Why Eric Trump is leading the Trump family’s massive bet on crypto

Eric, once the self-touted "bricks-and-mortar man," still oversees 25 Trump Organization property ventures from golf courses to hotels.

Eric Trump traces his move to crypto back to 2021, when America's biggest banks abruptly severed relationships with the Trump Organization after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Dozens of accounts were terminated, forcing the family to shower funds on regional banks before finding new partners.

For Eric, it was a lesson in exposure. He came to believe that banks could "weaponize" access to banking services against individuals for political reasons.

This experience, which conservatives have called "debanking," led him to explore crypto as an alternative system in which banks did not have dominance over access to money, the Wall Street Journal said.

Building a digital empire

By 2025, Eric had spearheaded the Trump family's entry into crypto. Their flagship company, World Liberty Financial, is valued at $4.5 billion and has issued its own token, WLFI, and dollar-backed stablecoin. Even listed companies have invested money into these companies, and Eric himself joined the board of crypto-payments firm ALT5 Sigma after it raised $1.5 billion in WLFI tokens. At the same time, he co-founded American Bitcoin, a mining firm that entered into agreements with players in the space like Hut 8. All these actions show the Trumps' attempt to plant themselves as major players in the space.

The political alignment

This rapid growth occurs at the same time when President Donald Trump's second-term agenda is relaxing regulations on the crypto space. Regulators have been told to check whether the banks are discriminating on political grounds or by religion, and some enforcement of financial regulation has been cut back. The critics contend the overlap between the president's decisions and his family's investments is a profound conflict of interest. Norm Eisen, who was once an ethics official in the White House, characterized it as "the essence of corruption." But the allegations have been dismissed by the administration, with officials insisting that the family business is separate from governing.

The $TRUMP memecoin phenomenon

One of the most controversial efforts has been the $TRUMP memecoin, which was introduced just days after Trump returned to the White House. At its high, the token had a market capitalization of nearly $15 billion, only to fall to some $1.7 billion. While even seasoned crypto traders constantly scoff at memecoins, Eric defends them as on-ramps to be taken seriously for retail investors. He argues buying a memecoin can be the "first step" in exploring deeper into more traditional assets like bitcoin and Ethereum, and thus viral tokens are an on-ramp to broader financial literacy.

A personal makeover

Eric, once the self-touted "bricks-and-mortar man," still oversees 25 Trump Organization property ventures from golf courses to hotels. But now he divides his attention between hard assets and soft ones. Friends and counselors say his enthusiasm is genuine: he's read technical white papers, attended conferences as far afield as Abu Dhabi to Dubai, and become investor and evangelist. His Trump Tower office is still filled with reminders of the family real estate wealth, but his public appearances increasingly focus on virtual wealth.

Foreign investments and scandals

World Liberty Financial and related business have attracted investment from scandal-prone sources, including a $550 million boost from Chinese-born crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who has been the subject of US regulatory scrutiny, and a $100 million boost from a small firm foundation based in the UAE. These relationships raise ethical concerns about global money flows into business tied to the family of the US president. Ethics experts argue that though technically within the law, the appearance confuses the distinction between public power and private business in ways unthinkable before.

A future vision: tokenizing Trump Tower?

Eric Trump envisions a future where real-world assets like towers and golf courses are tokenized, providing access to investment to millions of people worldwide. "Why is it that if I want to finance Trump Tower, I could not tokenize this asset and go to the street and get billions of people all over the world invest in it?" he asked recently. For him, crypto is not only economic freedom but also a political act of rebellion against central control.

Whether the venture pans out visionary or speculative gamble, Eric Trump has bet his future — and most of the family's — on digital currency.