The Trump family’s crypto project, World Liberty Financial, has seen its fair share of controversy, and its token is ending the year significantly down.
Analysis
World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto portfolio project, started the year with high hopes. But as the year draws to a close, the fund has barely seen gains.
US President Donald Trump announced the launch in September 2024 while he was still on the campaign trail for the 2024 elections. Led by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, it marked a significant shift in tone for crypto policy in the US.
The program started strong. It launched its own World Liberty Financial (WLFI) governance token and made large acquisitions of high-market-cap cryptocurrencies.
The bull market in the summer/fall of 2025 pumped the Trump family’s share into the billions. But since it began trading publicly, the project’s token is down over 40%.
World Liberty Financial has mixed returns
WLFI completed its first token sale in October 2024. It sold about 20 billion WLFI tokens at $0.015 per token, raising about $300 million. This was followed by another token sale that ran from January 2025 into March, in which WLFI sold some 5 billion tokens at $0.05 per token. It raised roughly $250 million.
In March, the Trump family issued its own stablecoin, USD1. By June, they had penned a deal with PancakeSwap, a decentralized finance protocol owned by Binance, to promote the asset.
In August, World Liberty entered into a private placement and treasury deal with ALT5 Sigma Corporation. In the $1.5-billion deal, ALT5 traded 100 million shares of its common stock for WLFI tokens, essentially creating a crypto treasury.
In the bull run that defined much of the 2025 crypto market, WLFI made several large cryptocurrency acquisitions. It bought millions of dollars’ worth of a basket of assets, including $21.5 million in Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Ether (ETH) and Move (MOVE). As of Dec. 22, top coins in the fund also include substantial holdings of USD1, several Aave-tied assets, as well as Mantle (MNT).
Public tracking data of the Trumps’ portfolio value only started in September 2025, when it was worth over $17 billion at the peak of the year’s bull market. As of Dec. 11, the assets in the fund are worth just under $8 billion, marking a 47% decrease.
Trump’s fund mired in controversy
Historically, US presidents have distanced themselves from any business ventures that could be seen as a conflict of interest with their responsibilities as the chief executive. Former President Jimmy Carter famously placed his peanut farm in a semi-blind trust while he held office.
Trump has taken the exact opposite approach, becoming actively involved in business ventures that would directly benefit from his own financial and political priorities. In September, as Bitcoin’s (BTC) price began to creep towards an annual high, the BBC reported that the Trump family’s share of World Liberty Financial was worth over $5 billion. This was realized largely through its contractual ownership of most of the WLFI tokens.
The Trump administration has faced repeated calls for inquiries over what opponents say are conflicts of interest. As early as April 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters sent a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) then-acting chair, Mark Uyeda. In it, they asked the SEC to “preserve all records and communications regarding World Liberty Financial, Inc., the cryptocurrency company owned by President Trump’s family.” The commission was called upon to ascertain the extent Trump’s involvement could compromise its ability to regulate effectively.
In November, Warren repeated her call for a probe, following a report from Accountable.US, which claimed that World Liberty Financial sold tokens to sanctioned individuals with ties to Iran, North Korea and Russia.
Related: Trump’s USD1 stablecoin deepens concerns over conflicts of interest
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the allegations were baseless. She blamed the media writ large for “continued attempts to fabricate conflicts of interest,” as they are “irresponsible and reinforce the public’s distrust in what they read.”
“Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged or will ever engage in conflicts of interest. The administration is fulfilling the president’s promise to make the United States the crypto capital of the world by driving innovation and economic opportunity for all Americans,” she said.
World Liberty itself said that it ran Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer checks on potential buyers “and turned down millions of dollars from potential purchasers who failed the tests.”
The Trump family’s crypto ventures are not limited to World Liberty Financial. Trump Media and Technology Group Corp also operates the fintech brand Truth.Fi. In September, it bought 684.4 million Cronos (CRO) tokens at roughly $0.153 per token, totalling $104.7 million. This was part of a 50% stock, 50% cash exchange with crypto exchange platform Crypto.com.
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. also founded and backed the crypto mining venture American Bitcoin. As of Dec. 10, the company’s total Bitcoin holdings amounted to 4,784 BTC, according to Solid Intel.
The overall value of World Liberty Financial’s portfolio has dropped significantly. Despite this marked decrease in value, World Liberty Financial is steaming ahead with new assets and deals. On Dec. 3, its co-founder Zach Witkoff announced that it will launch a suite of real-world assets (RWAs) starting in January 2026.
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