the edit, vol. 40

the president's $2.2 billion year

On July 1, the President of the United States filed his annual financial disclosure, which was 927 pages long. Barack Obama's final disclosure was 8 pages, Joe Biden's was 11, and JD Vance's, for the same year, was 17.

The document revealed that Donald Trump made at least $2.2 billion from his personal business ventures in 2025 — his first year back in office. Approximately $1.4 billion of that came from cryptocurrency. The single largest source was his memecoin, $TRUMP, which generated $636 million for the president through royalties collected every time anyone bought, sold, or traded the token.

On the same day, a report by cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen was published showing that 988,905 people who bought that same token had lost money — a combined $3.81 billion in losses, representing roughly two out of every three $TRUMP buyers. The token, which launched three days before Trump's inauguration at under $1, briefly reached $75.35. It now trades at approximately $1.76 — down 97 percent from its peak.

The president made $636 million, while nearly a million of his supporters lost $3.81 billion. The disclosure and the Nansen report were released on July 4 — America's 250th birthday.

how the model worked

The structure of the $TRUMP memecoin is worth understanding, because it explains how the president could profit whether the coin's price rose or fell, and why the outcome for retail buyers was, in retrospect, almost predetermined.

Trump did not own $TRUMP in the way a shareholder owns stock. His entity, CIC Digital LLC, held a licensing agreement with a company called "Celebration Coins" — an arrangement that generated royalties from trading activity. Every transaction, buy or sell, generated fees that flowed back to Trump's entity. This meant Trump's income from the memecoin was tied to volume, not price. The more people traded, and the more actively Trump promoted trading — which he did, repeatedly, on Truth Social — the more money he made.

The Nansen analysis makes the distribution of gains precise: of the 1.48 million wallets that purchased $TRUMP, the 492,285 wallets in profit collectively made approximately $4 billion. Those gains were almost entirely concentrated among buyers who entered in the token's first hours, when it traded under $1 per coin, before the retail frenzy drove the price to its peak. "This reflects a small number of early buyers capturing enormous gains while the broad retail majority absorbed the losses," Nansen's report stated.

The SEC, which would normally have jurisdiction over whether such a financial instrument constituted an unregistered security, announced in February 2025 — weeks after the memecoin launched that it would no longer scrutinize memecoin transactions. The agency had, under Trump, already dropped enforcement cases against Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, and Robinhood's crypto arm — all of which listed $TRUMP on their exchanges and promoted trading of the token. The New York Times found that the SEC had eased up on more than 60 percent of crypto enforcement cases that were ongoing when Trump returned to office.

The legal disclaimer on the $TRUMP token's official website stated that the tokens were "merely an expression of support" and "not intended as an investment opportunity." NYU law professor Stephen Gillers noted that this may not provide permanent protection. "Trump, back when he was a real estate developer, boasted that he plays 'to people's fantasies,'" Gillers told the Times. "Here, he seems to have encouraged supporters to invest with the expectation they could anticipate riches — even as he himself was cashing out."

the rest of the $2.2 billion

The memecoin was the most visible element of the disclosure, but not the only one that raised structural questions about the relationship between the presidency and private financial interest.

World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Trump's sons and the sons of special envoy Steve Witkoff, generated $799 million for the Trump family in 2025 — including hundreds of millions from the United Arab Emirates, which secretly moved in early 2025 to buy nearly half the company. The UAE is a country with significant diplomatic interests in U.S. policy in the Middle East, and its government's stake in a company co-founded by the sons of both the president and his lead Middle East envoy is not, to put it diplomatically, a minor conflict of interest.

Trump's golf courses and resorts generated more than $500 million in revenue — a 15 percent increase over 2024. Mar-a-Lago alone brought in $77 million, up from $50 million the year before. In April, Trump hosted the winners of his second annual memecoin contest at Mar-a-Lago — an event in which people who had purchased large quantities of his crypto token were rewarded with access to the president at his private club, blending the political and the commercial in ways that would have been considered extraordinary in any prior administration.

Trump also reported $52 million from licensing the Trump name to overseas property developers, particularly in the Middle East. He reported $80 million from legal settlements with media companies. He received gifts including ten tickets to the World Cup final from FIFA President Gianni Infantino, valued at $15,000.

When asked about his earnings, Trump told reporters: "You know why I'm profiting? Because the stock market's going up. Everybody's profiting." The White House spokesperson added: "President Trump proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world. All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people."

the conflict of interest

The numbers in the disclosure tell one story. The policy decisions that surrounded them tell another.

The Trump administration's approach to cryptocurrency regulation has been, in a word, permissive. The SEC dropped enforcement actions against the exchanges that listed and promoted $TRUMP. The administration created a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a crypto working group. It backed legislation making it easier for cryptocurrency firms to operate. It appointed crypto-friendly regulators across the relevant agencies. The president, meanwhile, was personally earning $1.4 billion from crypto ventures — in the same year those policy decisions were being made.

The question of whether these decisions were made because Trump genuinely believes in crypto deregulation, or because he was personally profiting from the environment that deregulation created, cannot be answered from a financial disclosure alone. What the disclosure establishes is the simultaneity: the president was making crypto policy and making crypto money in the same year, using the same office.

This extends beyond crypto. The UAE's investment in World Liberty Financial occurred while U.S.-UAE diplomatic relations were active and while U.S. policy toward the Gulf region was being formed. Trump's real estate licensing income from Middle Eastern developers occurred while the administration was brokering deals in the same region. The president's golf resorts generated $500 million in a year when foreign governments and domestic interests had strong incentives to book stays, hold events, and otherwise direct spending toward properties that would financially benefit the person setting their policy environment.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has proposed legislation banning elected officials and their spouses from issuing or promoting crypto tokens. The bill has not yet come to a vote.

the precedent being set

There is a version of this that the White House would offer, and it is not entirely without basis: every president has personal financial interests that overlap with their policy decisions, disclosure requirements exist precisely to make those interests visible, and the American public elected Trump knowing he was a businessman who would continue to operate as one.

All of that is true. It is also insufficient as a response to what the disclosure actually shows.

The $2.2 billion is not passive income from a blind trust. It is active, promotional income that required the president to personally market products to his political supporters, benefit from the regulatory environment his administration created, and accept hundreds of millions from a foreign government with active interests in U.S. policy — all while holding the most powerful office in the world.

What is being established here is not just a question about this president. It is a question about the office. If a sitting president can launch a cryptocurrency days before taking office, personally promote it to supporters on social media throughout his term, collect royalties on every trade regardless of whether buyers profit, dismantle the regulatory apparatus that might have scrutinized it, and report $636 million from that single venture — then the norms that once separated the presidency from personal commerce have not been bent. They have been dissolved.

The precedent being set is available to every future president, and it doesn’t require corruption in the legal sense, it requires only the willingness to treat the office as a platform and the supporters as a market.