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Despite President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, the crypto market has been in decline since his inauguration. As of January 20, 2025, bitcoin and ethereum are down 40% and 50%, respectively. Smaller altcoins and crypto spot ETFs have faced massive outflows.
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The current crypto winter is driven by inflation and expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. Additionally, market enthusiasm has waned as AI has replaced crypto as the main technology trend attracting investor capital.
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While the broader market and Trump-branded tokens (such as $TRUMP and $WFLI) crashed, the president still generated $1.4 billion in 2025 through crypto licensing agreements, token sales and equity stakes in crypto ventures.
Ahead of the 2024 election, President Donald Trump positioned himself as a leading proponent of decentralization. During fundraising events, he went so far as to call himself “the president of crypto.”
But since Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, the crypto market has been in disarray, with prices of coins and tokens plummeting from their highs.
That performance is very different from what Trump promised on the campaign trail. The president’s platform included efforts to strengthen bitcoin mining, oppose central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and support self-determination rights, which translated into millions of dollars in donations from the crypto community.
Trump even launched his own crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, whose native $WLFI token aims to lead a “financial revolution by breaking the grip of traditional financial institutions,” according to its website.
Instead of ushering in a Trump-led crypto boom, however, the market finds itself in the midst of its fourth major crypto winter — or the longest bear market for digital assets — while the prices of major and minor assets continue to fall.
Why crypto is facing an uphill battle
Before the rise last October, bitcoin’s market cap was approaching $2.5 trillion. The crypto market was in a frenzy, and that enthusiasm had spilled over into the traditional equity market with many crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which track the performance of assets like bitcoin and ethereum, starting and seeing record inflows.
Today, the bitcoin market is down to $1.26 trillion. Investors have been circling out of crypto since October. One of the main drivers of that has been rising inflation and growing expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later this year.
Like gold, crypto is not a yield-producing asset, and high prices increase the opportunity cost of holding those assets.
In early June, Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal listed more crypto storms, including a very weak influence from the crypto community, adoption has matured beyond the early stages and AI has replaced crypto as a technology trend that attracts the attention of many investors.
Along with market volatility, those conditions have stressed crypto and crypto-backed assets like spot bitcoin ETFs. In June, those funds saw outflows totaling $4.5 billion.
In retrospect, the performance of some of the largest cryptos by market cap shows how dire the situation has become. Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, bitcoin is down 40%, while ethereum – the second largest coin in the market – is down almost 50%. Binance lost about 18%, XRP lost about 66% and Solana lost 67%.
That loss isn’t isolated to major coins, either. As a leading digital asset, bitcoin’s performance is often mirrored by the broader crypto market. Its loss is shown by small altcoins and meme coins.
Trump’s meme coin — Official Trump ($TRUMP) — is. After withdrawing $28.93 on Jan. 17, 2025, the token reached a record high of $45.47 on Launch Day. Since then, prices have fallen more than 96%, and $TRUMP is currently trading at $1.65.
Similarly, Trump’s first crypto-backed venture, $WLFI, also had a free fall. After its release in August at 31 cents, the token is currently trading at just 5 cents – an 84% loss – while the Elon Musk-backed dogecoin is down 80% since Trump took office.
The full scope of the ongoing selloff has dampened expectations from the crypto community to Wall Street. On Wednesday, Citi revised down its 12-month price target for bitcoin from $112,000 to $82,000. Crypto price prediction platform CoinGecko suggests that there is a 10% chance that bitcoin will end 2026 or above $100,000.
How Trump’s involvement in crypto increased his fortune
Despite the struggles of the crypto market, the president has amassed a fortune over the past year thanks to his transactions in digital assets. According to a 927-page financial disclosure filed with the US Office of Government Ethics and released on June 30, Trump made $1.4 billion by 2025 from his crypto business.
Of that, $635 million came from a license agreement with Celebration Coin to sell the $TRUMP meme character. Another $526 million comes from the sale of crypto tokens through World Liberty Financial.
The president also reported nearly $197 million in investments in Stablecoin Holdco, LLC, a company in which Trump holds a 38.5% equity stake. The Miami-based company is a holding company for World Liberty Financial.
His portfolio is quite unusual. Former White House counsel Richard Painter told NPR that Trump “stands alone in having major financial conflicts that are official duties as president.”
“Five years ago, President Trump said bitcoin was a scam,” Painter said. “In his first year in office in 2025, he made a billion dollars selling cryptocurrency while issuing executive orders aimed at improving the cryptocurrency industry and market.”
For example, in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to rescind President Joe Biden’s executive order that established a government agency to regulate digital assets and examine America’s CBDC. Two months later, Trump signed another executive order that established a US strategic bitcoin reserve.
Income from Trump’s crypto dealings dwarfed his income from other businesses he promoted during his second term.
Trump Watches, for example, made the president $4.7 million last year, Trump’s limited-edition guitars earned him $35,920 and Trump sneakers and fragrances generated just $67,634 combined.
