Investors in Donald Trump-linked cryptocurrency ventures are at least $4.7 billion underwater. The president himself? He pulled in an estimated $1.4 billion in crypto-related income last year. Those numbers come from a report the watchdog group Public Citizen released Thursday.
The losses cut across four ventures the nonprofit tracked: the TRUMP memecoin, World Liberty Financial’s governance token, Trump Media’s bitcoin treasury, and three NFT trading-card collections. Most of that $4.7 billion is unrealized. Holders watched their assets shrink in value but did not necessarily sell. Public Citizen counted realized losses where trading data allowed.
The TRUMP memecoin produced the largest single hit. It launched in January 2025, three days before inauguration day. About one million of the roughly 1.6 million retail wallets that bought the token on decentralized exchanges ended up underwater by a combined $3.2 billion, Public Citizen found. Only about $400 million of those losses had been locked in through sales. The token hit an all-time high of $73.43 before sliding to roughly $2.73 as of Friday, per The Block’s price data.
Early buyers took the gains. Wallets that purchased during the token’s first two days accounted for nearly 90 percent of profits among retail buyers, Public Citizen said. The group described the losses as “wealth transferred to a small group of early buyers rather than money that simply vanished.”
Trump’s own proceeds tell a different story. His latest financial disclosure showed at least $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income for 2025, Cointelegraph reported. The breakdown, per Public Citizen: more than $600 million from World Liberty Financial token sales and an equity-stake sale, $635 million in TRUMP memecoin licensing fees, $197 million in revenue from capital contributions to World Liberty, and $7.2 million from NFT licensing fees and royalties. Those figures do not count stakes Trump still holds.
Public Citizen noted that Trump’s tokens were allocated to his company rather than purchased. His other meme-coin income came through licensing fees. “Neither required any capital investment from him, meaning his proceeds should be nearly all profit,” the group wrote.
World Liberty Financial accounts for at least another $1 billion in investor losses. AI Financial Corp, a Nasdaq-listed company that acquired 7.28 billion WLFI tokens for about $1.46 billion in August 2025, sat on roughly a $1.04 billion paper loss. Its shares fell 91 percent, from $7.04 to $0.642. Trump Media’s bitcoin treasury held 9,477 bitcoin as of June 30 at a cost of about $1.006 billion. That stash was worth roughly $557 million, a $450 million paper loss. Buyers of three Trump Digital Trading Card collections lost at least $9.3 million combined.
One bright spot: USD1, World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. Public Citizen assigned no investor losses there. The token kept its dollar peg.
The report landed as the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a crypto market-structure bill known as the CLARITY Act, moves toward a cloture vote scheduled for September 15. That vote requires at least 60 senators to advance. Trump met with crypto company executives last week and called for a “fair version” of the legislation to pass once the Senate returns next month. Public Citizen renewed its call for ethics provisions, arguing that “the president’s policy choices and personal portfolio cannot be separated” and that any legislation should require a president and his family to divest from crypto-industry projects.
Cointelegraph said it reached out to the White House for comment and did not receive an immediate response. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly has repeatedly said in response to questions about Trump’s crypto investments that there were “no conflicts of interest.”
