Crypto Is Now Trump’s Second-Most Lucrative Source of Income

Donald Trump’s crypto holdings were his second biggest source of income last year—and that was before the president retook office and made billions more off the sector from the White House. 

According to annual financial disclosure forms filed Friday with the United States Office of Government Ethics, Trump made over $58 million from crypto ventures in 2024. The vast majority of that revenue came from sales of WLFI, the governance token issued by World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto platform.

That figure made crypto the second biggest revenue stream for the president in 2024, according to last week’s filing. The only category that firmly beat out crypto last year was income from the president’s hospitality businesses. Trump’s golf courses, membership clubs, and hotels brought in a collective $418 million in revenue for the president, according to the filing. A full $50 million of that income came from Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s marquee members-only club in Palm Beach. 

While crypto lagged behind that massive figure last year, 2025 looks poised to see digital assets become the president’s primary income stream. In the months since the filing’s reporting period closed, Trump has made billions of dollars in realized and unrealized gains from various crypto projects, including expanded World Liberty offerings and his own meme coin.

In March, for instance, after World Liberty closed its $550 million WLFI token sale, Trump and his associates walked away with an estimated $390 million. The president’s meme coin, meanwhile, which debuted on the eve of his inauguration in January, is worth $10 billion at writing. Trump and his associates are entitled to 80% of that sum, though those profits have not yet been realized.

What makes Friday’s disclosure so remarkable is the fact that digital assets counted so significantly among the president’s income streams prior to his biggest crypto windfalls. 

In 2024, crypto likely beat out one of Trump’s most prominent revenue- generating sectors: real estate. According to estimations from the president’s ethics filings, he made somewhere between $24 million and $63 million last year collecting rent from tenants of his properties around the world. 

Last year, Trump’s crypto income also handily outweighed earnings from his historically reliable income streams of licensing and royalties. Licensing fees for Trump-branded projects in far-flung locations like Dubai, India, and Oman brought the president roughly $34 million in revenue in 2024.

Even royalties from Trump-branded memorabilia like watches, shoes, books, and bibles represented a fraction of the president’s crypto income in 2024. The president made slightly more than $11 million on such agreements last year, less than a fifth of the money he made from the portion of World Liberty’s token sale completed before December 31.

In recent months, the president’s appetite for crypto ventures—and his refusal to divest from them while in office—has drawn growing criticism from lawmakers in both parties. Congress is currently attempting to pass multiple landmark crypto bills, the fate of which has recently become imperiled by protests over the president’s self enrichment off the sector.

Edited by James Rubin