Investors at Least $4.7 Billion Underwater Across Trump Crypto Ventures, Public Citizen Says
A Public Citizen report quantifies investor losses across Trump-linked crypto projects at $4.7 billion while Trump’s disclosed crypto income reached $1.4 billion, sharpening conflict-of-interest scrutiny.
Investors in five Trump-linked crypto products are sitting on at least $4.7 billion in losses. That figure comes from a report published Thursday by watchdog group Public Citizen, which puts President Donald Trump’s own cryptocurrency-related income for 2025 at roughly $1.4 billion.
Most of the damage is on paper. The assets dropped in value but were not necessarily sold. The report does include realized losses where trading data made that possible. It covers the TRUMP memecoin, World Liberty Financial’s WLFI token, Trump Media’s bitcoin treasury, Trump Digital Trading Cards, and the USD1 stablecoin. Holders of USD1 took no hit: the token has kept its dollar peg, the report said.
The biggest loss center is the TRUMP memecoin. It launched in January 2025, three days before Trump took office. About one million of the 1.6 million retail wallets that bought it on decentralized exchanges ended up underwater by a combined $3.2 billion, the report found. Only roughly $400 million of that was locked in through sales. The token hit an all-time high of $73.43 in January 2025. As of Friday it was trading around $2.73, according to The Block’s price page.
The early buyers walked away with the money. Wallets active in the first two days captured nearly 90% of all gains among retail holders, the report said.
World Liberty Financial accounts for at least $1 billion more. That number includes an approximately $1.04 billion paper loss at Nasdaq-listed AI Financial Corp., which picked up 7.28 billion WLFI tokens for about $1.46 billion in August 2025. AI Financial Corp. shares have since dropped 91%, falling from $7.04 to $0.642, the report found.
Then there is Trump Media’s bitcoin treasury. It adds roughly $450 million in paper losses. The company held 9,477 bitcoin as of June 30. Those coins cost about $1.006 billion and were worth roughly $557 million at the report’s valuation. Buyers of three Trump Digital Trading Card collections lost at least $9.3 million combined.
Trump’s own ledger looks different. He reported at least $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income for 2025 in his latest financial disclosure. His TRUMP tokens went to his company rather than being bought on the open market, and his other memecoin income came through licensing fees, the report said. “Neither required any capital investment from him, meaning his proceeds should be nearly all profit,” Public Citizen wrote.
Put another way: the president’s crypto ventures produced personal income for Trump while most of the risk landed on retail buyers who purchased tokens at market price.
The report puts conflict-of-interest questions back in the spotlight as Trump-linked crypto projects keep expanding under an administration that has pushed crypto-friendly regulation. Neither The Block nor Cointelegraph reported a response from the White House or the Trump Organization.
Neither outlet disclosed the full methodology behind the loss calculations. Public Citizen’s report, the third such analysis the group has published on Trump’s crypto ties, is dated August 28, 2026.
