Inside the Trump family’s global crypto cash machine  A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT

Eric Trump, left, Donald Trump Jr., right, and their World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff, behind Don Jr., at the Nasdaq Market in New York in August to celebrate the closing of a deal under which blockchain company Alt5 Sigma raised hundreds of millions of dollars to buy World Liberty Financial tokens, yielding a windfall for the Trump family. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

The U.S. president’s family raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, a Reuters examination found, on top of potentially billions more in unrealized “on paper” gains. Much of that cash has come from foreign sources as Donald Trump's sons have touted their business on an international investor roadshow.

DUBAI - Eric Trump was in Dubai on family business. Meeting with a Chinese businessman and his associates on the sidelines of a cryptocurrency conference in May this year, the son of U.S. President Donald J. Trump ran through his usual talking points about the inefficiency of traditional banks and his own famous father’s run-ins with financiers.

Then came the pitch. Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

To some in that small gathering, the technology Eric Trump’s team described for World Liberty seemed “rudimentary,” the person said. At the time, World Liberty was a fledgling business. It hadn’t yet created the cryptocurrency-based finance platform it promised after its September 2024 launch. It still hasn’t.

Even so, the pitch apparently worked. On June 26, an obscure entity called Aqua1 Foundation, which said it was based in the United Arab Emirates, announced it was buying $100 million of cryptocurrency tokens from World Liberty. It was the single largest known purchase of the so-called WLFI tokens at the time.

The Chinese businessman who met with Eric Trump in Dubai was Guren “Bobby” Zhou, who has executive roles in multiple businesses and who is under investigation in Britain for money laundering, according to that nation’s National Crime Agency and a document filed in an immigration case at London's Royal Courts of Justice.

Zhou did not respond directly to requests for comment for this article. In a statement emailed to Reuters, an entity calling itself Aqua Labs Investment LLC said Zhou was its co-founder and described itself as an Abu Dhabi entity of Aqua1 Foundation. The statement said Aqua1 Foundation’s investment in World Liberty tokens “was a commercial decision consistent with its focus on advancing regulated, scalable digital-asset ecosystems.” Zhou’s relationship to Aqua1 Foundation has not been previously reported.

Aqua1 Foundation did not respond to requests for comment. Nor did Eric Trump.

The Dubai meeting, reported here for the first time, was just one stop on a globetrotting investment roadshow the two elder sons of President Trump – Eric and Donald Trump Jr. – embarked on around the time of their father’s election to a second term. In Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they have been promoting World Liberty and other ventures that funnel investors’ cash to Trump family businesses, known collectively as the Trump Organization.

These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen. They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.

Kathleen Clark, law professor at Washington University

The Trump brothers’ efforts have been a whopping success. In the first half of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources. Of the first-half total, $802 million – more than 90% – came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens.

That $864 million payday represents actual income – cash flowing, free and clear, into Trump family coffers. Reuters’ calculations were reviewed by half a dozen crypto and real estate experts and a certified accountant who has studied the U.S. Internal Revenue Service’s approach to crypto.

The Trumps' first-half crypto income dwarfed what the family earned from its traditional businesses – $33 million from the president’s golf clubs and resorts and $23 million for licensing his name to overseas real estate developers, according to the Reuters estimates. More than half the Trumps’ income – $463 million – came from sales of World Liberty tokens alone, including up to $75 million from Aqua1’s token purchase. On its website, World Liberty says a Trump Organization entity receives 75% of the revenue from the token sales through its association with World Liberty.

The family also made $336 million from sales of a Trump meme coin, $TRUMP, Reuters calculated, using assumptions vetted by five analysts. Due to a lack of transparency in the Trump meme coin business, estimates of income from the coins carry a higher degree of uncertainty than those for WLFI token sales.

The Trumps are minting a trove of hard cash from digital assets backed, so far, by little more than the Trump name. World Liberty tokens, like most crypto products, are registered on digital ledgers called blockchains. But WLFI tokens offer holders little beyond a limited say in the business’s plans, unlike governance tokens for similar projects. And meme coins like the $TRUMP coin are essentially collectibles whose value reflects the popularity of the internet joke, meme or personality associated with them.

World Liberty Financial did not respond directly to requests for comment for this article. In a letter to Reuters, Timothy Parlatore, a lawyer for the company, said: “WLFI tokens are not securities; they are digital assets with real utility, including governance rights that benefit holders as the platform grows.” He also said: “The Alleged Valuation and Income Analysis of WLFI Is Inaccurate and Misleading.”

In a subsequent email, Parlatore declined to provide further specifics on the benefits to holders of World Liberty governance tokens or his critique of the Reuters analysis.

The jump in the Trumps’ income represents “a massive pivot” for the family business, said Carter Davis, an assistant professor of finance at The Ohio State University who has studied cryptocurrency pricing and who reviewed the Reuters calculations. “Even if you go through and you do the most conservative estimate…it's pretty wild that you end up with such a huge fraction of the income coming from crypto.”

‘LEGAL BUT UNETHICAL’

The identities of most buyers of the WLFI tokens are hidden behind opaque “wallet” addresses – the unique identifiers investors use as keys to access and manage their holdings. Among the few major buyers whose identities are known – a mix of foreign and U.S. investors – most have histories of legal and regulatory entanglements related to their business endeavors. And as the Trump brothers’ travels over the past year show, foreign investors have been a major target for token sales.

Reuters interviewed half a dozen foreign crypto entrepreneurs who met with the Trump brothers. Five of them said they sought out the younger Trumps for business opportunities because of their proximity to the 79-year-old president and hopes of cashing in on his political and financial power.

For many other investors, the Trumps' involvement signaled a chance to capitalize on the family’s name. Dorji Rabten’s Seoul-based venture investment firm, Oddiyana Ventures, bought an undisclosed amount of WLFI tokens in January. Rabten said he never met the Trump sons, but the family's involvement was central to his investment. "In the first very moment where we saw the project, we thought it's going to be very huge, obviously, given the fact it's a president's sons taking up that project," Rabten told Reuters in September.

By David Gauthier-Villars, Tom Bergin, Michelle Conlin, Lawrence Delevingne and Tom Wilson  October 28, 202510:00 AM UTCUpdatedOctober 28, 2025