The updated count of Trump supporters who have become cryptocurrency investors is now available. And for them, the overall results are remarkably bad.
Nearly one million people who bought the cryptocurrency created by President Trump lost money through the end of June, according to a report from cryptocurrency analysis firm Nansen. Its losses amount to a total of 3.81 billion dollars.
The analytics firm’s assessment was calculated this week after Mr. Trump signed an annual financial statement showing he earned a $636 million payout for the same cryptocurrency bet, part of a haul of at least $2.2 billion from all of his companies in 2025.
The odds were always in his favor. Mr. Trump made profits regardless of whether the price of his memecoin rose or fell. He received profits every time someone traded the tokens, as he repeatedly urged his followers to do, using his Truth Social account to promote the coin.
After being skeptical of cryptocurrencies, Mr. Trump took advantage of the opportunity to profit from digital currencies in 2024, during his presidential campaign. Together with his children, he founded a cryptocurrency startup called World Liberty Financial, which soon began selling a coin called $WLFI, whose value has also fallen sharply.
Three days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump unveiled a second Trump-branded investment: the meme cryptocurrency $TRUMP, a type of novelty currency with little practical value.
“It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “Join my special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!” But it turned out to be bad advice.
Most cryptocurrency transactions are public and recorded on a digital ledger called a blockchain. This allows analysts to track digital currency purchases from individual accounts, known as wallets. Nansen’s data shows that, as of the end of June, 988,905 buyers of the $TRUMP meme cryptocurrency had lost money, representing roughly two in three buyers.
In total, these 988,905 portfolios have lost $3.81 billion, including buyers who kept their funds and recorded paper losses, according to Nansen. On Friday, the cryptocurrency was trading at $1.76, down 97% from its peak price of $75.35.
Nicholas Pinto is among the losers. Pinto, a regular cryptocurrency investor who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024, claimed to have invested a total of approximately $500,000 in the $TRUMP cryptocurrency, and has now lost about half of that investment.
“He is taking advantage of the power that the presidency confers on him to flip coins, when he appears trustworthy to the public,” Mr. Pinto said in an interview. “It’s incredible. It could almost be considered a legal scam.”
The White House last week rejected any suggestion that Mr. Trump has enriched himself at the expense of his supporters. Since arriving at the White House, Mr. Trump and his appointees have reduced regulatory oversight of the sector, including policies related to cryptocurrencies.
“President Trump is proud to have made the United States the cryptocurrency capital of the world,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement to The New York Times following the release of Mr. Trump’s annual report on Tuesday. “All actions by President Trump and his administration are in the best interest of the American people.”
A representative for the meme cryptocurrency project $TRUMP did not respond to a request for comment. David Wachsman, spokesperson for World Liberty, attributed the drop in the value of $WLFI to general market conditions, which have caused a decline in the prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“No one can control the markets,” he said. “World Liberty supports the WLFI governance token, which has demonstrated increasing utility in an expanding ecosystem since day one.”
Mr. Trump was not the only winner with the $TRUMP cryptocurrency. Upon its launch, its price skyrocketed from less than $1 to over $70, creating an opportunity for more experienced cryptocurrency traders to make big profits.
These advanced traders, who often use automated programs to buy cryptocurrencies, know that memecoins often skyrocket in value and then crash as early buyers sell their holdings to less sophisticated, slower investors hoping to get in on the bidding.
According to Nansen, just under 500,000 cryptocurrency wallets have seen profits thanks to $TRUMP, totaling $4 billion. However, that figure “reflects that a small number of initial buyers made huge profits, while the vast majority of retail investors absorbed the losses,” the report notes.
The meme-based cryptocurrency was just one of several cryptocurrency-related initiatives that generated profits for Mr. Trump and his allies.
According to his financial disclosure, Mr. Trump’s total earnings from World Liberty reached $799 million last year, including hundreds of millions from the United Arab Emirates, which secretly acquired nearly half of the company in early 2025. A Trump business entity also pocketed 75% of $WLFI sales, after deducting certain expenses, guaranteeing that Mr. Trump would make a profit even if the cryptocurrency’s price ultimately crashed.
World Liberty currency losses are harder to trace. Initially, the company sold the coin directly to investors, at prices of $0.015 or $0.05, according to Nansen.
Nansen found that anyone who bought the coin at $0.05 made a small profit. However, WLFI did not become widely available until September, when it began trading on secondary markets, known as exchanges.
Not all of those transactions are publicly traceable. Of the 26,663 wallets Nansen tracked, 85 percent recorded losses. Total losses amount to $83 million, compared to $23 million in profits.
But this is likely to represent only a small part of the total losses, as the other buyers purchased the coins on exchanges whose data is not public. Today, the World Liberty coin is trading at $0.057, down 82% from September.
Despite the price crash, Mr. Trump has faced few consequences from his investments because federal regulators have largely abandoned enforcement of cryptocurrency law.
Stephen Gillers, a professor of law and legal ethics at New York University, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Trump and his associates eventually faced a class-action lawsuit from supporters who lost money, even though the Securities and Exchange Commission announced in February 2025 that it would no longer scrutinize memecoin transactions.
Cryptocurrency website $TRUMP warned buyers against considering the token as an investment vehicle. “Trump memes are designed to express support and commitment to the ideals and beliefs represented by the “$TRUMP” symbol and associated artwork, and are not intended to be, or be the subject of, an investment opportunity,” the website states.
But Mr. Gillers said this revelation likely will not be enough to stop future legal challenges, even if they have to wait until after Mr. Trump leaves office.
“When Trump was a real estate developer, he boasted that he ‘played with people’s fantasies,’” Mr. Gillers said. “Here he seems to have encouraged his followers to invest with the expectation of getting rich, even while he himself made huge profits.”
