Trump hyped crypto — then parked the profits in stocks and bonds

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US President Donald Trump speaks at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, Tennessee, in July 2024. [AP]

While US President Donald Trump and his two sons have actively encouraged investors to pour money into virtual assets, the president's own wealth managers have been channeling a significant portion of the profits from those crypto ventures into traditional financial assets such as stocks and bonds. The contrast is stark: retail investors who backed the Trump family's virtual asset projects have suffered heavy losses.

According to financial disclosure documents Trump recently filed with the US Office of Government Ethics, Reuters reported Friday, the president earned more than $1.4 billion last year through family crypto ventures including World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin.

As crypto profits flowed in, Trump's stock and bond holdings grew sharply. A Reuters analysis of disclosures over the past two years found his equity and bond portfolio expanded at least fourfold.

As of the end of last year, Trump reported holding between $703 million and $2.6 billion worth of traditional financial instruments, including stocks and bonds. That marks a substantial increase from the $225 million to $608 million he reported at the end of 2024.

Because the disclosures list holdings in ranges rather than exact figures, it is not possible to determine precisely how much of Trump's crypto earnings were reinvested into stocks and bonds.

However, nine digital asset experts who reviewed the Reuters analysis said the filings show that Trump does not rely on virtual assets as the primary store of value for his personal wealth.

Timothy Massad, director of the Digital Assets Policy Project at Harvard Kennedy School and a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under the Barack Obama administration, said the president "talks about digital assets as the frontier of finance and says he wants to make America the crypto capital of the world."

"But the financial disclosures suggest that after making money quickly through the meme coin and World Liberty tokens, he invested those gains in traditional assets like stocks and bonds," Massad said.

Trump also did not report purchasing shares in two publicly listed crypto companies backed by his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., beyond his existing stakes in World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin.

The divergence between the Trump family's returns and those of ordinary investors is striking. Reuters calculated that retail investors in four major crypto ventures backed by Trump had collectively lost $2.3 billion as of April.

US President Donald Trump visits "Pubkey," a cryptocurrency-themed bar in Manhattan, in September 2024. [Getty Images]

Trump has not divested all his crypto holdings. According to the disclosure filings, he still holds a large quantity of digital tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, which he and his sons co-founded, and his overall exposure to virtual assets has expanded.

As of the end of last year, Trump reported holding about 15.75 billion World Liberty governance tokens, worth more than $50 million.

Affiliates managing Trump's stakes in World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin project held at least $160 million worth of bitcoin and ether as of the end of last year, along with up to $6 million in other virtual assets.

That represents a significant increase from the $1 million to $5 million worth of ether Trump reported holding at the end of 2024.

The Trump Organization has said the president's asset management reflects a sound financial strategy. A spokesperson for the Trump family's business said the disclosures "demonstrate that the Trump Organization maintains a strong financial position, underpinned by world-class valuable assets, ample liquidity and a conservative financial structure."

The Trump family has long publicly championed the growth potential of virtual assets. Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, has repeatedly called bitcoin the "greatest asset" of the modern era in media interviews and at conferences since November 2024.

He has predicted that bitcoin, currently priced at around $64,000, will eventually reach $1 million. Last year, President Trump himself also said he has "great confidence in digital assets."

mokiya@heraldcorp.com