Trump’s New Businesses Are Making Billions. Are His Investors Making Money?
Many people like to argue about the politics of the Trump family, but if you want to understand what is really going on, you have to look at the statistics.
Since the 2024 election, the family has launched or heavily promoted a number of new financial services. Marketing platforms are always huge, promising to transform finance or media.
But as an investor, you shouldn’t care about marketing. You need to care about the engineering of the deal.
I looked at the latest filings and market data from early 2026. The decision is not consistent across countries. The Trump family arranged these businesses for quick payouts through licensing fees and a cut of the revenue. Meanwhile, the everyday investors who funded the project lost their shirts.
Here’s how flagship projects work for people who have actually bought it.
Crypto machine: World Liberty Financial
Shortly after the 2024 election, the Trump family consolidated control of a new cryptocurrency project called World Liberty Financial. They raised $550 million eyeballs by selling tokens to investors.
If you’ve bought into the hype, you may be wondering when you’re getting your cut. The short answer is that founders lead first. According to a recent Reuters report, a holding company controlled by the Trump family is entitled to 75% of the revenue from those token sales. That means about $400 million of the money raised has been earmarked directly for the family organization.
What do investors gain? They get WLFI governance tokens. The catch is that these tokens cannot currently be sold publicly. You own a token that allows you to vote on protocol changes, but you can’t easily withdraw it to pay for your house.
The platform recently launched a stablecoin called USD1. In late February 2026, the company reported that it had to fend off a planned short-selling attack that temporarily pulled the coin from its dollar peg. The platform survived the stress test, but the fact remains that the family received hundreds of millions of guaranteed income while retail buyers held tokens locked in a volatile market.
(Related: “3 Reasons to Hate Crypto – and 3 Reasons I Still Do”)
Stock market play: Trump Media (DJT)
Trump Media & Technology Group, which is the parent company of Truth Social, went public with the merger of the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The stock has been a roller coaster, but for anyone who bought and held last year, it was a big drop.
As of early March 2026, DJT stock is hovering around $10 to $11 a share. That’s down more than 50% from last year.
The company released its full-year 2025 earnings in late February, and the numbers are staggering. According to financial data, the company generated only $3.7 million in revenue for the entire year. However, it reported a huge loss of $712 million, driven largely by the write-down of digital assets.
This is where the disconnect between the company and the retail investor becomes painfully obvious. Despite heavy losses and poor stock performance, Trump Media is currently sitting on approximately $2.5 billion in financial assets and has actually managed to generate an operating cash flow of $14.8 million.
The company is rich. Managers are well compensated. But everyday investors who bought the stock at $40 or $50 a share are sitting on potentially big losses forever.
(Related: “Crypto Meets Your 401(k): Biggest Retirement Risk?”)
Digital collections: Trump NFTs
Before the current crypto push, there was a digital trading card.
When the first series of Trump NFTs were launched, a few quick traders made a profit by trading them in the secondary market.
But like most fads, the music eventually came to a standstill. If you’ve bought the latest collections — like Series 2 or the 2024 America First Collection — you’re probably sitting on a dud. The trading volume on the secondary market for these goods has reached full capacity.
Did the Trump family lose money when the NFT market crashed? Not at all. Financial disclosures from 2024 showed that President Donald Trump himself went with the cost of more than 7.15 million licenses for the sale of digital cards.
He hired a like-minded person, collected his multi-million dollar check, and left buyers to figure out what to do with a digital photo that no one else wanted to buy.
The lesson here applies to almost any celebrity or politician pushing a financial product. Always look at the financial structure. If the founder takes 75% of the revenue up front, or pulls in millions in licensing fees before the product proves its worth, you are not an investor. You are a symbol.
