Trump Family Amasses $6 Billion Fortune After Crypto Launch
The Trump family notched as much as $6 billion in paper wealth on Monday after its flagship crypto venture opened trading of a new digital currency.
The launch is akin to an initial public offering, in which the cryptocurrency, called WLFI, can now be bought and sold on the open market like a listed company’s shares. Beforehand, people who had privately bought WLFI from the Trump venture, World Liberty Financial, hadn’t been able to exchange their tokens.
The trading debut was most likely the biggest financial success for the president’s family since the inauguration. The Trump family, including President Trump himself, holds just under a quarter of all WLFI tokens in existence. Trump’s three sons are co-founders of World Liberty, while it names the president a “Co-Founder Emeritus.”
World Liberty says founders and team members’ tokens remain “locked,” meaning they still can’t sell them. But the trading launch now puts a real-world valuation on their holdings, which previously were valued based on private sales.
WLFI is likely now the Trumps’ most valuable asset, exceeding their decades-old property portfolio. While the president’s family has continued to pursue property deals around the world since taking office, the fast-moving crypto business has had the biggest early impact.
President Trump helped launch World Liberty a year ago, while campaigning, saying it would help make “America Great Again, this time with crypto.”
World Liberty’s rise this year came as the president drove the growth of the crypto industry from the White House, slashing back regulation and touting the potential of private, digital currencies to invigorate the U.S. economy.
In advance of the WLFI trading debut, World Liberty this summer took over a publicly-listed firm and raised $750 million in cash from investors to buy the cryptocurrency.
That deal, an unusually circular transaction with the same party as buyer and seller, stands to earn the Trumps around $500 million since they keep up to three-quarters of the revenues from the sale of the tokens, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Trading in WLFI exploded on crypto exchanges early Monday, with about $1 billion in the tokens changing hands within an hour, according to data site CoinMarketCap.
On Binance, the most popular exchange, WLFI traded between about 24 cents and 30 cents a token, in line with prices implied by futures contracts tied to the cryptocurrency that traded there last week. At the higher price, the Trumps’ stake is worth more than $6 billion.
Adding in stakes in other crypto businesses makes the Trump family’s overall crypto hoard even larger. Trump-related entities control around 80% of $Trump, a so-called memecoin, worth several billion dollars.
A Trump-owned trust holds just over half of publicly-listed Trump Media, which runs his Truth Social platform and buys and holds cryptocurrencies. That stake is worth around $2.5 billion.
To be sure, cashing in this newly created wealth may prove difficult, as even a small amount of selling of cryptocurrencies can trigger prices to drop.
Monday’s prices of WLFI are a huge premium on the 1.5 cents that investors at first paid last year to buy the token from World Liberty itself, offering them an opportunity to make a big profit. World Liberty said those early buyers would only be able to initially trade a fifth of their holdings.
Cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile, meaning the exact size of the Trump fortune could fluctuate wildly. The $Trump memecoin, launched in January, initially soared, and then collapsed.
Critics of World Liberty say it is a potential vehicle to influence the Trump family, and that its growth owes to partners and investors that are seeking help from the White House. For instance, the market for USD1 has been largely propped up by Binance, whose convicted founder has been seeking a presidential pardon, the Journal previously reported.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”
Zach Witkoff, World Liberty’s chief executive and son of Presidential envoy Steve Witkoff, said last week that it is strictly a private business and doesn’t get involved in politics, though “clearly President Trump is the greatest president of all time.”
World Liberty has said that its cryptocurrency’s long-term value will be supported by its plans to become a serious industry player. The venture issues a dollar-pegged stablecoin called USD1 and plans to roll out a mobile app. “This isn’t some meme coin,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr. just after the launch.
Tad Tobar, chief operating officer at crypto firm Lorenzo Protocol, which has joined with World Liberty, said he plans to buy and hold WLFI, which grants its holders a vote on some of World Liberty’s operations, known as governance rights, though not a claim on its profits.
“Its staying power is real because it’s designed to be the governance token of this new open economy,” said Tobar.
Write to Angus Berwick at angus.berwick@wsj.com