A Democracy Drive Thread
How the family built a multibillion-dollar crypto empire from the White House — a memecoin, a stablecoin, foreign money, mining and treasury companies, and a pardon.
Beginning just before the second inauguration, Trump and his family moved aggressively into cryptocurrency — launching tokens, a stablecoin, and mining and treasury companies — while the administration dismantled the enforcement apparatus that had policed the industry. This thread tracks the ventures and the official actions around them in chronological order, with sources, including the conflicts of interest that ethics experts and lawmakers flagged.
September 15, 2024
Trump and his sons launched World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture, during the 2024 campaign. After the election an Abu Dhabi vehicle tied to the UAE’s national security adviser bought a 49% stake for $500 million — sending roughly $187 million to Trump-controlled entities — and the firm later issued its own dollar-backed stablecoin, USD1.
January 17, 2025
Days before being sworn in, Trump launched the $TRUMP memecoin (his wife followed with $MELANIA). Trump-affiliated entities controlled roughly 80% of the supply and collected trading fees. The token briefly topped a $14 billion market value, then collapsed: more than 760,000 wallets lost about $2 billion while insiders took in over $100 million in fees — ultimately an estimated $320 million.
February 27, 2025
The administration dismantled crypto enforcement. The SEC dropped or paused more than a dozen cases — including suits against Coinbase, Binance and Kraken it had been winning — moving on February 27 to dismiss the Coinbase case; the agency called its prior approach a “misinterpretation” of securities law. In April the Justice Department disbanded its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. Several firms that benefited had donated to Trump’s inauguration.
May 1, 2025
An Abu Dhabi state-backed firm, MGX, said it would use World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin for a $2 billion investment in Binance — effectively a $2 billion deposit into the Trump-linked project. Senators Warren and Merkley demanded records, warning a foreign government was routing billions through a business the president’s family profits from.
May 22, 2025
Trump hosted a private gala dinner at his Virginia golf club for the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP memecoin, with VIP White House tours for the very top buyers. Analyses of the leading wallets indicated many were non-Americans tied to offshore exchanges; the promise of access drove fresh buying of the token his family profits from.
June 14, 2025
Trump’s June financial disclosure reported more than $600 million in income and $1.6 billion in assets, much of it crypto. A House Judiciary staff report later put the family’s crypto holdings as high as $11.6 billion and crypto-sale income above $800 million in the first half of 2025 alone.
July 21, 2025
Trump Media & Technology Group (ticker DJT), the company behind Truth Social in which Trump holds a large stake, disclosed a roughly $2 billion bitcoin-and-crypto treasury plus a $300 million options strategy — making the president’s media company one of the largest corporate crypto holders.
September 3, 2025
American Bitcoin — a mining venture co-founded by Eric Trump and backed by Donald Trump Jr., majority-owned through miner Hut 8 — began trading on the Nasdaq under ticker ABTC after a merger, briefly reaching a roughly $5 billion valuation and moving to raise billions more to buy bitcoin.
October 23, 2025
Trump pardoned Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the Binance founder who had pleaded guilty to a money-laundering charge in 2023. Binance had boosted World Liberty Financial’s USD1 stablecoin — including the $2 billion Emirati deal — and lobbied for the pardon. Asked about it, Trump said he didn’t know who Zhao was.