Trump’s Crypto-Card Monte
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
—Quote attributed to Justice Louis D. Brandeis, repeated often by editor/journalist Lewis Lapham in the last year of his life (2024).
On June 13, 2025, in compliance with the United States Office of Government Ethics (motto: “Preventing Conflicts of Interest in the Executive Branch”), President Donald Trump filed his “Personal Public Financial Disclosure Report” (OGE Form 278e, for those keeping score at home).
In theory he complied with all the requests to disclose non-government income of more than $200, assets in excess of $1,000, and outside income greater than $5,000, although by filing 234 pages of densely-typed statements Trump is playing a deception game, hoping that in a data dump of staggering proportions no one will notice how his presidency has become a Washington Monument to conflicts of interest.
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Needless to say, in the section that asks him to list “Gifts totaling more than $480,” Trump did not write, “Undisclosed influence peddlers in the crypto industry gifted me millions of dollars by anonymously buying my $TRUMP memecoin, just as my hand-picked board and management at Trump Media & Technology Group awarded me (in exchange for nothing) shares in a public company now worth several billion dollars.”
Instead, for his crypto dealings, Trump reported $1,057,490 of income from “licensing fees from NFT INT LLC” but then added parenthetically “value not readily ascertainable”—even though elsewhere he discloses earnings from World Liberty Financial, Inc. (another crypto company) of $57,355,532.
That take sounds like a lot of money until you read the reporting in Forbes which estimates that in the last nine months Trump earned $390 million from the sales of World Liberty tokens and $315 million from hawking his memecoin (neither amount made it into the financial disclosure report).
I am guessing that the difference in the figures is what accountants call a “rounding error”.
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In the world according to Trump’s filing, the president is just your average real estate developer billionaire with hotels, office towers, apartment blocks, and golf courses spread around the United States and the world.
Left out of the fine print in all 234 pages is Trump’s conception of the presidency as a hedge fund, in which there is one general partner—Trump—and endless feeder funds (MAGA suckers who lap up his coins and sneakers).
The report is also mum about who is throwing billions at Trump via Trump Media or his cryptocurrency three-card monte.
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On the form’s pages labeled “Filer’s Positions Held Outside United States Government,” Trump lists only five titles, of which only two—Mar-a-Lago and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts—are current.
According to Trump, his position as chairman of the board and director of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) ended on March 22, 2024, when the company completed its reverse takeover of Digital World (basically a honey pot of about $230 million in cash).
What Trump discloses in the report (as if it was just normal business) is that the merger, plus the gift of some “Earnout Shares”, left Trump with 114,750,000 shares in Trump Media (more than 50% of the 220,000,000 then outstanding shares and control of the public company).
On paper, the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, dated April 7, 2014, holds Trump’s shares in Trump Media, but given that the TMTG board is a conglomeration of Trump family and Trump remittance men—such as Don Jr. and Devin Nunes—there’s no chance of the board wandering off the reservation.
In fact, in May of this year, the captive board of directors voted to issue 57,010,000 new shares (diluting Trump’s stake from 52% to 41%) at $25.72 a share.
In exchange, the company raised about $1.44 billion in new equity, and it raised another $1 billion in Convertible Senior Secured Notes (which absurdly pay no interest to their holders and can be converted into common stock at $34.72 a share, although the current share price is $18.50).
On top of this capital raising, the company invested the $2.44 billion proceeds into Bitcoin, and it registered a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (a long way from its declared business strategy to compete with legacy social media companies, such as the woke Facebook).
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In other words, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to raise $2.4 billion in a company that he controls from about 50 individuals and funds (this in the weeks following his predators’ ball at which he hosted the 220 largest investors in $TRUMP, his memecoin).
[Note: the guest list for the Trump memecoin dinner supposedly was made up of the largest investors in $TRUMP, but that’s a fiction. The anonymity of cryptocurrency wallets makes it impossible to identify the beneficial owners of crypto coins. Besides, the crypto bros who made millions from $TRUMP’s issuance sold their positions on January 20, 2025, when the price spiked on Trump’s inauguration. Memecoin traders are not generally “buy and hold” aka diamond-hands investors; those at the dinner were just rug pullers.]
