Trump's First Year in Office: Family Goes Wild with 'Crypto Printing Press'
Original Title: "One Year of President Trump, the Family's Crazy 'Crypto Money Printing Machine'"
Original Author: Dangdang, Odaily Planet Daily
On January 20, Trump Media and Technology Group (NASDAQ: DJT) announced that the record date for its previously disclosed digital token plan has been set for February 2, 2026. On the record date, individuals and registered shareholders holding at least one share of full DJT stock will be eligible to receive the future issued digital tokens and associated incentives. After the record date ends, Trump Media will cooperate with Crypto.com to be responsible for the token minting and distribution, with the specific execution mechanism yet to be further disclosed.
From a formal perspective, this looks more like a cross-experiment between crypto and traditional finance: although it is an airdrop, the holders are not crypto players but rather stock investors. However, as long as it involves the "Trump family + issuing coins," the market's nerves are hard to remain untouched.
After all, Trump's "holding" of the crypto market participants is always proper, and the scene of the last TRUMP coin issuance is still vivid. It enriched a large number of people but was also subsequently accused of draining market liquidity because, after that, the market experienced a sharp pullback. This time, DJT's shareholder token plan is the Trump family's new move based on financialization and securitization, but there is an inexplicable sense of familiarity with being harvested, what's going on?
After Trump began his second term as president, his public stance also significantly shifted towards being crypto-friendly: on the one hand, promoting regulatory framework construction, on the other hand, his family business also accelerated its expansion pace in the crypto industry. Over the past year, crypto assets have become an integral part of the Trump family's wealth structure, systematically establishing a crypto industry network spanning DeFi, stablecoins, hashrate, and publicly listed company financial products.
Recent reports suggest that crypto-related projects have added approximately $1.4 billion to the Trump family's asset size in one year, with the proportion of crypto assets rising to nearly 20% for the first time in the overall net worth of around $6.8 billion.
Based on this, Odaily Planet Daily has attempted to systematically inventory the Trump family's current major traceable crypto layouts.
1. World Liberty Financial: Core DeFi Hub
This is a core crypto project in the Trump family's industrial layout, positioned as a decentralized financial protocol and governance platform, aiming to bridge the gap between traditional finance (TradFi) and DeFi through blockchain technology, providing users with lending, governance participation, and yield opportunities, while emphasizing the role of the US dollar stablecoin in the global digital financial system.
The project was initiated in 2024 by Donald Trump himself and his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, in collaboration with real estate developer Steve Witkoff.
World Liberty Financial's governance token is WLFI, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens and a current market cap of around $4.7 billion. The token sale started in October 2024, raising approximately $550 million. According to the rumored revenue distribution structure, about 75% of the net proceeds from the sale will belong to the Trump family entity, potentially bringing in around $400 million in cash.
In terms of token distribution, the family-affiliated company DT Marks DeFi LLC holds around 2.25 billion WLFI tokens, accounting for 22.5% of the total supply. At the current price of approximately $0.17 per token, its book value is around $380 million.
Of particular note is their stablecoin USD1.
USD1 is backed by a 100% reserve mechanism primarily composed of short-term US Treasury bonds, cash deposits, and money market funds. Defillama data shows that USD1 has a current market cap of around $3.2 billion, ranking seventh in the stablecoin rankings. For a stablecoin issued as late as April 2025, its growth rate is remarkable.
A key driving factor is Binance's deep integration and traffic support. On the BSC chain, USD1's supply is around $1.83 billion, which accounts for 57.8% of its total issuance.
If we consider a reserve size of around $3 billion and assume a 3.5%–4.5% annualized yield on short-term US bonds in 2026, the interest income from the reserve assets alone could reach $105 million to $135 million annually. Currently, this cash flow mainly belongs to the issuer.
From a financial standpoint, this makes USD1 not just a stablecoin but also a financial instrument capable of generating a sustained flow of US dollar cash. For the Trump family, it is truly a long-running "interest machine."
2. American Bitcoin Corp.: Dual-Driven by Hash Power and Reserves
American Bitcoin Corp (NASDAQ: ABTC) is a bitcoin mining and strategic reserve company held by Hut 8 Corp, one of North America's largest publicly traded mining companies, in collaboration with the Trump family. Hut 8 owns about 80% of the shares, while Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and early shareholders of American Data Centers collectively hold the remaining 20%, with Eric Trump personally holding around 7.4%–7.5%.
The company is not just a pure investment entity, but operates multiple large-scale mining farms located in Texas and other places. In November 2025, Eric Trump showcased a mining farm in Texas in a public video, deploying around 35,000 mining machines, stating that this is only a part of its overall hash rate, implying that American Bitcoin Corp may own far more than 35,000 devices. He mentioned that their daily output represents about 2% of the global daily new Bitcoin production, suggesting that the company will mine around 9 Bitcoins per day (global daily new output is around 450 Bitcoins), totaling approximately 3,285 Bitcoins annually.
