4 June 2025

Trump’s crypto empire is a brazen hustle

It won’t be the president emptying his bank account to buy meme coins.

That Donald Trump has turned his second presidency into a personal enrichment scheme is not exactly surprising. What has been unexpected, however, is one of the avenues he is using for that brazen accumulation: cryptocurrency and meme coins. The president is engaging in what many financial experts say is a scam industry, more akin to a pyramid scheme than a real currency. The Trump family’s net worth has increased by an estimated $3bn thanks to various crypto schemes and investments.

One overlooked aspect of the Maga movement is that while Trump is its leader, he is almost as influenced by its minions as they are by him. The degree to which Maga devotees seem willing to blindly follow Trump is more reminiscent of a cult than a political movement (one Maga diehard told the New York Times that he wasn’t bothered by Trump’s tariffs crashing the economy because he would “eat a rat” for the president if he had to). But Trump also shape shifts according to what his followers seem to want. Do we really believe that this president, who seems happiest surrounded by billionaires on the golf course, has harboured a long-held passion for MMA fighting? Do we believe that a man whose favourite songs are “Ave Maria” and “YMCA” truly appreciates the musical stylings of Kid Rock? Of course not. But he likes power and he likes money. And by embracing the cultural preferences of his working-class base, he secures their fealty and adoration.

This loyalty is particularly useful to Trump when he can profit from it. The Trump family’s crypto schemes are now multiple, including a crypto exchange and meme coins. These funnel money directly into their pockets, beyond the reach of campaign finance laws. A recent dinner hosted by Trump, for which invitees were chosen based on how much of the $TRUMP meme coin they purchased, was seen as such a blatant attempt to use the presidency as a piggy-bank that a congressional Democrat opened an investigation. But the constitutional mechanism to deal with this kind of behaviour is impeachment. And with Republicans controlling Congress, that’s not going to happen.

There is something particularly American about all of this. For much of the country, the real American dream is less of hard, steady work and more getting rich quick. One in eight buy a lottery ticket at least every week. The proliferation of casinos, especially as revenue generators for Native American communities, has fed the country’s gambling addiction (casinos are another tool Trump has long used to enrich himself). The legalisation of sports betting has also sent problematic gambling into overdrive. Thanks to the smartphone, millions can bet on sporting events 24 hours a day from devices designed to capture attention and not let go. One research paper found that legalising sports betting has translated to a 25-30 per cent increase in bankruptcy rates. Young men in low-income areas are most likely to face financial ruin due to gambling.

It is perhaps not surprising that get-rich-quick schemes like gambling, sports betting and crypto seem to appeal primarily to isolated, uneducated young men. In contrast, the now female-dominated sphere of multi-level marketing businesses – which work not by gambling one’s resources but by pulling in others to sell the same products, giving you a cut of the proceeds and encouraging your new partners’ own underlings to do the same – create a structure that resembles a pyramid.

These companies have thrived in religious communities where many women don’t have full-time jobs and social ties are deep. The schemes seemingly most appealing to young men don’t require having friends at all – just a phone and a dream. Many don’t have attractive financial prospects, yet live in a culture that still ties masculine value to earning power. It’s notable that one of the men helming Trump’s crypto empire has described the industry thus: “This space is run by a bunch of middle-aged men, you know, like, the mid-30-year-old men who understand the power of social media. And you can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for $1bn if the story is right, because people will buy it. And that is what is going on in the crypto space.”

A long-animating question in American politics is to what degree the government should protect people from themselves. How much should we regulate vice? What rules should govern risky financial endeavours? Young men, for reasons both cultural and biological, are typically history’s greatest risk-takers. Sometimes this brings a small number fame and fortune. More often it brings ruin. Now, the world’s crypto bros have an American president who claims not just to be advocating for them but to be one of them. Except he won’t offer any protection from magical thinking, and he certainly isn’t the guy emptying his own bank account to buy virtual coins with cartoon dogs on them. He is, instead, a man who sees an opportunity to exploit others’ naivety and penchant for risk-taking in order to profit handsomely, with little to no risk to himself. A man who we might say is inordinately talented at selling shit in a can.