🔒 The Trump crypto empire: Influence, risk, and a $14.9bn bet: Lionel Laurent

Key topics

Trump-backed entities hold $14.9B in volatile memecoins.
Political influence and crypto conflicts raise corruption concerns.
Calls grow for stricter safeguards against insider trading in crypto.

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By Lionel Laurent ___STEADY_PAYWALL___

Eric Trump thinks it’s a good time to buy Ethereum. Maybe he’s right; his endorsement temporarily lifted its price, at least. But now would also be a good time for politicians and regulators to set up stronger guardrails around the growing and deeply conflicted crypto empire that the Trump presidency and its entourage seem eager to build.

It’s now clear that the First Family wants to do more than put the US on a pro-crypto track via friendlier regulation; it also wants a stake in the outcome. World Liberty Financial, a decentralized-finance platform backed by the Trumps, has built a war chest of tokens including about $340 million worth of ether. Trump’s memecoin minted billions out of thin air and generated nearly $100 million in trading fees for entities in the president’s orbit, according to Reuters. Elsewhere, Trump’s Truth Social is branching out into financial services.

These are not your average mom-and-pop investments: The paper value of memecoins currently held by Trump-connected entities is around $14.9 billion, by my calculations, based on current (admittedly volatile) spot prices. And if the sums are mind-boggling, so are the risks. Influence-peddling and corruption will surely grow as token buyers and industry figures see their shot at currying favor with the comically transactional Trump. There’s also moral hazard as the world’s most powerful person and his relatives promote the kind of crypto risk that they can easily afford to take when compared with those lower down the wealth ladder. When told of his (paper) memecoin wealth, Trump barely flinched: “Several billion — that’s peanuts for these guys.”

So when Eric Trump tweets with a friendly nudge that Ethereum looks like a buy, he’s hardly a neutral observer — as he seemed to recognize when he deleted the phrase “you can thank me later” from his post on X. And whether by coincidence or design, World Liberty put his idea into practice, adding about $55 million in ether after a weekend selloff triggered by Trump tariff threats. This came after moving much of its stash to Coinbase Global Inc., though it denied plans to sell. It’s a little much at this stage to imagine a family-wide, moustache-twirling conspiracy at work — Trump’s tariff brinkmanship is hardly pro-crypto and his son’s tweet has had limited market impact overall. Yet we’re only in week three of this administration and the banana republic vibes are strong.

Democracies have been around long enough to set up institutional safeguards against political conflicts of interest. The question is whether they have the stomach to enforce them. The US has seen the post-Watergate push for ethics and transparency in office, the 2012 STOCK Act designed to combat insider trading, or the Foreign Emoluments Clause stretching back to the Constitution. Crypto is no excuse: The European Union’s new digital-asset rulebook includes specific provisions against insider trading and market abuse. And Trump pick Tulsi Gabbard has agreed to divest her holdings in stocks and crypto to comply with rules.

Without effective enforcement and reinforcement, oversight of conduct can become toothless. Trump seems unbothered by constraints. Howard Lutnick, Trump’s pick for commerce secretary, won’t say if he’ll recuse himself from a crypto task force despite his firm Cantor Fitzgerald’s convertible-bond exposure to stablecoin Tether. Institutional ethical blind spots can deal financial damage down the line: The case of collapsed German fintech company Wirecard AG offers one example, with staff at regulator BaFin suspected of trading its shares instead of holding it to account. Let’s hope Trump crypto czar David Sacks means it when he promises more consumer protection.

At the very least, a simple requirement for all politicians should be to put invested wealth in blind trusts the day they take office, says Garen Markarian, corporate-governance expert at University of Lausanne, with curbs on friends and family. Worryingly, the current prevailing mood among the elites is that there should be less scrutiny, not more.

Trump is railing against “de-banking” in conjunction with the crypto set; meanwhile, Elon Musk is being allowed to set his own limits as he trains his DOGE guns on government. This is textbook overconfidence, especially considering this president has been convicted of fraud. It also sends a signal of arrogance to regular people who can see the law is less forgiving when insider tips are passed in a hair salon or overheard at home. The crypto swamp is visible; the draining, less so.

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