We shouldn’t just shrug at Trump’s latest effort to use his office for personal gain
The president and his economic and financial teams have made move after move in the past six months to pump crypto.
By Jeff Nesbit
President Donald Trump’s shamelessness at using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and his circle of sycophants is now so deeply embedded in the public eye that we all just tend to forget about it.
Oh, there Trump goes again, using the White House to benefit himself, his billionaire donors, golfing buddies, and wealthy Mar-a-Lago pals.
But Trump’s latest effort to use his office for personal gain is something we shouldn’t forget.
Trump has turned his media company—Truth Social—into a multi-billion-dollar Bitcoin holding company and used his administration to pump up its value. Here’s how he did it.
Trump Media & Technology Group is a publicly traded company. But Trump, as president, held a majority of the stock in Trump Media until its moves to buy Bitcoin diluted those shares of stock to just below 50%.
Trump placed his shares in a revocable trust in the name of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., before he took office a second time. But that trust can be revoked at any time, returning the shares to the president, who is listed as an “indirect owner” of Trump Media stock in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
In 2024, TMTG, the parent company of Truth Social, reported significant financial losses. The company's 2024 revenue was only $3.6 million, and its operating loss reached $186 million, according to a report by Axios.
Though it hasn’t made its user numbers public, it’s obvious that Truth Social has nowhere near the number of followers and engagement of, say, Elon Musk’s X or Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads. It is basically a place where Trump posts his unfiltered rants and thoughts night and day, with not much else going on.
But, last week, Trump’s parent company for Truth Social announced that it had officially acquired $2 billion in Bitcoin—a move that Trump Media had been publicly discussing since May.
Think about the optics of this. A publicly traded company with very little revenue—which lost $186 million in one year, according to Axios, and is owned by a sitting president—acquires $2 billion in Bitcoin. Does it make sense?
It does when you recognize that this president, his White House economic team and senior Treasury officials have been trying to sell crypto to the public for months—basically from the day he was reelected with the help of those with a vested financial stake in crypto.
In early November, one Bitcoin was trading for around $75,000. Last week—when Trump’s media company used investor funds to buy $2 billion in Bitcoin, essentially turning Truth Social into a crypto holding company—the value of one Bitcoin had risen by about 50% since Election Day.
Trump and the crypto advisors in his administration are, quite literally, gambling on Bitcoin‘s continued rise—all while his administration is doing everything in its power to foster that continued rise.
So, why should we care about this particular self-enrichment scheme? Because it could have a profound impact on things like the U.S. dollar, the Federal Reserve and fiscal monetary policy that has been the bedrock of the U.S. and global economies for decades. Which, in turn, could have a massive impact on the consumer economy and the pocketbooks of millions of Americans.
Trump’s administration has used nearly everything in its economic policy arsenal to promote Bitcoin and crypto. Now, he is using his White House office to promote a financial scheme that could impact the faith in the U.S. economic system to pump a cryptocurrency that could make him wealthier.
MAGA world loves this sort of stuff by Trump—and will almost certainly champion this move. The reason is that anyone can speculate on Bitcoin now. If the price of Bitcoin keeps rising, Trump’s crypto bros will make gobs of money.
And if Bitcoin keeps rising, Trump’s media company, Truth Social, will make gobs of money on it. Which is almost certainly why Truth Social’s parent company has become a crypto holding company rather than remaining a media company.
Trump, as president, has the power and the authority to sign executive orders, request an increase in federal agency budgets, and make public statements that could be designed to increase the price of Bitcoin keeps rising, generating hundreds of millions of dollars of profit for the company he controls.
One of Trump’s very first moves, just a few days after his inauguration, was to repeal an effort by President Joe Biden to protect consumers, investors, and businesses from the financial risks of cryptocurrency.
Trump’s Jan. 23 executive order—Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology—was paired with a White House working group created by David Sacks, a venture capitalist and crypto investor who joined the White House as a special adviser.
The Trump administration also has a number of schemes in the works designed to keep pumping crypto: killing off the SEC’s ability to regulate crypto by moving it to another federal agency; making it easier for 401(k) retirement plans to invest in crypto; potentially reducing capital gains taxes on crypto; and creating a crypto reserve.
In short, Trump’s economic and financial team has continued to make move after move in the past six months to pump crypto, including Bitcoin. And it’s worked.
Now, if Bitcoin keeps rising, thanks to the promotional efforts by his administration, the president could be personally enriched by potentially hundreds of millions of dollars—the end result of the move by Truth Social’s holding company to acquire $2 billion in Bitcoin.
That isn’t a free market (which was at one time a north star for the Republican Party). It is, by longtime GOP billionaire donor Charles Koch’s definition, the hallmark of “crony capitalism.”
Which is basically the point—and something we shouldn’t forget.
Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet departments or agencies under four presidents.
You’re absolutely right! If anyone else was doing the same they would be in major trouble. It should not be any different for the president. If accepting gifts from foreign governments and enriching yourself with crypto isn’t an impeachable offense then what is. We’ve allowed Clarence Thomas to accept expensive gifts without consequences so when should this corruption end and with whom?
Of course you're right, and it's not just the crypto. It's his new golf course, all of the kitsch and stuff he's been selling from hats to shoes to bibles to phones, to heaven knows what else, and then there's that damned airplane. Why has the Emoluments Clause never been visited? We aren't accepting, but what can we do about it? What is anybody doing about it? Feeling more than a little bit helpless at this point. Can we do any more than complain, and if so, what? The man is cuckoo, but his toady cabinet won't invoke the 25th Amendment, and don't look to the complicit House of Representatives to mount impeachment proceedings. Congress wouldn't deal with it any better or different than they did the last two times. Hoping for a change in majority with the 2026 midterm elections. Without that, it's almost certain that nothing will happen.