American workers may be struggling with the highest rate of corporate layoffs since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but one lucky group is doing better than ever: the Trump family.
President Donald Trump’s children and extended family members added over $5 billion to their net worth in a single day, thanks to a new cryptocurrency issued by the family’s newest crypto project, World Liberty Financial. WLF investors voted last month to allow the Trumps and a handful of key investors to cash out their crypto holdings early, locking in a handsome profit for the connected few.
Others weren’t so lucky. WLF’s cryptocurrency has fallen over 50% since Monday, saddling many regular investors with heavy losses.
Eric Trump doubled down on Thursday with the IPO of yet another family crypto venture, this time named American Bitcoin Corp. It was no coincidence that the new company’s public launch came on the same day that his father hosted Silicon Valley’s biggest crypto and AI boosters for a private dinner at the White House.
Trump’s brazen blending of personal profit and public influence represents an unprecedented level of state corruption. Not only do the Trump family’s multiple crypto operations offer foreign nationals an easy way to buy access to the White House, they reveal a president willing to steer American policy in ways that enrich his family and close friends. The result is a rotten government that doesn’t even pretend to serve the public interest.
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In July, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, a landmark cryptocurrency bill that critics argued would boost an industry in which the first family was already deeply established. Republicans were quick to dismiss those ethics concerns as so much “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” but on Tuesday, even Fox Business host Stuart Varney gave up trying to defend Trump’s blatant self-dealing.
“What it amounts to is—it's crypto-friendly legislation coming from the president of the United States, who is in turn cashing in on the crypto phase—personally, his family,” Varney said. Fox Business reporter Lauren Simonetti agreed, describing Trump’s profiting off the GENIUS Act as a “conflict of interest.”
But Trump’s corruption doesn’t stop with fleecing crypto investors. His coin is hosted by Binance, a crypto exchange that was—until recently—facing accusations of illegal business dealings with the United Arab Emirates and other foreign actors. Binance founder CZ Zhao is also seeking a pardon from Trump after pleading guilty to violating federal money laundering laws.
Crypto mogul Justin Sun also saw civil fraud charges against him put on hold after investing $75 million in the Trump family’s personal cryptocoin. Sun was one of guests at the dinner Trump hosted in May for his biggest memecoin investors.
All that corruption is too much for some watchdogs to bear, even those that once had the president’s back. Legal experts from the conservative American Enterprise Institute warn that Trump’s dealings with Binance are a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause, which bars federal officials from using their office for private profit.
Now the Trump family is considering wading into the frothing AI market, and it’s easy to see why. AI spending now accounts for fully 2% of the American economy, on par with what railroads contributed to national GDP between the 1820s and 1860s. That growth is powered by a staggering $400 billion in Big Tech investment this year alone, and Trump wants those Silicon Valley scions to know he’s happy to help—in exchange for his cut.
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Tech executives including Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman lavished Trump with praise during Thursday’s dinner. Altman in particular heaped acclaim on Trump for “being such a pro-business, pro-innovation president” who is “set[ting] us up for a long period of leading the world.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025, in Washington.
When Altman says “us,” he doesn’t mean America’s shrinking middle class or even the United States as a nation. He means himself and the ultra-rich tech titans who have already funneled millions of dollars into Trump’s coffers through inauguration fund donations and commitments to invest in the president’s pet projects. In return, Trump is more than willing to let Silicon Valley race forward with AI development without any meaningful safeguards or federal regulation.
Tech executives are already feeling Trump’s favor through the actions—or inactions—of Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson. Back in May, Ferguson told lawmakers that the FTC wouldn’t regulate AI until after problems emerged, effectively giving AI companies one free screw-up courtesy of the White House. Ferguson has also taken a hands-off approach to cryptocurrency regulation, including undermining draft regulations put in place by his predecessor, Lina Khan.
“The pro-regulation side … is the wrong one,” Ferguson said, characterizing any efforts to rein in Big Tech’s AI and crypto adventurism as potentially “hostile to the United States.”
With no regulators left to call out his crypto and AI self-dealing, nothing stands in the way of Trump and his family members raking in billions more in profits by fleecing consumers and allying with shady crypto exchanges like Binance.
The Trumps will almost certainly leave the White House far richer than when they entered it. The same can’t be said for the Americans they’ve ripped off.
