In Trump's crypto 'scrip', family always wins
It was January 2025, crypto fever was raging, and Donald Trump was preparing to return to the White House. So when Fatime Elrgdawy's friend told
It was January 2025, crypto fever was raging, and Donald Trump was preparing to return to the White House. So when Fatime Elrgdawy's friend told her about an online message from the United States president-elect hyping the launch of his own crypto coin-"GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW"-she thought: "Oh my God, this is brilliant."The 29-year-old software project engineer in California put $2,000 of her savings into the $TRUMP meme coin. All that remained, she thought, was to sit back and wait for the price to climb.Instead, the price plummeted. At the end of May, her $TRUMP holding was worth less than $120. Meanwhile, the Trump family pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from the token sales after putting little to none of their own money into the project.Also read | Trump just got caught in a perfect storm.
Can he survive it?Four bad bets for invetorsThe $TRUMP meme coin is one of four Trump family crypto projects that have turned into a financial jackpot for the Trumps and a very bad bet for buyers like Elrgdawy. Each of these ventures has followed the same playbook. The Trumps risked little up front. Trump family members-notably, the president's oldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr-hyped the venture. They raked in money as investors piled in. And those buyers lost big when, for various reasons, the prices of their Trump-related crypto assets later tanked.A Reuters examination shows that Trump's family has used this template to generate at least $2.3 billion in profit from investors since he retook the presidency. On the other side of that cash bonanza for America's first family: over a million investors whose net losses totaled $2.3 billion at the end of April, as per a Reuters analysis.The Reuters analysis was based on a review of blockchain records, corporate filings, online disclosures by Trump companies, and public remarks by the Trumps and their projects' executives, as well as interviews with executives.
The findings were reviewed by over a dozen accounting and crypto experts, all of whom found Reuters' estimates and analysis to be reasonable.The four crypto projects include World Liberty Financial, the Trumps' flagship crypto venture. It has brought the family over $1.4 billion from sales of its governance tokens. The tokens, which give holders a vote on some governance matters, have crashed in value.Also read | India's first class action case goes to arbitrationMeme coinThe Trump brothers have also heralded two publicly listed firms, American Bitcoin and AI Financial Corp, known as ALT5 Sigma until April, as convenient ways to gain exposure to crypto tokens through their shares. The companies' stock prices have collapsed. And there's the $TRUMP token, its poor performance typical of meme coins, whose value reflects the popularity of internet trends or celebrities linked to them.White House spokesperson Anna Kelly, in a statement, replied to Reuters' findings: "All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people." Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr did not respond to requests for comment.All but three of the 27 individual investors interviewed for this article said they knew of Donald Trump's history of bankruptcies, unpaid contractors and failed ventures.
The BriefWire