Trump defends billion-dollar crypto windfall while in office

Donald Trump said in a CNBC interview that there was “nothing illegal” about earning more than one billion dollars from cryptocurrency ventures while in office, after new financial disclosures highlighted the scale of his income, according to The Independent. The paper reports that the disclosures cover earnings tied to his family’s crypto businesses, alongside other income streams such as Mar-a-Lago, which has become a regular venue for donors and executives seeking access.

The episode lands as Washington debates how to regulate digital assets while the sitting president’s family benefits from them. The Independent describes critics accusing Trump of influence trading through family crypto operations, an allegation Trump and the Trump Organization deny. Trump has said his assets are held in a trust managed by his children and independent financial institutions, and claimed he does not know who his money managers are.

The disclosures and surrounding reporting also sketch how private deals can intersect with public policy. The Independent says the Trump family sold a large stake in one crypto business shortly before Trump took office to an Abu Dhabi royal, and that one of the royal’s firms later used a Trump-branded crypto coin in a separate deal. The same Abu Dhabi figure, the paper reports, was involved in negotiations with the Trump administration over access to advanced AI chips for the UAE.

At the same time, The Independent writes that Trump has shifted from earlier skepticism to courting the industry, with crypto companies among the most influential donors during the 2024 campaign. In office, he has prioritized scaling back crypto prosecutions, and has pushed for a national Bitcoin stockpile, while also moving to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That combination—policy discretion over enforcement, and a family brand active in the market—creates a familiar problem for regulators: decisions that move prices and business models are made by people who can plausibly claim distance from the transactions that profit.

The Independent notes that Mar-a-Lago’s initiation fee was raised ahead of Trump’s reelection and that fundraising events there have reached one million dollars per plate. In the disclosures, the paper says, the president’s personal income and the political economy of access appear in the same documents.

Trump’s defense rests on legality and formal separation. The disclosures, and the dealmaking around them, show how valuable that separation can be.