How Reuters tallied the Trump Organization’s crypto income

By Tom Bergin

LONDON, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Most of U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s business empire is privately held, with few reporting requirements and little transparency, so calculating a reliable estimate of the Trump Organization’s earnings from crypto and other sources for the first half of 2025 required some sleuthing.

The process entailed reviewing the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other publicly available sources. Where the family’s share of revenue from certain ventures could not be determined, Reuters made estimates that were vetted by four finance professors, two certified public accountants and an accounting professor, all of whom have taught courses or advised clients on crypto. They all agreed that Reuters' approach was sound.

Ultimately, Reuters calculated that the Trump Organization earned $802 million from the family’s crypto ventures during the first half of 2025, overwhelming income from its traditional businesses like real estate, licensing deals and golf clubs, which together generated $62 million during the period.

Reuters shared a summary and an extensive spreadsheet of its calculations with the White House, Trump family members and the Trump Organization, and executives of the crypto businesses and requested comment. None of them responded.

The single largest source of income was World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm founded in mid-2024. Its revenue comes almost entirely from sales of digital tokens. According to World Liberty’s so-called Gold Paper, a kind of prospectus, a Trump family-owned entity, DT Marks DEFI LLC, receives 75% of all revenue from token sales, after deducting operating expenses. The business earned $57 million in late 2024 and $618 million in the first half of 2025 from selling tokens, according to President Trump’s official disclosures and statements from World Liberty and its partners.

Based on the formula disclosed in the Gold Paper, those token sales netted the Trumps $463 million in the first half of 2025.

World Liberty also earns money by promoting a so-called stablecoin, a cryptocurrency backed by traditional assets like U.S. Treasury securities so that it maintains a constant value. The issuer of that coin shares the interest it collects on the stablecoin's collateral with a company in which the Trump Organization has a 38% stake. Current yields on the funds the collateral is invested in pay annual interest of about $80 million, which could bring millions of dollars for the Trumps this year, based on Reuters calculations. Because USD1 was launched in March, the amount for the first half would have been small, unlikely to have been much more than $2 million.

World Liberty did not respond directly to requests for comment. A lawyer for World Liberty said of the Reuters calculations: “The Alleged Valuation and Income Analysis of WLFI Is Inaccurate and Misleading.” In a subsequent email, the lawyer, Timothy Parlatore, declined to elaborate on his critique of the Reuters analysis.

In January, the Trump Organization helped launch a second venture selling another digital asset – $TRUMP, the Trump meme coin. The venture’s website says the Trump Organization will receive revenue from the project, but it does not specify a percentage. To reduce the risk of overstating the president’s take, Reuters assumed for its analysis that the Trumps received just a 50% share of earnings from the meme coin.

Five academics who reviewed Reuters’ findings agreed that 50% is a reasonable estimate of the Trumps’ share. Two others diverged. One said Trump could receive a higher cut from the meme coins than the 75% he receives from World Liberty because the coin was sold entirely on the basis of showing support for Trump. But another said Trump might have accepted a smaller cut because his family is less involved in the meme coin than in World Liberty, where his three sons are listed as co-founders.

The meme coin venture has not reported revenue from coin sales. Blockchain data shows that more than $350 million of coins were sold via so-called “liquidity pools” – online marketplaces where people can buy and sell coins.

The project also distributed meme coins via crypto exchanges like Binance. Sales via exchanges cannot be traced through blockchain data, but based on statements from the Trump Memes social media account and the gradual move of coins in batches onto, rather than off of, the exchanges, the experts said all the coins were likely sold. Thus Reuters assumed that all batches of coins moved before June 30 were sold – excluding the last batch, which moved at the end of that month – and estimated the sale price as being an average of the market price over the period between batch moves.

Reuters estimated the venture earned $322 million in the first half selling coins in this way. Additional funds may have been raised selling coins Reuters could not trace, and the estimate excludes most of the transaction fees the venture says it earns.

In total, Reuters estimated that from the more than $672 million earned by the Trump meme coin project during the first half of the year, the Trump Organization was entitled to $336 million.

Analyzing income from the Trumps’ traditional assets like real estate was more straightforward, involving corporate filings, President Trump's presidential financial disclosures, ratings agency documents, and court filings. Where estimates were necessary, they included long established procedures like projecting forward income from real estate assets based on reported profit margins and industry growth projections.

Those calculations were reviewed by two real estate professors and a real estate and hospitality industry consultant.