The Securities and Exchange Commission (which reports to Trump) approved the Trump Media transaction without demanding to know who was investing through the vehicle of a listed company $2.4 billion directly into the pockets of the U.S. president.
If you’re in the ethics business—as most voters should be—it is the kind of detail that would be useful know.
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In theory, under the Emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution:
No Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
But that constitutional law has become as quaint as insider trading restrictions, as the whole idea of memecoins (including $TRUMP and $MELANIA) is to raise money in offshore bolt-holes and to trade ahead of the general market on whispered, non-public information.
A study of the cryptocurrency wallets that invested in $TRUMP revealed that a few insiders, including the Trump family, made money from trades around (if not before) the issuance of the coin, but that another 764,000 “wallets” lost money betting on The Crypto Kid.
As Paul Newman aka Henry Gondorff in The Sting says to a poker-game loser: “Don’t worry about it, pal. They wouldn’t have let you in here if you weren’t a chump!”
There are several other sleights-of-hand associated with Trump’s financial disclosure filings concerning Trump Media.
One is the refrain in the report that the “Underlying asset: 114,750,000 shares of common stock [is] subject to [a] lock-up period,” when in fact that lock-up period expired in September 2024.
To imply in the report that the shares are subject to a “lock up” mades it look as if Citizen Trump isn’t free to do as he pleases in the money markets, but is subject to regulatory restraint, which is not the case.
For Trump, it’s still the roaring 1890s, except he’s both President McKinley and one of the robber barons.
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The second grand illusion is to state that the value of the president’s Trump Media shares is simply “greater than $50 million”, when in fact, on the date the report was filed, the president’s stake was worth about $2.3 billion (down from about $4.6 billion when he was sworn in on January 20, 2025).
Mind you: Trump paid nothing and invested nothing to wind up with 114,750,000 shares in Trump Media and his windfall billion-dollar fortune.
All he agreed to do was post some of his social media on its Truth Social platform “for six hours.”
In exchange, Trump was awarded control of the company with a majority of the outstanding shares (he now has 41% of the public entity, which is still the largest position in the company). Plus he controls the management and the board of directors.
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Also omitted from the small print of the financial disclosure report is the extent to which Trump Media remains a pyramid scheme worthy of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi-ed imagination.
In the first quarter of 2025 (the period of the report), Trump Media posted revenue (that’s total sales!) of $821,000 and an operating loss of $32 million. For year-end 2024, the company reported revenue of $3.6 million and a net loss of $401 million.
TMTG is only worth the liquid assets on its balance sheet (less some provision for its annual losses), so between $3-4 per share, but instead the company trades at about 6 times its book value (under the illusion that Trump can spin that cash into gold).
Why pay a huge premium just to own Bitcoin or Ethereum on Trump’s balance sheet?
Who—other than those keen on subsidizing Trump to the tune of billions—needs to pay $6 to buy $1 on a Trump balance sheet?
Who other than someone buying favors would pay six times book value to acquire shares in a money-losing venture with no coherent business plan?
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In other words, the Trump Media has no business other than selling access to the American president, which it does now by floating new shares in the market and now investing those proceeds in cryptocurrency, notably Bitcoin.
Originally, the purpose of the company was to take on “legacy media,” such as Alphabet, Meta, and X, which were stifling the free expression of the MAGA faithful. All that business plan led to was a series of lawsuits with other founding shareholders and millions in losses.
In numerous filings to the SEC, the company has stated:
The mission of Trump Media is to end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the Internet and giving people their voices back. Trump Media operates Truth Social, a social media platform established as a safe harbor for free expression amid increasingly harsh censorship by Big Tech corporations, as well as Truth+, a TV streaming platform focusing on family-friendly live TV channels and on-demand content. Trump Media is also launching Truth.Fi, a financial services and FinTech brand incorporating America First investment vehicles.
For its “America First investment vehicle,” however, it has chosen cryptocurrency, which exists only in cyberspace, well beyond the control of any one nation, including the United States.
