Trump Made $1B on Crypto Deals While His Fans Lost a Fortune
President Donald Trump generated approximately $1 billion through cryptocurrency-related business ventures, including memecoins and NFT collections, while many of his retail investors—predominantly supporters—suffered significant financial losses after the value of those assets plummeted.
Background
- Donald Trump has publicly embraced cryptocurrency, launching his own NFTs and a crypto platform called World Liberty Financial. This article reports that these ventures generated roughly $1 billion for Trump and his family, primarily through token sales and licensing fees.
- The "fans" in the headline are retail investors — many of them Trump supporters — who bought into these crypto projects. The article claims that after an initial spike, the value of these tokens collapsed, leaving ordinary investors with heavy losses while Trump and his circle cashed out.
- This fits into a bigger story: Trump's shift from calling crypto a "scam" in 2019 to positioning himself as the "crypto president" in his 2024 campaign. The article is from the Wall Street Journal, a major U.S. financial newspaper with a center-right editorial stance, not a partisan or activist outlet.