Nearly a million investors lost $5.5 billion on Trump’s crypto coin
Eric Lipton And David Yaffe-Bellany
An updated tally of Trump followers turned crypto investors has arrived. And the overall consequences for them are pretty bad.
Nearly 1 million people who bought President Donald Trump’s meme coin lost money by the end of June, according to a report from cryptocurrency analysis firm Nansen. Their losses totaled US$3.81 billion ($5.47 billion).
The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated last week after Trump signed an annual financial disclosure that showed he walked away with a $636 million payout for the same crypto bet; this was part of a gain of at least $2.2 billion from all its business ventures in 2025.
The odds were always in his favor. Trump made a profit whether the price of his meme money rose or fell. He has repeatedly challenged his followers by using his Truth Social account to promote the coin, as well as reaping returns whenever anyone trades the token.
Trump, once a crypto skeptic, has embraced the profit-making opportunity of digital currencies as he runs for president in 2024. He and his sons founded a crypto startup called World Liberty Financial and soon began selling a cryptocurrency called $WLFI, which fell sharply.
Three days before his inauguration, Trump announced a second Trump-branded investment: the $TRUMP meme coin, a type of hipster currency with little practical value.
“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WIN!” Trump wrote on social media. “Join my very exclusive Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!” But this turned out to be bad advice.
Most crypto transactions are publicly visible and recorded on a digital ledger called a blockchain. This allows analysts to track digital currency purchases made from individual crypto accounts, known as wallets. Nansen’s data shows that as of the end of June, 988,905 buyers of the $TRUMP meme coin had lost money; This represents roughly two out of every three buyers.
According to Nansen, these 988,905 wallets lost a total of $3.81 billion, including buyers who kept their stashes and recorded paper losses. The cryptocurrency was trading at $1.76 as of Friday, down 97 percent from its peak price of $75.35.
Nicholas Pinto is also among the losers. Pinto, a frequent cryptocurrency trader who is voting for Trump in 2024, said he invested a total of about $500,000 in $TRUMP coins and has now lost about half of that investment.
He appears to have encouraged his supporters to invest with the expectation that they would foresee wealth, even as he withdrew money.
Stephen Gillers, New York University professor of law and legal ethics
“When he appears trustworthy in the eyes of the public, he uses the power of being president to launch currencies,” Pinto said in an interview. “This is incredible. It’s almost a legal scam.”
The White House last week rejected any suggestion that Trump was making money at the expense of his followers. Since coming to the White House, Trump and his appointees have restricted regulatory oversight of the industry, including policies on meme coins.
“President Trump has proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said after Trump’s annual report was made public on Tuesday. “All actions of President Trump and his administration are carried out in the best interest of the American people.”
A representative for the $TRUMP meme coin initiative did not respond to a request for comment. David Wachsman, a spokesman for World Liberty, attributed the decline in the value of the WLFI dollar to broader market conditions that are pushing down the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“No one can control the markets,” he said. “World Liberty stands behind WLFI, the governance token that has had increasing utility in a growing ecosystem since day one.”
Trump wasn’t the only winner of the $TRUMP money. After its launch, its price rose from under US$1 to over US$70, creating a window of opportunity for advanced crypto traders to make a huge profit.
These advanced traders, who often use automated programs to buy digital currencies, know that the value of meme coins soars and then crashes as initial buyers sell their holdings to less sophisticated, slower-moving investors in hopes of getting in on the action.
According to Nansen, just under 500,000 crypto wallets made a total profit of $4 billion from TRUMP. But that figure “reflects that the majority of retailers absorbed losses while a small number of early buyers reaped enormous gains,” the report said.
The meme coin was just one of several crypto ventures that turned a profit for Trump and his allies.
According to his financial disclosure, Trump’s total profits from World Liberty reached $799 million last year; This includes hundreds of millions from the United Arab Emirates, which moved secretly in early 2025 to buy nearly half the company. A business entity of Trump’s also collected a 75 percent cut of sales of the WLFI dollar after deducting certain expenses, ensuring that Trump would make a profit even if the coin’s price eventually dropped.
Tracking losses in World Liberty’s coin is more complicated. The company initially sold the coin directly to investors at prices of $0.015 or $0.05, according to Nansen.
Nansen found that anyone who bought the coin at $0.05 made a slight profit. However, $WLFI did not become widely available until September, when it began trading on secondary markets known as exchanges.
Not all of these transactions are publicly viewable. 85 percent of the 26,663 wallets tracked by Nansen recorded losses. Total losses amounted to $83 million compared to a profit of $23 million.
But this is probably only a small fraction of the overall losses; because other buyers purchased the cryptocurrencies from exchanges whose data is not publicly available. Today, World Liberty’s coin is trading at $0.057, down 82 percent since September.
Despite the crashing prices, Trump has faced few consequences for his initiatives as federal regulators have largely abandoned crypto enforcement.
Stephen Gillers, a professor of law and legal ethics at New York University, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump and his associates end up being sued by money-losing followers in a class-action lawsuit, even though the Securities and Exchange Commission announced in February 2025 that it would no longer investigate meme coin deals.
The $TRUMP meme coin site warned buyers that they should not view the token as an investment tool. “Trump memes are intended to function as an expression of support for and engagement with the ideals and beliefs embodied by the ‘$TRUMP’ symbol and associated artwork and are not intended to be or be the subject of an investment opportunity,” the website says.
But Gillers said even if they had to wait until Trump leaves office, that announcement likely wouldn’t be enough to stave off future legal challenges.
“When Trump was a real estate developer, he bragged about ‘playing to people’s fantasies,'” Gillers said. “Here he appears to have encouraged his supporters to invest in the expectation that they would foresee wealth, even as he himself was withdrawing money.”
This article was first published on: New York Times.
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