Trump Is Making Bank on Crypto: Do Voters Care?

As digital asset legislation races through Congress and towards President Donald Trump’s desk for signature, the president’s personal, lucrative crypto dealings have come increasingly under fire. 

Democrats have launched protests against “Trump’s crypto corruption” in both the House and Senate, putting up enough of a stink to lead industry policy leaders to conclude that their coveted market crypto structure bill is now doomed.

But a new poll out Monday from a pro-crypto nonprofit is attempting to dispel the narrative that the president’s digital asset antics have caused a major impediment to the industry’s legislative agenda. 

The poll, conducted between June 16 and June 18 on behalf of the Cedar Innovation Foundation—a pro-crypto lobbying organization that does not disclose its backers—found that a slim majority of nationwide voters was not aware of Trump’s personal crypto ventures.

Some 60% of poll respondents had not “seen, read, or heard anything recently” about how the president “has made millions of dollars” from his family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. Another 40% were aware, according to the poll, which was conducted by Global Strategy Group on Cedar’s behalf and surveyed 1,000 voters. 

Elsewhere, 57% percent of respondents had recently seen, read or heard “nothing or not that much” about Trump’s Solana meme coin, while 43% had recently seen, read or heard “a lot or some” on the subject.

Cedar trumpeted the results of the poll Monday as proof that “recent attempts to make [Trump’s] interest in the issue salient have not broken through with the American public.”

“The results show that the Dem attacks aren’t breaking through,” a Cedar spokesperson told Decrypt. 

But other recent polling disputes that conclusion. A Data for Progress poll of 1,155 nationwide voters conducted in roughly the same period, from June 6 to June 8, found that a solid majority of all voters—62%—believed Congress should insert provisions in crypto legislation to “prevent President Trump and his family from personally benefiting from cryptocurrency.”

Broken down by party affiliation, that figure was 42% among Republicans, 66% among independents, and 80% among Democrats. 

A House Democratic staffer told Decrypt that Cedar’s new poll should be taken “with skepticism and a grain of salt,” and characterized the organization as a “dark money group with huge crypto ties.”

Cedar’s survey does not appear to have asked voters whether such a provision should be included in crypto legislation. It did, however, poll them on if Trump is going to be involved with crypto no matter what, whether “there should be clearer rules and regulations for the industry.”

Interestingly, 79% of Democrats said “yes” to the question as phrased—as did only 36% of Republican respondents.

Though Trump has dabbled in crypto since 2022, his family’s involvement in the sector has sharply accelerated since the start of his second term.

The Trump family’s Ethereum decentralized finance platform, World Liberty Financial, for example, sold $550 million worth of its native WLFI token earlier this year—netting an estimated $390 million payday for the president and his associates.

Trump’s official Solana meme coin, TRUMP, soared to a fully diluted valuation in excess of $70 billion shortly after its launch in January, though it has since fallen to about $8.6 billion at present. The president and his partners own 80% of all TRUMP tokens, which are set to be unlocked over the next three years.

Late last month, when asked by Decrypt whether he would consider pulling away from his numerous crypto ventures if doing so would aid the passage of crypto legislation, President Trump deflected, refusing to commit to a divestment. He further argued that if not for his help, the industry would have gone to China. 

The first major piece of crypto legislation poised to pass Congress is the GENIUS Act, which would establish a framework for issuing and trading stablecoins in the United States. The bill passed the Senate last month, and is set to undergo a vote in the House next week. 

It does not contain any provisions restricting the president and his family from issuing or profiting off their own stablecoin. The Trumps and their World Liberty business partners launched such a product, USD1, in March. USD1 is currently the eighth-largest stablecoin in the world, according to CoinGecko, with a market capitalization of $2.2 billion.