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When Trump Media discovered it only had one part-time client (Trump), endless expenses, and piles of cash from gullible MAGA investors, the company decided to pivot into cryptocurrency (for which it has no systems, management, or trading experience, other than Trump having hustled the memecoin market for several hundred million dollars). Now it states:
Developing American First investment vehicles is another step toward our goal of creating a robust ecosystem through which American patriots can protect themselves from the ever-present threat of cancellation, censorship, debanking, and privacy violations committed by Big Tech and woke corporations.
[Aside: can you imagine investing money based on such drivel?]
Trump Media is trying to reinvent itself as an exchange-traded crypto fund manager, and in so doing has gambled most of the firm’s capital in one long Bitcoin position, believing the presidential hype that “I will make sure the US is the crypto capital of the world. We are making America great again.”
Trump now has a private stake in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency that, as president, he can promote, no matter what the consequences are for the nation at large.
For the moment, the only countries betting on a “crypto reserve” are such financial bastions as El Salvador, Central Africa Republic, and Bhutan. China (no slouch financially) has banned Bitcoin.
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Pages 17 to 148 of Trump’s financial disclosure are lists of securities held in some mutual funds in which he is invested. For page after page, the report lists things such as INDIANA FIN AUTH HLTH SYS REV UNIV HLTH SER C B/E 5.00 % Due Dec 1, 2024, and records that Trump owns less than $5,000 in such a bond.
In all, several thousand stocks and bonds are listed, most of which show that Trump’s position in such securities is less than $5,000. (Stop press: his 2024 income from his Lululemon position was less than $201.)
Presumably, the endless list of stocks and bonds, presumably held in various mutual funds, is presented to lull Trump critics to sleep (at least those still awake after the Army parade).
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Despite publishing 131 pages of tiny bond positions, Trump’s lawyers left Part 7, “Transactions”, blank, as if selling off $2.5 billion in a publicly-listed corporation was not a “transaction.”
It also omitted any entries for “Gifts and Travel Reimbursements,” when the report could have stated:
Without congressional approval, as the asset was worth more than $480, Mr. Trump accepted the gift of a Boeing 747-8 that he plans to use personally as Air Force One and, after his presidency, as his private jet. When objections were raised that the gift was a jumbo jet of conflicting interests, Trump modified the terms of the handout and accepted the gift on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, which announced that the unneeded and unwanted plane would require between $400 million and $1 billion in system upgrades before it could serve as a presidential plane (by which time Trump will be out of office and the plane will be re-gifted to the Trump presidential library, on instructions from the current president).
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The heart of the Trump financial disclosures comes in a section called “Filer’s Employment Assets & Income and Retirement Accounts,” which is a dog’s breakfast of 431 companies, assets, associations, golf memberships, skating rink checking accounts, property, trademarks, shell companies, buildings, random assets (both active and inactive), and, mixed into this jumble, assets valued in the billions (although all the report ever admits to is an asset being worth “more than $50 million”).
Included in the strange list is a “receivable” from a “Mr. Hughes” for €3,887.58. Then, not far away, is the disclosure that Trump’s 2024 income from Mar-a-Lago (the pay-to-play presidential club in Palm Beach) was $50,122,259. (Think of all the foreign intelligence operatives who may have been parachuted into the membership.)
In the filing, Trump discloses that he earned $2,500,000 in royalties from Trump Sneakers, which he reports has a license agreement something called 45Footwear LLC (whose “value is not readily available”). Bravo to Trump that he has the time to integrate vertically the corporate structure of his sneaker collection.
For some reason “The Donald J. Trump Company LLC” is listed as “inactive” and worth less than $201,” as is The Trump Organization, Inc. Maybe that explains why he only pays $750 a year in taxes?
