Donald Trump Promised To Make The Us The World’s Crypto Capital. His Businesses Are Seizing On It.

Donald Trump, the real estate mogul, reality television star and president, has a new title: cryptocurrency tycoon. A growing share of his net worth is now linked to a corner of the financial markets over which his administration holds considerable sway.

Presidents have historically distanced themselves from their businesses while in office. But over the last year, Trump, his family and business partners have challenged that convention, backing a series of crypto startups and deals. Those crypto ventures have boosted Trump’s assets by roughly $1 billion, according to media reports.

The trading of $TRUMP- and $MELANIA-branded cryptocurrency tokens, or “memecoins,” has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the president’s family and its partners. Truth Social-parent company Trump Media & Technology Group, which counts Trump as its largest shareholder, said last year it would begin stockpiling crypto tokens. And a Trump-backed crypto venture called World Liberty Financial has been striking deals around the world, while also expanding its footprint in the U.S.

Now, World Liberty could further blur the line between Trump’s businesses and his role as president. The company applied this month to launch a federally regulated bank in the U.S., which would give it more oversight of customers’ assets. It would also put a Trump-linked business under the direct oversight of one of Trump’s regulators.

“It’s a pretty straightforward smash-and-grab while the president has control over economic and regulatory policy,” said Corey Frayer, who worked on crypto policy at the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden administration. “A bank is a fundamentally different kind of business that really can only function with the explicit approval of the government.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt denied that Trump or his family “have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.” In a statement, she said the “media’s continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest are irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read.”

World Liberty’s application concerns the launch of a national trust bank, which would have direct control over the issuance of the company’s stablecoin, USD1, and the billions of dollars in customer assets that back it. Stablecoins, the main currency of the crypto world, are a type of digital token usually pegged to $1.

World Liberty spokesperson David Wachsman said in a statement the application would subject the company “to more regulation, not less” and “increase transparency and consumer protection.” Trump and his family, he added, have a nonvoting interest in the trust company and won’t control the business’s day-to-day operations. What’s more, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency — the federal regulator reviewing the application — handed five other crypto companies conditional approval for the same charters in December.

But the bid has run into resistance: Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Banking Committee, recently urged Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould to not review the World Liberty application until Trump eliminates “all financial conflicts of interest” between himself, his family and the company. Gould declined to take up Warren’s request.

An entity affiliated with Trump and his family members owns about 38 percent of World Liberty’s holding company, according to the company’s website. Trump is also listed as a “co-founder emeritus” while his sons, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Barron Trump, are co-founders. The proposed bank would be led by Zach Witkoff, another World Liberty co-founder and the son of White House envoy Steve Witkoff. Through a spokesperson, the younger Witkoff declined to comment.

The OCC has said that its review process is “inherently apolitical” and that it “conducts rigorous reviews” of applicants. Currently, assets backing USD1 are safeguarded by another crypto company that is already overseen by the OCC.

“We have a job to do,” Gould said in an interview, while declining to comment on the World Liberty application specifically. “The job involves applying the statutory factors that Congress has given us on a case-by-case basis to the applicants that we receive. If they meet the statutory factors, if they can meet our high supervisory expectations, then we will grant them a charter.”

‘I’m allowed to’

Critics say Trump faces conflicts of interest, but there’s little they can do about them with Congress under GOP control. Ethics experts say there is no evidence the president or his family are breaking the law.

“If we’re being honest with ourselves, a lot of voters priced in the fact that he was going to keep making money while in the White House,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat and leading critic of Trump’s growing crypto ties.

Trump seems unfazed.

“I found out that nobody cared. I’m allowed to,” the president told The New York Times in an interview this month, when asked why he is allowing his family to strike deals in his second term. “I prohibited them from doing business in my first term, and I got absolutely no credit for it.”

Kimberly Benza, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization, called allegations of ethical conflicts “categorically false.” The Trump Organization, Benza said, “operates completely separate” from the White House and follows strict internal ethics standards. It has also appointed an independent outside ethics adviser “to ensure continued transparency, uphold the highest-level standards and avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” she said.

Last year, Trump agreed to step away from the day-to-day operations of his family business and keep his assets in a trust managed by his children while he was president. He did the same during his first term.

Trump's business empire remains heavily invested in the hotels, golf courses and other real estate dealings that he built his name on. Trump Media is also expanding into new areas like nuclear fusion.

But crypto has emerged as its next frontier. Trump’s estimated net worth is now more than $6.5 billion, up from $3.9 billion in 2024, according to Forbes.

Crypto comes into vogue

Trump has aggressively shifted the regulatory landscape around crypto — helping lift the once-besieged industry’s standing in Washington.

His SEC dropped a series of high-profile lawsuits against crypto giants like Coinbase, Binance and Kraken and paused a fraud case against crypto mogul Justin Sun, a major investor in the Trump memecoin. The Justice Department has pulled back on crypto enforcement. Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had previously spent four months in prison over money laundering-related charges, a few months after an Abu Dhabi investment fund used World Liberty’s stablecoin to invest $2 billion in Binance. Lawmakers are considering a sweeping bill outlining how market regulators should oversee the industry, a move long sought by crypto executives. Trump last summer also signed a bill into law bringing stablecoins into the mainstream financial system.

For many crypto executives, the Trump administration’s embrace of the market has been a welcome change after the intense regulatory pressure the industry previously faced. There’s been no sign that Trump has meddled in the oversight of any specific crypto companies, either.

But even some Republicans have voiced unease about the president’s crypto ties. Last year, Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, a staunch crypto ally, told NBC News that a planned dinner for investors in the $TRUMP-branded crypto token was giving her “pause.” Katie Warbinton, a spokesperson for Lummis, did not respond to requests for comment.

Democrats have pushed for conflict-of-interest guardrails around the presidency, hoping to include new restrictions in the pending crypto bill. But they have yet to land a deal on ethics language with Republicans and the White House.

For critics, the best hope for untangling the Trump businesses from policy lies in the midterm elections. Murphy said should Democrats win back the House or Senate later this year, he hopes to see “endless investigations to try to get to the bottom of these corrupt schemes.”

Some in the industry are bracing for that. A crypto industry official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there could be “a shitload of heat” on digital assets under a Democratic-led House or Senate.

Until then, Noah Bookbinder, who recently stepped down as head of the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said: “It’s hard to be confident that anything he does is unaffected by his potential business interests.”

“And that seems like a dangerous place to be,” he added.

Victoria Guida and Aiden Reiter contributed to this report.