General Discussion

Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine

The U.S. president’s family raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, a Reuters examination found, on top of potentially billions more in unrealized “on paper” gains. Much of that cash has come from foreign sources as Donald Trump's sons have touted their business on an international investor roadshow.

by David Gauthier-Villars, Tom Bergin, Michelle Conlin, Lawrence Delevingne and Tom Wilson
October 28, 2025, Reuters

DUBAI - Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of U.S. President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous father’s run-ins with financiers.
Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

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The jump in the Trumps’ income represents “a massive pivot” for the family business, said Carter Davis, an assistant professor of finance at The Ohio State University who has studied cryptocurrency pricing and who reviewed the Reuters calculations. “Even if you go through and you do the most conservative estimate…it's pretty wild that you end up with such a huge fraction of the income coming from crypto.

‘LEGAL BUT UNETHICAL’

The identities of most buyers of the WLFI tokens are hidden behind opaque “wallet” addresses – the unique identifiers investors use as keys to access and manage their holdings. Among the few major buyers whose identities are known – a mix of foreign and U.S. investors – most have histories of legal and regulatory entanglements related to their business endeavors. And as the Trump brothers’ travels over the past year show, foreign investors have been a major target for token sales.

Reuters interviewed half a dozen foreign crypto entrepreneurs who met with the Trump brothers. Five of them said they sought out the younger Trumps for business opportunities because of their proximity to the 79-year-old president and hopes of cashing in on his political and financial power.

For many other investors, the Trumps' involvement signaled a chance to capitalize on the family’s name. Dorji Rabten’s Seoul-based venture investment firm, Oddiyana Ventures, bought an undisclosed amount of WLFI tokens in January. Rabten said he never met the Trump sons, but the family's involvement was central to his investment. "In the first very moment where we saw the project, we thought it's going to be very huge, obviously, given the fact it's a president's sons taking up that project," Rabten told Reuters in September.

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https://www.reuters.com/investigations/inside-trump-familys-global-crypto-cash-machine-2025-10-28/