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Then for another 57 pages of the report, there are listings of Trump’s worldwide trademarks, including this entry for something called TRUMP HOME in Qatar:
Soaps; perfumery, essential oils, cosmetics, hair lotions; dentifrices; essential oils for use in manufacturing of candles; room fragrance diffusers…
For Russia, one of the trademark entries reads:
Real estate services, namely, selling, listing, leasing, financing, and managing commercial, residential, and hotel property. 037 – Real estate development and construction of commercial, residential, and hotel property. Hotel and accommodation services; temporary lodging; hotel management; restaurants; food and drink services; coffee shops; bistros and bars…
[Question: what about Trump’s denial for the past ten years of any dealings in Russia?]
Finally, on page 57 of the 57 mind-numbing trademark pages, we get to the heart of the disclosure, which is that Trump has registered copyright claims to some of the following expressions and catch phrases: “Crippled America…How I do my deals…Trump: how to get rich…The way to the top…Letters to Trump…”
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If there is a loser in the financial disclosure form, it is Melania Trump, who gets her own section in the report under “Spouse’s Employment Assets & Income and Retirement Accounts”, although it reads like the minutes of a bankruptcy proceeding.
There’s nothing in the report that indicates any of Trump’s 400-odd investments are jointly held with his wife, nor that she has any authority over his revocable trust (emphasis on the word revocable, which means he can un-do it at any time).
Alas, Melania LLC, located in Palm Beach, FL, is “inactive,” and valued at less than $201. She does seem to own an apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York (via 721 33H Holdings LLC), although its valuation of between $500,000 and $1 million would indicate that Trump Tower is a single-room occupancy.
Melania’s only other steady source of income seems to be the rent that she collects on a family house or apartment in Ljubljana, Slovenia; otherwise, Melania Marks Accessories LLC, clearly aimed at the bling industry, throws off less $1,001 a year.
Melania did earn more than half a million dollars for two speeches given in 2024 for the Log Cabin Republicans, which—don’t tell Donald—is “America’s oldest and largest organization for LGBT conservatives.”
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Strangely, her memoir, Melania, which according to Vanity Fair sold 85,349 copies in its first week on sale, is listed as having generated less than $201 in income, although at $40 a copy, that line should at least be $3.4 million (ironically, about the same as Trump Media’s revenues).
The line for her publisher advance was left blank—more evidence that the first couple does not exchange much information.
Nor is her $40 million payday from Jeff Bezos and Amazon—to assist with a documentary film about her life—listed in the report, although that windfall was disclosed in January 2025 (well before the signing of this report on June 13, 2025).
Another dodge in the Melania section is the absence of any mention of the trading made around the issuance of her memecoin ($MELANIA), about which the Financial Times reported:
A handful of traders bought first lady Melania Trump’s memecoin before it went public, and in the process secured a $99.6 million windfall.
By studying the blockchain, which publicly displays wallets and transactions but not identities, the Financial Times found that 24 separate wallets bought $2.6 million worth of $MELANIA two and a half minutes before it was publicly announced by the first lady in a Jan. 19 Truth Social post.
Another news report headlined: “Melania Coin Made 24 Wallets Rich—Then Crashed 95%.” She’s lucky that the Department of Justice’s Pam Bondi is blind to the Trumps’ insider trading—if only because Bondi, herself, reported earning $1-5 million selling Trump Media shares on the day that Trump’s tariff announcements cratered the stock market.
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Trump signed the financial disclosure report with his flourishing Sharpie pen, but he failed to date it, and so whoever signed off on the report (that signature is illegible) had to fill in the date for the careless Trump.
The head of the United States Office of Government Ethics signed off digitally, which suggests she wasn’t in the room with the president, looking over his shoulder at his omissions.
The report states that these disclosures are for 2025, but omitted from the disclosures is any mention that Trump raked in billions from Trump Media or hundreds of millions from his memecoin—not to mention Melania’s $40 million haul from Amazon or the fishy insider trading around her memecoin.
The form does have one accurate line where it asks Trump about his “Appointment Type,” and the answer comes back: “President of the United States.” It seems more fitting than to say, as he so often has: “The beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive.”
Sadly, at the end of the day—especially with Supreme Court immunity in his back pocket and Congress indifferent to the blurring of private and public interests at all levels of the Trump administration—the president is reporting to himself and accountable to no one.
