peril.
“Potential victims of future crashes,” Brewster warns, “could balloon if the nascent industry is allowed to become more entrenched with traditional banks.”
And that entrenching is approaching overdrive.
“Crypto bros are heading into 2025 with great expectations,” notesBloomberg columnist Andy Mukherjee.
These “bros” invested big-time in 2024’s presidential and congressional campaigns. Now they want, Mukherjee adds, “unhindered access to the global banking system.”
What could possibly go wrong?
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Trump’s Crypto Scam Threatens the Economy and His Own Power
For oligarchs, the rise of digital finance provides large moneymaking opportunities. But for the rest of us, it increases the risk of another financial crisis.
Jan 27, 2025
As of Friday, the Trumps’ cryptocurrency meme coins—the $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency coins—had a combined market value of about $6 billion.
Days before taking the oath of office, now-U.S. President Donald Trump announced on his social media platform the creation of the $TRUMP coin, featuring Trump’s image from the July assassination attempt, and said: “Join the Trump Community. This is History in the Making!”
The $MELANIA coin soon followed.
Any wealthy person, corporation, or foreign leader wishing to curry favor with Trump now has a particularly easy means—just buy $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency tokens.
Despite no details about the coin’s value, use, or risks, Trump supporters. gamblers, and those wishing to suck up to Trump bought it—sending the coin’s price into the stratosphere. On paper, the Trump family is now several billion dollars richer.
Trump once denounced crypto, but as the crypto industry poured tens of millions of dollars into 2024 campaigns, he changed his mind. Not only did he see the political power of the crypto industry; he saw an opportunity to make a pile of money.
He then promised to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.”
In September, the Trump family started World Liberty Financial, which they marketed as a platform to facilitate borrowing and lending in digital currencies. (Trump receives a cut of the sales of WLFI, the cryptocurrency associated with the platform.)
Now that he’s taken office, Trump plans to make billions off his presidency by implementing policies that favor crypto.
The Truth About Crypto
Cryptocurrencies serve no useful purpose other than the purchase of other crypto assets, money laundering, extortion, and scams. As economist Paul Krugman has said, their market value rests on nothing but “technobabble and libertarian derp.”
They also use huge amounts of energy.
And if they infiltrate Wall Street, they could destabilize the entire financial system.
The crypto industry has a dubious reputation. Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, was last year sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. Changpeng Zhao, founder of a rival exchange, has spent four months locked up for money-laundering.
But the richest people in America with huge power—the oligarchy, including Trump—support cryptocurrencies. Not only can they make a fortune, but crypto advances their long-term aim of shifting financial controls out of a democratically elected system of government and into their own hands.
Trump II and Crypto
Now that he’s president, Trump is actively promoting crypto—reversing former President Joe Biden’s attempts to prevent the crypto industry from infiltrating Wall Street.
Biden’s tight rules made it prohibitively expensive for banks to hold digital assets on behalf of clients, and stopped them from developing their own crypto products, such as stablecoins (tokens pegged to the dollar or other assets).
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), a watchdog, stopped dozens of such projects on the basis that it did not know how digital assets ought to be treated in regulatory filings.
With Trump, though, banks and the crypto industry are now pushing in the same direction, and face little resistance. New and enormously profitable forms of risk-taking are emerging—for a small group of people able to take such risks and able (like the Trump family) to profit of their own crypto products.
Trump is putting crypto-friendly people into place at key federal agencies, boosting its prospects. In December, he picked Washington lawyer Paul Atkins, a known crypto booster, to chair the Securities and Exchange Commission, America’s main financial regulator.
Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission altered its guidance so that financial institutions no longer have to account, on their own balance-sheets, for crypto assets held on behalf of customers. The SEC rolled back accounting guidance that had deterred banks from getting involved with crypto.
Trump has tapped the venture investor and digital currency enthusiast David Sacks to oversee administration policies on crypto (and artificial intelligence).
Then, this past Thursday, Trump issued an executive order committing the Trump administration to “protecting and promoting” the crypto industry:
The digital asset industry plays a crucial role in innovation and economic development in the United States, as well as our nation’s international leadership. It is therefore the policy of my administration to support the responsible growth and use of digital assets.
The order gives his administration authority to establish a national cryptocurrency stockpile—a stash of digital coins that the crypto industry has spent months lobbying the new administration for because it further legitimizes crypto and adds to the demand for it.
Trump’s order also prohibits the creation of a “central bank digital currency,” overseen by the government. And the order promises “fair and open access to banking services” for crypto (responding to complaints from crypto companies that banks have denied them accounts).
In effect, Trump is writing the rules for a business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars.
If you’re outraged by this, fine. You’re probably outraged by a large number of things Trump has done since January 20.
The Larger Picture
The real significance of such blatant profiteering off the highest office in the land is what it reveals—not just about Trump but about the entire oligarchic enterprise he fronts for. It is likely to contribute to a vast wave of public alarm and disgust.
Just as Elon Musk is demonstrating how huge wealth can create enormous personal political power, Trump is demonstrating how enormous personal political power can create huge wealth.
Musk sank a quartet of a billion dollars into electing Trump, and was rewarded with a key spot as director of the so-called department of government efficiency, or DOGE (Dogecoin, itself a cypto token, has benefited from Musk’s vocal support)—creating vast conflicts of interest over crypto and Musk’s myriad businesses (X, SpaceX, and Tesla, which are regulated by federal agencies and also major government contractors).
As crypto and banking begin to merge, bank deposits will become more vulnerable to movements in the crypto market, and banks more vulnerable to runs.
This dynamic—great power creating huge wealth, and huge wealth creating great power—is central to the oligarchic takeover of America. And both are premised on the corruption of democracy.
Any wealthy person, corporation, or foreign leader wishing to curry favor with Trump now has a particularly easy means—just buy $TRUMP and $MELANIA cryptocurrency tokens.
The corruption will grow worse because neither Trump nor Musk has any sense of limits. Nor do any of the oligarchs surrounding them, such as David Sacks, who Trump picked to oversee his administration’s policies on crypto and artificial intelligence.
Like Musk, Sachs serves as a "special government employee,” which does not require Senate confirmation or full financial disclosure, and allows Sacks to maintain his business interests while influencing policy. Expect more conflicts of interest.
As crypto and banking begin to merge, bank deposits will become more vulnerable to movements in the crypto market, and banks more vulnerable to runs. That’s what happened at Silvergate and Signature, two crypto-focused banks which collapsed in 2023. Both were broken by a tumble in cryptocurrency prices that began in late 2021 and then reverberations from FTX’s collapse.
The biggest beneficiaries of all this are the highest rollers—the oligarchs who have been pushing crypto for years. And now Trump is in on it and stands to personally gain billions, as will those seeking to curry his favor by buying his coin.
The Endgame
The American public doesn’t abide flagrant self-dealing. We don’t want public officials personally profiting by decisions that are supposed to be made in the public’s interest.
You may be thinking: “But Trump has been profiteering for years off his presidency, as have members of his family. And they’ve gotten away with it.”
True, but what’s happening now is much bigger and far more visible. It involves an entire industry (crypto), and conspicuous members of the American oligarchy who are investing in it, including the president and officials around him.
And it’s inherently risky. For oligarchs, the rise of digital finance provides large moneymaking opportunities. But for the rest of us, it increases the risk of another financial crisis.
Unbound greed combined with unconstrained power is an explosive combination. When the blowup comes, it will take Trump, Musk, and the oligarchy with it.
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