May 2, 2025 / 7:41 PM EDT / CBS News
President Trump's venture into crypto products has increased his family's wealth by billions in the last six months, according to a new report, as his administration continues to loosen the federal government's regulatory approach to the digital currency industry as a whole.
The group State Democracy Defenders Action estimated in a new report that the president's crypto holdings now represent nearly 40% of his net worth - or approximately $2.9 billion. That increase is due in part to his release of the $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, in addition to a large stake in World Liberty Financial, a crypto exchange affiliated with the Trump family that launched in October 2024. State Democracy Defenders Action identifies itself as non-partisan, but it is overseen by frequent critics of President Trump, with an agenda focused on "the autocratic threat to our nation."
The president's net worth is expected to get another bump, with World Liberty Financial's announcement this week that a Abu Dhabi-backed firm will invest billions of dollars in the Trump family-affiliated crypto fund. The Emirati firm, MGX, will purchase $2 billion in a stablecoin product offered by World Liberty, the company said in a statement to CBS. The currency, called "USD1" will then be used to invest in Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
World Liberty has ties to the president and his sons. The fine print on the company's website says an entity affiliated with Mr. Trump and his family members own a 60% stake in the company.
According to the company's public reports, a Trump family entity also holds 22.5 billion of the $WLF tokens -- and takes an additional 75% in net revenue from future token purchases.
Details of the MGX deal have not been released, so it is unclear how much the Trump family stands to benefit from this transaction.
In a statement to CBS News, World Liberty said the deal represents the "single largest-ever investment in a crypto company" and sets a "historic precedent." It did not respond to questions about how much the Trump family stands to make from the investment.
The White House responded to a request for comment by telling CBS News to "report on something people actually care about." A spokesperson provided links to several White House technology initiatives.
As the president's investments in crypto have grown, the Securities and Exchange Commission has paused investigations into a dozen crypto companies since his inauguration, a CBS News analysis found.
"The bottom line is it appears like he's profiting off of his public office," said Virginia Canter, State Democracy Defenders chief counsel for ethics and anticorruption. Canter, who co-authored the new report, served as senior ethics counsel for the Treasury Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
"In terms of prior presidents in the modern age, they've all divested their assets, or they've rolled them over into what we call blind trusts," Canter said. "President Trump did not do that in his first term, and it seems as if in the second term he's doubled down and he is all in (on) the crypto industry."
The report leans heavily on past media reports, including a Fortune magazine article that reviewed the Trump family's financial disclosures and provided the original estimates of the president's net worth.
Crypto companies are not legally required to disclose who is buying and selling on their platforms to the public, so little is known about who has invested in Trump family-affiliated crypto products.
Canter says this makes it more difficult to identify potential conflicts of interest.
"In his first administration, we could see who was walking in and out of the Trump hotels," she said.
The president, who as recently as 2021 described crypto currency as a "scam," has since embraced digital currency, saying he hopes to make the United States the "crypto capital of the world."
Since his