In his first term, most of the president’s money came from real estate. Now, more of his income comes from cryptocurrency and related ventures his administration regulates.
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No past president has seen financial gains in office like those reported by President Donald Trump this week — not even Trump.
The president’s income last year soared to more than $2.2 billion, fueled by cryptocurrency holdings and related ventures, according to his latest financial disclosure forms. The figures represent a vast expansion over his first term, when Trump reported still-significant income gains but on a smaller scale.
Trump reported making at least $440 million in 2019, driven primarily by his real estate businesses, according to financial disclosures released the following year. In 2024, before he retook office, he reported making over $600 million.
Trump’s surge in income contradicts a frequent claim by his aides that his time in office has worsened his financial situation.
“This is a president who has actually lost money for being president of the United States,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last year.
On Wednesday, Trump claimed that his income has surged because of improved conditions in financial markets.
“You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to board Air Force One, encouraging other Americans to thank him for boosting the value of their retirement savings.
But Trump’s stock holdings are just a small piece of his record gains as president in his second term, according to the financial disclosures. Trump’s reported income increased by more than $1.6 billion last year, with most of that coming from his vast holdings in cryptocurrency and related ventures, even as his administration relaxed rules on crypto markets.
The income from cryptocurrency and related ventures underscores how thoroughly Trump’s financial picture has changed since his first term. Back then, the longtime real estate magnate reported that much of his income came from his hotels, golf courses and other properties.
Trump reported making at least $389 million in 2019 from his real estate businesses. Trump National Doral, one of his golf clubs in Florida, brought in $77 million that year, and his Mar-a-Lago estate brought in $21 million.
The profits from his real estate holdings have generally grown during his second term: Trump made $122 million from Trump National Doral last year, and $77 million from Mar-a-Lago. As president, Trump has extolled businesses that have used his properties, such as visiting Trump National Doral earlier this year to celebrate the return of the PGA Tour after golf’s biggest circuit shunned the course for a decade.
But that real estate income now makes up a much smaller share of Trump’s income.
The president launched a crypto company, World Liberty Financial, as he ran for president in 2024. The company is now run by his family members and sold a large stake to investors tied to the United Arab Emirates just days before Trump’s inauguration last year. Trump has also been involved in other ventures, such as the $TRUMP coin, a “meme coin” bearing his name. Royalties from coin sales provided one of his largest income sources in 2025, the financial disclosure forms show, netting him $635 million.
In his first term, his real estate holdings sparked investigations by Democrats into whether Trump had used his assets, especially his hotels, to wrongly profit from his office.
His cryptocurrency ventures pose an even more serious set of potential conflicts, Trump’s critics say.
“Since he retook office, he’s making over a billion dollars a year off of crypto, while at the same time his administration is writing the rules of the road for how crypto will be regulated,” said Lee Reiners, a Duke University lecturer who warned earlier this year about Trump’s potential financial rewards from his cryptocurrency policies.
“Not only is this an unprecedented level of self-dealing and self-enrichment, the scale is really hard to wrap your head around.”
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Under Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission has rejected the idea of regulating meme coins as securities, a priority for the cryptocurrency industry. Trump also issued executive order in his first week in office to ease regulation of the crypto industry.
Reiners, who worked as a bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said he believes the administration’s loose regulation of cryptocurrency will eventually harm average Americans.
“In my opinion, that will eventually lead to some type of financial stability event similar to 2008, in which case we would all be impacted,” he said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), a frequent critic of the president’s policies, called Tuesday night for legislation that would prevent the president, other political leaders and their family members from profiting off the crypto industry.
Others said that Trump — who as president in his second term has endorsed products, solicited donations for his pet construction projects and took possession of a Boeing jet gifted by Qatar that he plans to put in his presidential library — has used the Oval Office to benefit in ways they never thought possible.
“It’s corruption on a scale that, to be honest, has few rivals in world history,’ said Norm Eisen, who served as White House ethics czar under President Barack Obama. ”That’s because you never had the combination of a president willing to fully monetize the Oval Office combined with a world full of countries and other special interests who are willing to fork over vast sums.”
The White House and Trump have defended his conduct, with officials saying that the president has no conflicts of interest.
“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement, adding that any suggestion otherwise is a “tired, false narrative.”
The president also reported a wide array of other sources of income — including more than $200,000 from Trump-endorsed Bibles, nearly $600,000 from a book collecting letters written to Trump, and at least $4.7 million related to Trump-branded watches — that Eisen said would have exceeded any past president’s single-year gains while in office.
“Even if you took the bottom portion of the financial disclosures, it still would be by far the greatest exploitation for personal gain of the American presidency in our history,” Eisen said.
President Joe Biden, for example, reported making tens of thousands of dollars, largely from interest payments on bank accounts, according to his financial disclosure for 2023, which was released during his final year in office.
Trump reported assets of at least $2.4 billion last year, up from at least $1.4 billion in 2019 and at least $1.6 billion in 2024. His assets are almost certainly worth more, since the federal disclosure forms require only that asset values be reported in ranges that top out at “over $50 million,” which leaves the full value of the president’s holdings unclear.
Past presidents profited less during their time in office because of ethical norms, federal laws and simple propriety, experts said.
“When Barack Obama was president during the Great Recession and regulating the banks, I wouldn’t even let him refinance his modest family home in Chicago, which would have been a matter of a few $100 a month in lowered interest payments, because he was regulating the banks,” Eisen said.
Presidents including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton divested some assets or put them into blind trusts before becoming president, which Trump has not done. Trump also has not released his tax forms, unlike his predecessors going back several decades.
Speaking as he prepared to board Air Force One, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he didn’t speak to people managing his money. As he did so, two of his sons — Eric and Donald Trump Jr. — stood behind him. Trump’s children are helping manage his finances, the White House has said.
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