Trump Called Himself the 'Crypto President.' Bitcoin Has Plummeted 40% Since He Took Office
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Key Takeaways
- Despite President Donald Trump’s campaign promises, the crypto market has plummeted since his inauguration. Since Jan. 20, 2025, bitcoin and ethereum have dropped by 40% and 50%, respectively. Smaller altcoins and spot crypto ETFs have faced massive outflows.
- The current crypto winter is being driven by rising inflation and expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. Additionally, market enthusiasm has waned as AI has replaced crypto as the primary tech trend attracting investor capital.
- While the broader market and Trump's own branded tokens (like $TRUMP and $WFLI) have crashed, the president still generated $1.4 billion in 2025 through crypto licensing agreements, token sales and equity stakes in crypto ventures.
In the lead-up to the 2024 election, President Donald Trump positioned himself as the foremost proponent of decentralized finance. During fundraising events, he went as far as labeling himself "the crypto president."
But since Trump took office for his second term in January 2025, the crypto market has been in disarray, with the prices of coins and tokens plummeting from all-time highs.
That performance has come as a stark contrast to what Trump promised on the campaign trail. The president's platform included efforts to bolster bitcoin mining, oppose central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and support self-custody rights, which translated into millions of dollars worth of donations from the crypto community.
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Trump even launched his own crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, whose native $WLFI token aims to lead "a financial revolution by dismantling the stranglehold of traditional financial institutions," according to its website.
Instead of ushering in a Trump-led crypto boom, though, the market finds itself in the midst of its fourth major crypto winter — or a prolonged bear market for digital assets — while prices of assets big and small continue to slump.
Why crypto is facing an uphill battle
Before peaking last October, bitcoin's market cap was approaching $2.5 trillion. The crypto market was abuzz, and that enthusiasm had spilled over into the traditional equities market with numerous spot crypto exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which track the performance of assets like bitcoin and ethereum, debuting and seeing record inflows.
Today, bitcoin's market cap has fallen to $1.26 trillion. Investors have been rotating out of crypto since October. One of the major catalysts for that has been rising inflation and the growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates later this year.
Like gold, crypto is not a yield-producing asset, and higher rates increase the opportunity cost of remaining in those assets.
In early June, Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal listed additional crypto headwinds, including significantly weakened influence from the crypto community, adoption having matured beyond the early stages and AI replacing crypto as the technology trend attracting the most investor attention.
Together with the market's rotation, those conditions have depressed crypto and crypto-backed assets like spot bitcoin ETFs. In June, those funds saw net outflows of $4.5 billion.
Zooming out, the performances of some of the largest cryptos by market cap illustrate how dire the situation has become. Since Trump assumed office on Jan. 20, 2025, bitcoin has fallen 40%, and ethereum — the second largest coin on the market — is down nearly 50%. Binance has lost around 18%, XRP has lost nearly 66% and Solana has lost 67%.
Those losses aren't isolated to large-cap coins, either. As the premier digital asset, bitcoin's performance is often mirrored by the broader crypto market. Its losses have been reflected by smaller altcoins and meme coins.
Trump's own meme coin — Official Trump ($TRUMP) — is no exception. After debuting at $28.93 on Jan. 17, 2025, the token reached a record high of $45.47 on Inauguration Day. Since then, prices have crashed more than 96%, with $TRUMP currently trading at $1.65.
Similarly, Trump's first crypto-backed venture, $WLFI, has also been in free fall. Following its release in August at 31 cents, the token currently trades for just 5 cents — a loss of 84% — while Elon Musk-backed dogecoin is down 80% since Trump took office.
The sheer breadth of the ongoing selloff has tempered expectations from the crypto community to Wall Street. On Wednesday, Citi downwardly revised its 12-month price target for bitcoin from $112,000 to $82,000. Crypto platform CoinGecko's price prediction modeling suggests there is just a 10% chance that bitcoin will finish 2026 at or above $100,000.
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How Trump's crypto dealings have increased his fortune
Despite the crypto market's struggles, the president has amassed a fortune over the past year thanks to his digital asset transactions. According to a 927-page financial disclosure filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and released June 30, Trump made $1.4 billion in 2025 from his crypto ventures.
Of that, $635 million came from a licensing agreement with Celebration Coin to sell the $TRUMP meme coin. Another $526 million came from the sale of crypto tokens through World Liberty Financial.
The president also reported nearly $197 million in income from investments in Stablecoin Holdco, LLC, a company in which Trump holds a 38.5% equity stake. The Miami-based firm is the holding company for World Liberty Financial.
His portfolio is somewhat unusual. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told NPR that Trump "stands alone in having such substantial financial conflicts of interest with is official duties as president."
"Five years ago, President Trump said bitcoin was a scam," Painter said. "In his first year in office in 2025, he made a billion dollars selling cryptocurrency while he was issuing executive orders that were intended to boost the cryptocurrency industry and market."
For instance, in January 2025, Trump signed an executive order to revoke a directive from President Joe Biden that established a federal framework for regulating digital assets and exploring a U.S. CBDC. Two months later, Trump signed another executive order that established a U.S. strategic bitcoin reserve.
The income from Trump's crypto dealings has dwarfed his income from other ventures he has promoted during his second term.
Trump Watches, for instance, made the president $4.7 million last year, branded limited-edition Trump guitars netted him $35,920 and Trump sneakers and fragrances generated just $67,634 combined.