Public Citizen says Trump crypto ventures left investors $4.7B underwater

Investors in crypto schemes launched by the Trump family have lost more than $4.7 billion. A report published by the watchdog organization Public Citizen on Thursday made the big revelations. This comes in when President Trump has made calls to the Senate to pass crypto market structure legislation next month.

Trump memecoin leaves investors with $3.2B in losses

Official Trump (TRUMP) was the main source of the loss, being the meme coin that the president unveiled on the third day prior to starting his second presidential tenure. As highlighted in the report by Public Citizen, the loss of $3.2 billion came from the meme coin. In a matter of two days from its launch, the token reached a trading price above $73, only to fall later. It is currently valued below $2, reports Cointelegraph and Raw Story.

Public Citizen reported that the losses of $3.2 billion are not lost funds but wealth that was shifted to a few individuals who invested initially. Data shows that 1% of wallets held 80% of gains, while 65% are below water in terms of losses totaling $3.2 billion.

President Trump never lost any money in this scheme. He neither made an investment nor spent any cash on his wallet that is valued at $271 million. On top of that, he earned $635 million in licensing fees from the token last year, as reported by Raw Story.

Governance tokens, trading cards, and a stablecoin that held

World Liberty Financial’s governance token, which is connected to the project established by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., is worth at least another $1 billion in total losses. The price peaked at $0.33 in September 2025 and is now trading below $0.06. According to Public Citizen, private purchasers who bought in at $0.015 or $0.05 are up by 15% to 283%, while public market purchasers who bought near the peak may be down 83%.

Trump’s 2022 NFT trading cards that were issued at $99 apiece offer an example of how things went wrong: the overall value decreased from $12.3 million to $3 million, thus leaving holders nearly $9.3 million in the red. However, Trump got $7.2 million in licensing fees and royalties on the trading cards.

One item managed to survive. Public Citizen says that “buyers of World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin haven’t suffered major losses.”

What did Trump earn while investors lost?

The report sums up the amount that the former president has earned through those projects. $7.2 million through NFT trading cards, $600 million-plus from World Liberty token sales and equity position, $635 million from memecoin licensing fees, and $197 million in capital contributions to World Liberty. Some of these amounts were reported in Trump’s 2025 crypto-related earnings totaling $1.4 billion. These numbers do not account for his equity positions in the companies.

The White House did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Cointelegraph. Spokesperson Anna Kelly stated previously that there “were no conflicts of interest” regarding Trump’s crypto assets.

Zach Everson, research director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project and the report’s author, urged critics not to mock those who bought in. “Trust me, I get the desire to sneer,” he wrote in a Thursday post, before arguing that buyers “got screwed over nevertheless.”

Public Citizen used the findings to renew its call for ethics provisions in the Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act, arguing that “the president’s policy choices and personal portfolio cannot be separated” and that any market-structure law should force a sitting president and his family to divest from the industry.

The timing is deliberate. Trump met with crypto executives last week and called for a “fair version” of the CLARITY Act to pass once the Senate reconvenes. The bill faces a cloture vote on September 15 and needs at least 60 senators to move forward.