Donald Trump, Long Skeptical of Crypto, Holds Up to $500,000 In Ethereum

Donald Trump holds up to half a million in cryptocurrency, according to a recently released financial disclosure form submitted to a federal ethics agency.

A filing submitted to the Office of Government Ethics included a listing of assets and other sources of income belonging to the former president. In one line on the second to last entry of the 82-page form, it lists a “cryptocurrency wallet (Ethereum)” with a value between $250,000 and $500,000. 

The wallet appears to be connected to a line of non-fungible tokens (NFT) that his campaign launched as part of his bid to return to the White House in 2024 after his previous defeat to President Joe Biden in 2020. 

The NFTs, a collection of virtual trading cards that feature illustrations of Trump in myriad poses as a superhero, cowboy, or astronaut, launched for $99 each in December 2022. 

Sales of the tokens took off in the following months, including after his first indictment by a state court in New York, before dropping off after the candidate launched a second batch in April that crashed the first set’s value. 

Trump’s ownership of a crypto wallet comes against a backdrop of historically critical comments he has made about cryptocurrencies, as he questioned their value in ways more akin to his Democratic Party rivals than his Republican peers.

When he was in office, Trump tweeted only once about crypto. In July 2019, he said that he was “not a big fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.” Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s former communications director at the White House, later told Decrypt that he suspects Trump himself did not author the now-deleted tweet.

After losing his re-election bid in 2020, Trump went on to tell Fox Business in June 2021 that Bitcoin—the first and most widely traded cryptocurrency—“just feels like a scam,” and made it clear that he prefers fiat currency.

“I don’t like it, because it’s another currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That’s what I’ve always said,” Trump told Fox’s Stuart Varney.

Trump’s aversion to crypto comes in stark contrast to the warm embrace extended to the technology by others in his party. Since taking control of Congress, Republicans in the House and Senate have worked to advance new bills providing regulations for crypto that have been cheered on by the industry—albeit with some misgivings. 

Among his GOP rivals for the White House, there have been a few who have staked out pro-crypto stances. 

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been publicly supportive of cryptocurrency adoption. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also promised to end what he says is the Biden administration’s “war on Bitcoin” if elected. All of these candidates remain far behind Trump in opinion polling. 

On the Democratic side, long-shot Democratic Party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been publicly vocal about his support for cryptocurrencies. He revealed that he and his family own about 14 Bitcoin after previously saying he was not an investor.