Trump Urges Public to Invest in Crypto While Privately Shifting Gains to Traditional Stocks
Official financial disclosures reveal a stark contrast between former U.S. President Donald Trump's public promotion of cryptocurrency investments and his private financial strategy. While Trump and his two adult sons aggressively encouraged retail investors to pour money into various crypto projects, which resulted in significant losses for the public, Trump's personal financial managers quietly redirected substantial profits into safer traditional assets like stocks and bonds.
According to recent filings submitted to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, Trump earned over $1.4 billion last year from family crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial and the Trump meme coin. A Reuters analysis of Trump's assets over the past two years found that his portfolio of traditional financial instruments grew at least fourfold alongside the influx of cash from crypto businesses. By the end of 2025, Trump held between $703 million and $2.6 billion in conventional financial assets, a dramatic increase from $225 million to $608 million at the end of 2024.
Although Trump retained some crypto holdings, nine senior digital asset experts who reviewed the data concluded that his financial behavior indicates a lack of genuine trust in crypto as a primary wealth store. Notably, Trump did not report buying shares in two public crypto companies backed by his sons Eric and Donald Jr., beyond his involvement in the meme coin and World Liberty.
Timothy Massad, former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and current Harvard digital asset policy director, commented that despite Trump's public rhetoric positioning digital assets as the future of finance, his actual strategy was to profit quickly from token sales and then secure gains in traditional stocks and bonds. Meanwhile, retail investors who followed Trump's advice suffered heavy losses, with Reuters reporting approximately $2.3 billion lost across four main Trump family crypto projects as of April.
Trump still holds significant exposure to digital currencies, including 15.75 billion governance tokens from World Liberty Financial valued at over $50 million, subject to long-term vesting schedules. His companies also held at least $160 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum and up to $6 million in other tokens by the end of 2025, a substantial increase from prior holdings.
A Trump family spokesperson stated that the disclosures demonstrate the organization's strong financial resilience backed by valuable global assets and liquidity, but declined to explain why crypto profits were shifted to stocks and bonds. The White House noted Trump's assets are managed independently by third-party financial institutions. World Liberty's spokesperson emphasized the project's long-term belief in digital asset technology shaping financial services' future.
Trump's sons continue to publicly champion crypto investments. Since November 2024, Eric Trump has repeatedly called Bitcoin the "greatest asset" of the modern era and predicted its price could reach $1 million. Despite claiming their father believes strongly in digital assets, Eric and Donald Jr. did not respond to Reuters' requests for comment regarding the new disclosures showing Trump's conservative personal portfolio.
