🚧 Oh Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz? My Friends All Drive Porsches, I Must Make Amends🚦
A 927-page disclosure form, one very generous royalty arrangement, and the quiet dread of doing the math.
So here's a number to consider: $1.4 billion. That's roughly what landed in Donald Trump's pocket from digital-currency ventures in 2025 alone, according to the annual financial disclosure his own ethics office released this week. For comparison, Joe Biden's final disclosure ran eleven pages. Trump's ran 927. I don't know what to do with that information except to state it repeatedly.
The bulk of it traces back to two places. First, the meme token launched three days before his inauguration, spiked to over $74 within a day, and now trades around $1.67 — a fact that should haunt everyone who bought at the top. Trump himself doesn't profit from that price collapse; he profits from royalties on every sale, regardless of whether the buyer wins or loses. That royalty stream alone brought in over $635 million last year, routed through an entity called CIC Digital under something described as Celebration Coins. Nobody seems entirely sure what that name means.
"The tokens offer no ownership stake, just voting power on certain policies, and are difficult to value" — which is, generously, also a way to describe the presidency right now. The second pile of money comes from World Liberty Financial, the family venture where Trump is listed as co-founder emeritus while his sons handle the actual running of things. Token sales and an equity sale there added another $580 million or so. A Chinese billionaire currently facing a federal fraud case put $75 million into governance tokens and $200 million into souvenir coins, then watched his case be paused before settling for a $10 million fine. I am simply describing events in the order they happened.
For the ledger
His disclosed digital-currency holdings, meanwhile, are comparatively modest: a Bitcoin position north of $50 million and a smaller Ethereum stake. The billion-plus figure is income that flowed through, not a stash, sitting in a wallet. His overall net worth climbed from $2.3 billion to $6 billion over the year regardless.
None of this is a secret transaction or a leaked document. It's the official paperwork, filed on schedule, describing income streams that exist because a sitting president also runs businesses that sell tokens bearing his name to the public he governs. The White House maintains there's no conflict of interest here. I maintain that I've blogged about digital currency for over a year now, specifically because I find its hobbyist side charming, and this is not a hobby. This is tons of new money with a royalty structure.
