Donald Trump earned more than $2.2bn in 2025, nearly quadrupling his 2024 business income, with the bulk coming from cryptocurrency ventures that rely heavily on government regulation, according to financial disclosures released Tuesday.
Staggering income from crypto and businesses
The president's personal income in 2025 was $2.2bn, a dramatic increase from his private-sector earnings the previous year. Most of this gain came from the $Trump memecoin and other crypto-related activities, a space that depends almost entirely on how it is regulated by the government, experts said.
Jordan Libowitz, vice-president of communications for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), described the haul as staggering. “In the first term, Donald Trump was bringing in a shocking amount of money, but it all seems small potatoes compared to the amount of money he is bringing in now,” he said.
Libowitz noted that revenue at Mar-a-Lago jumped from $10m during Trump's first term to $77m now, and millions more came from transaction fees for the $Trump memecoin. “This is only a snapshot and a partial look, because he’s the only president elected since Nixon not to release his tax returns,” he added. “We’re only getting a part of the story here.”
Comparison to presidential salary
The disclosures reveal that Trump earned the equivalent of about $200 per hour as president during a 40-hour work week, while his private businesses brought in about $1.1m per hour during the same period. Unlike his real estate ventures, where income often reflects increasing asset values, much of the crypto income comes from trading digital assets for cash or pocketing investment returns.
Molly White, a cryptocurrency researcher and anticorruption activist, said most of the reported income is cash from licensing agreements and trading fees. “There’s certainly some of it that is crypto-denominated, but for example, all this meme coin revenue is denominated in dollars, not Trump coin,” she said.
Conflict of interest concerns
Trump founded World Liberty Financial with his children just three days before re-entering office in January 2025. One transaction that raised alarm was a half-billion dollar investment by the United Arab Emirates, buying a 49% stake in the firm. Months later, Trump authorized the sale of artificial intelligence chip technology to the UAE, despite national security concerns.
“I think that is one of the most glaring conflicts of interest that is visible on this balance sheet,” White said.
Public numbness to grifting
Both Libowitz and White said the lack of greater outrage reflects a public that has become numb to Trump's behavior. “The general populace accepts at this point that he is corrupt, will be making money any way he can, and the government will let him do so,” Libowitz said. “So I think people have just kind of accepted this is what’s going to happen.”
He added that the numbers “should seem more shocking to people, but when you get down to it, it was already so much money that it’s just a number on a page. It’s hard for an average American who’s struggling to pay for gas and for groceries to contemplate the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars.”
White pointed to “a steady drumbeat of controversy” during Trump’s second term. “Every day there’s at least one headline that would be jaw-dropping in other circumstances, and people have just become kind of numb to it,” she said. “I think people just at this point have sort of thrown up their hands and say Trump’s a grifter – of course he’s grifting, that’s what he does. And that sort of dampens any outcry.”