According to American Bitcoin's released financial report for the third quarter of 2025, the revenue for the quarter was around $64.2 million, with a net profit of about $3.5 million, reversing the situation of a $576,000 loss in the same period last year. The mining output for the third quarter was 563 Bitcoins. Based on this, the average Bitcoin price for the period was around $114,000, and if it fluctuates in the current range of around $89,000, the profitability will obviously be compressed, potentially leading to losses.
Data from bitcointreasuries.net shows that American Bitcoin Corp currently holds a Bitcoin reserve accumulated through mining and market purchases, totaling 5,427 Bitcoins, worth approximately $486 million, ranking among the top twenty publicly traded companies in terms of Bitcoin reserves.
However, because the company does not fully pay for new mining machines in cash, but instead uses a "BTC collateral + installment/guarantee" structure, using some of its own Bitcoins as collateral to exchange for equipment and defer payment. The disclosed collateral BTC scale for Q3 is around 2,385 Bitcoins, which has not yet been deducted from the total reserve.
Many mining companies adopt this approach, using BTC as "high-value collateral" to exchange for physical equipment. Therefore, for mining companies, this "mining output → partial collateral to finance new mining machines → hash rate increase → more mining output" accumulation cycle can amplify the return on investment in a rising Bitcoin price trend; and in a bear market phase, it can also magnify operational leverage.
3. TRUMP and MELANIA Tokens: Monetizing Political IP Traffic
Compared to the above infrastructure-oriented layout, TRUMP and MELANIA directly monetize the brand influence of the Trump family and the market hype effect.
TRUMP was launched by Trump-associated companies CIC Digital LLC and Fight Fight Fight LLC. The total token supply is 1 billion, with an initial circulation of 200 million tokens, and the remaining 800 million are expected to be linearly unlocked over 3 years. However, the two affiliated entities own 80% of the TRUMP tokens, with a lock-up period of 3–12 months, followed by a gradual release over 24 months.
According to tokenomist data, the current circulating supply of TRUMP is 4.8 billion tokens, with 2 billion allocated for airdrops and liquidity support, unlocked at launch, and the remaining 2.8 billion owned by Trump-affiliated companies. Based on the current price of $4.86, the paper gain is approximately $13.6 billion, even though the current TRUMP price has dropped over 90% from its peak of $77.
MELANIA, on the other hand, is marketed by MKT World LLC, a Florida-based company owned by former First Lady Melania Trump. The total supply is also 10 billion tokens, with about 6 billion already unlocked, including 3.5 billion allocated to the team, valued at approximately $57.8 million at the current price.
However, Melania's team was once accused of cashing out at a high point, defrauding investors. In June 2025, on-chain data shows that the team's associated address sold 82.18 million MELANIA tokens within 4 months through 44 wallets, primarily through adding and removing liquidity, cashing out a total of 245,000 SOL tokens, then valued at around $35.76 million. It can be imagined that their actual gains may far exceed the current data.
4. Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT Series
NFTs were Trump's entry point into the crypto world.
In December 2022, Trump announced the release of Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT through his social media platform, Truth Social. This series was minted on the Polygon blockchain, initially creating a total of 45,000 NFTs, each priced at $99. Purchasing 45 digital trading cards would grant a ticket to have dinner with Trump. Despite initial ridicule, this series sold out in less than two days, generating direct profits of $4.45 million.
Following the success of the initial sale, Trump released Series 2 and Series 3, with each card still priced at $99. Series 2 had a total of 47,000 cards, and Series 3 had a total of 100,000 cards. Despite the large numbers, Trump's marketing strategies led to another sold-out success, accumulating approximately $14.55 million in revenue from these two sales.
In August 2024, Trump once again launched Series 4, priced at $99 per card, but this time with an exorbitant total of 360,000 cards. However, the market did not respond favorably. Opensea data shows that about 32,000 cards from this series were sold, resulting in profits of around $3.18 million.
Overall, this NFT series still brings direct revenue to Trump of over 20 million US dollars, not including the 10% royalty fee that each NFT can receive when traded on the secondary market.
5. Financial Products Ambitions of Trump Media
Starting in 2025, the Trump Media Group launched the "America First" ETF series and a crypto treasury through Truth.Fi. These ETFs were officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 30, 2025, jointly launched by TMTG and Yorkville America Equities (a branch of Yorkville Advisors). The initial release includes five ETFs, all of which are equity-themed funds focusing on the "Made in America" concept, covering areas such as defense, security, technology, energy, and real estate, with only one related to Bitcoin.
However, TMTG has indeed filed for multiple pure crypto ETFs (such as the Truth Social Bitcoin ETF, Bitcoin & Ethereum ETF, Crypto Blue Chip ETF), which plan to hold assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cronos (CRO) directly (e.g., Crypto Blue Chip ETF initially allocates 70% BTC, 15% ETH, etc.). However, these crypto ETFs are still in the SEC filing/approval stage and have not been approved for listing or trading yet.
However, the Trump Media Group itself holds about 11,500 Bitcoins, worth about 1.03 billion US dollars, ranking 12th in publicly traded companies' Bitcoin reserves, with no sales records to date.
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
Related Articles
