When Jimmy Carter won the White House in 1976, he placed his family’s peanut farm in a blind trust before taking office, a step meant to head off conflicts of interest and calm ethical concerns.
Half a century later, a strikingly different picture emerged: filings released this week showed the current US president earned more than $1.4 billion last year from his family’s cryptocurrency businesses.
Donald Trump says no conflict exists, even though he has rolled back crypto regulation since returning to office and championed policies and initiatives the industry has embraced.
So where, exactly, did Donald Trump’s crypto windfall come from?
The disclosures show his companies took in nearly $800m from World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture he co-founded with his sons.
That total included more than $520m from crypto token sales and more than $250m from selling stakes in the World Liberty business.
The US president also reported another $635m from sales of his Trump meme coins, which carry an image of his face.
Meme coins are digital currencies built around internet memes, jokes or broader cultural trends.
“Their value is largely driven by community sentiment, social media hype, and celebrity endorsements,” according to Forbes.
Justin Urquhart Stewart, co-founder of Seven Investment Management, said that although Mr Trump appears to have profited from his meme coins, most investors have not.
In just three years, Donald Trump’s stance on crypto was transformed
“He has created a souvenir meme, which is basically a coin, which doesn’t necessarily have a technical value you can use to buy anything, but it can be sold for value and it’s got Mr Trump’s face on it,” Mr Urquhart Stewart said.
“That has actually managed to raise a figure of $635 million, which is really quite astonishing,” he said.
“The price of it went up to $74 but it’s now currently trading at $1.60, so an awful lot of people have actually lost a vast amount of money on it,” he added.
In June 2021, before his return to the White House, Mr Trump told Fox Business that bitcoin “just seems like a scam”.
In another Fox Business interview later that year, he said investing in cryptocurrencies looked like a “disaster waiting to happen”.
Yet within only three years, Mr Trump’s view of crypto had changed dramatically.
In July 2024, as his re-election campaign gathered pace, Mr Trump spoke at a bitcoin conference in Nashville and promised to stand with the crypto industry if voters sent him back to the White House.
“This afternoon I’m laying out my plan to ensure that the United States will be the crypto capital of the planet and the bitcoin superpower of the world and we’ll get it done,” Mr Trump told the conference.
After winning re-election, he followed through by moving to relax restrictions imposed by the previous administration.
“Joe Biden was actually acting in the opposite way, and was actually trying to put more controls on it for a currency, which frankly, most people don’t really understand,” Justin Urquhart Stewart said.
“It’s a currency which doesn’t have proper regulations around it and isn’t going to be operated by any central banks, but Mr Trump has said he is trying to loosen all of this,” he added.
World Liberty Financial
In March 2025, World Liberty said it would introduce USD1, a stablecoin backed by the dollar.
A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is tied to another currency, commodity or asset.
One of World Liberty Financial’s co-founders is Mr Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff.
He has faced accusations of blurring the boundary between diplomacy and business amid claims that he and his son promoted World Liberty’s crypto interests during visits to the Middle East.
In May 2025, an Abu Dhabi state-backed investment firm announced a major $2 billion investment using the USD1 stablecoin.
After Mr Trump’s earnings were made public this week, the White House said that “neither the President nor his family has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest”.
“President Trump proudly made the US the crypto capital of the world through executive actions,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said.
“All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people and any so-called “reporters” pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade,” she added.
Not just about crypto
The US president’s earnings are not limited to cryptocurrency.
Mr Trump also reported a 15% rise in revenue at his golf and resort properties, bringing that total to just over $500m last year.
Revenue at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, often dubbed the “Winter White House”, climbed to $77m from $50m in 2024.
His Irish golf resort at Doonbeg in Co Clare generated income of close to $20m last year.
The Doonbeg hotel and golf resort in Co Clare
TIGL Ireland Enterprises Limited, the company that runs the golf course and resort, brought in just over $14m, while a separate company operating the hotel on the site generated almost $5m in revenue for Mr Trump.
Much has shifted over the past 50 years in the way US presidents handle their assets, income and business interests.
A multi-billion dollar empire spanning crypto and property is far removed from Jimmy Carter’s family farm, and the sums involved can scarcely be called peanuts.
