The White House has repeatedly said Trump’s businesses are held in a trust managed by his sons. It also denied that the president is profiting from the presidency.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said Trump had proudly made the US “the crypto capital of the world”. She added: “Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged - or will ever engage - in conflicts of interest.”
Kelly also said: “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of the American people – and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”
Why ethics experts are raising questions
Trump has previously noted that the president is not covered by federal conflict of interest laws. That legal point has not ended the ethical debate, mostly because ethical debates are famously not impressed by technicalities.
Richard Painter, who served as chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, told the BBC that Trump making $1bn from crypto was “extraordinary”.
“Of course it’s a conflict of interest,” Painter said.
Will Walker-Arnott, director of private clients at Raymond James Financial Group, told the BBC that Trump’s approach differs sharply from earlier presidents.
“His approach, I suppose, is in contrast to previous presidents in terms of money making,” he said.
Walker-Arnott pointed to Jimmy Carter placing his peanut farm into a blind trust and George W. Bush selling his interest in the Texas Rangers before becoming president. Trump, he said, “seems to be operating in a very different manner and seems to be making a lot of money through this family crypto company.”
How Trump moved from crypto critic to industry champion
Trump was not always selling himself as a digital-assets president. In 2021, he called Bitcoin a “scam” and described cryptocurrency as a “disaster waiting to happen”.
By the 2024 presidential campaign, his public position had changed. He said he wanted to make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet”. After returning to the White House in 2025, one of his early actions was an executive order intended to “support the responsible growth” of the crypto industry.
His administration has since taken a friendlier line on crypto, even as companies linked to his family issued digital tokens.
Paul Atkins, Trump’s pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, is widely viewed as an ally of the crypto industry. Since taking office in April 2025, Atkins has shifted the agency away from the tougher regulation-by-enforcement approach used by his predecessor.
In July 2025, Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law, saying it would help “make America the undisputed leader in digital assets”.
Real estate still pays, but crypto dominated
The filing shows that Trump’s digital-asset income far outstripped the earnings from the real estate and hospitality businesses that first made him nationally famous.
According to the disclosure, Trump reported:
- About $77m from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida
- $122m from his golf club in Doral, Florida
- More than $30m each from golf clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey; Jupiter, Florida; and Turnberry, Scotland
Those are not small numbers. They are just small next to the crypto figures, which is a sentence that would have sounded less plausible a decade ago.
Trump also reported millions from licensing and branded merchandise. The disclosure listed $4.7m in royalties from Trump-branded watches, along with income from Trump-branded Bibles, trainers, fragrances and guitars.
Melania Trump and legal settlements also appear in the report
First Lady Melania Trump also reported income in the 2025 filing. She listed $10.7m from a “license agreement” connected to a documentary about her that was released last year.
The disclosure also listed another $6m for her from NFT sales, the digital images sold online using blockchain technology.
Trump separately reported about $86.5m in income from settlements connected to legal actions. The filing listed:
- $16m from a lawsuit against ABC
- $16m from CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive
- $24.5m from Meta
- $22m from YouTube
- $8m from X
The White House has said most of that money went either toward Trump’s future presidential library or to a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining park sites in the Washington, DC, area.
The filing is unusually large
Trump’s annual disclosure runs to more than 900 pages, far longer than those of recent predecessors. Joe Biden’s financial report for his last full year in office was 11 pages.
The new filing also arrives as Trump’s estimated wealth has risen sharply. Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people puts his fortune at about $6bn, up from $2.3bn in 2024. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index estimates his net worth at $7.6bn.
The White House says there is no conflict. Ethics experts quoted by the BBC say the arrangement raises serious concerns. The filing itself makes a simpler point: cryptocurrency has become a major source of income for the sitting US president, at the same time his administration is reshaping the rules around it.
