A new disclosure about Donald Trump's finances reveals that the Republican presidential candidate holds millions in cryptocurrency, including investments in non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
As shown in his personal financial disclosure, released by the ethics watchdog Citizens for Ethics, the former president declared holdings of between $1 million and $5 million in cryptocurrencies. Virtually all of the declared crypto assets are based on the Ethereum network.
Based on that data, blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence estimates Trump's cryptocurrency holdings to be worth $3.5 million.
Adding to the holdings are earnings exceeding $ 7.15 million from three NFT collections. These include the “Mugshot” project, focused on criminal allegations, along with two separate series of Donald Trump collectibles. In July, the former president said he was willing to release another collection, “by public demand.”
It should be noted that those Ethereum holdings briefly spiked to $18 million in June amid a temporary rally in the MAGA memecoin with the ticker “TRUMP.” But even after the drop, substantial gains are still seen relative to the holdings reported last year.
Trump reveals multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency holdings. Source: Citizens for Ethics.
Trump claims to be friendly with bitcoin without having it
It is striking that the former US president has not yet acquired bitcoin (BTC), the pioneering digital currency that he has been describing as very valuable for a few months now. Although before that, BTC was considered by Trump to be “backed by air.”
The presidential candidate who now claims to be a “defender of cryptocurrencies” was not always a fan of bitcoin.
Just five years ago, in July 2019, Trump said : “I am not a fan of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” This statement, which occurred when he was President of the United States , was made through a post on the social network X.
The former president, who hopes to win the elections next November, now has a completely opposite view. “Those who say that bitcoin is a threat to the dollar have the story exactly backwards,” he said a few weeks ago.
His "conversion" has reached such a point that he promises to make the United States a cryptocurrency power and assures that he will include BTC in the country's strategic reserves, also giving a strong boost to Bitcoin mining.
“Bitcoin will go to the moon,” Trump has said, emulating Bitcoiners. “One day it will probably surpass gold,” he adds in the middle of his speeches. However, according to his financial statement, he has no investment in BTC.
The situation is very different with other candidates who have also declared themselves pro-bitcoin. This is the case of Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for the Republican Party nomination at the beginning of the year. According to Jameson Loop on X, the politician has around USD 250,000 in BTC.
It is worth noting that Trump's change of position came after the importance that the cryptocurrency sector — and particularly Bitcoin — had acquired in the American voter base became known. It was after that that the change occurred.
It came amid industry pressure for favorable regulation and after polls showed the ecosystem was popular among a significant segment of voters, particularly young men who tend to spend a lot of time online.
"And I know a lot of very good people who are really in that world and in that market. They're smart, they're good people, and they think it's going to be very beneficial," is what Trump is saying now to reach out to his voters.
