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Trump crowned himself the crypto president. Then crypto collapsed.



When Donald Trump returned to the White House, one industry was convinced it
had finally elected its champion: crypto.



Trump didn’t just promise lighter regulation on cryptocurrency. He declared
himself America’s “crypto president.” He vowed to make the United States the
crypto capital of the world. He appointed a White House crypto czar, David
Sacks. He hosted crypto executives at an unprecedented White House summit. His
administration rolled back enforcement actions, embraced digital assets, and
even proposed a “strategic bitcoin reserve.”

The crypto world responded with jubilation. Investors believed their moment
had finally arrived. Industry executives praised Trump as a visionary.
Investors poured money into bitcoin, Ethereum, meme coins, and every
crypto-related investment they could find. If anyone was going to usher in a
new golden age for digital assets, surely it would be the self-proclaimed
crypto president.

After Trump’s 2024 victory, bitcoin skyrocketed from roughly $69,000 on
Election Day to more than $103,000 on the day of his inauguration, in January
2025. By that October, bitcoin closed an all-time high of nearly $126,000. The
crypto bros were euphoric.

Then reality intruded.

Now, while artificial intelligence booms on Wall Street, crypto has been
pummeled.

On Tuesday morning, Bitcoin was trading at around $58,000, below where it
stood before Trump was elected. Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency,
has fallen nearly 70% from its 2025 high. As of this past Thursday, more than
$2 trillion in value had vanished from the crypto market since its October 2025
peak.



No investment better captures Trump’s presidency than his own meme coin. It
debuted around $45 and now trades for under $2. First lady Melania Trump’s
shitcoin is down over 98%. The people who bought into the hype got wiped out.
The insiders who created it had every opportunity to cash out near the top. It
is, in miniature, the story of Trump’s entire crypto presidency.




 



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But the biggest gap hasn’t been between Trump’s promises and crypto’s
performance. It has been between who made money.

Trump gave the crypto industry much of what it had demanded from Washington.
Friendly regulators. A friendly White House. Explicit government backing.
Direct access to the president. A proposed strategic reserve. The kind of
legitimacy the industry had spent more than a decade chasing.

It just didn’t make them rich.

Ironically, the person who appears to have profited most from Trump’s crypto
presidency wasn’t the average crypto investor. It was Donald Trump.

Trump and his family didn’t just buy crypto. They’ve built a sprawling crypto
empire—launching meme coins, investing in crypto firms, issuing a stablecoin
(USD1), and expanding into bitcoin mining.

That has created an extraordinary conflict of interest.



Every time Trump proclaimed himself the “crypto president,” every time he
welcomed crypto executives to the White House, every time his administration
announced another crypto-friendly policy, Trump and his family stood to benefit
financially.

Here’s what that looked like in practice. As crypto prices sank and investors
watched their portfolios shrink, a Trump-tied crypto company reportedly kept
selling hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of its own crypto tokens. The
buyers took the risk. Trump’s family appears to have collected the money.

The same pattern has showed up elsewhere. Eric Trump’s American Bitcoin, a
crypto mining firm, reportedly lost more than 90% of its value from its
post-IPO high, eliminating more than $200 million for outside investors. But
Eric Trump, who received his founder’s stake on different terms than ordinary
investors, still held shares reportedly worth around $70 million.

Crypto investors are learning the same lesson as everyone else who has ever
mistaken Donald Trump for an ally.

They didn’t think they had helped to elect a president who would merely
tolerate crypto. Many in the crypto world have an almost evangelical belief
that blockchain will revolutionize finance and reshape society. And they
believed Trump shared that faith—that he was using the presidency to build
their movement.

They mistook a salesman for a true believer.

He didn’t see a financial revolution. He saw marks for a new grift.

If you judge the crypto industry’s bet by political access, it has been a
spectacular success. But if you judge it by investment returns, it’s more of a
disaster.

And if you judge it by who is actually getting rich, there may never have been
a better investment than becoming the crypto president.



Click here to check out this story on DailyKos.com.
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