By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 26th, 2024
Trump’s aversion to crypto is directly opposed to the position of the rest of his party.
Donald Trump’s 2023 public financial disclosure has revealed that the former president holds Ethereum (ETH) worth between $250,000 and $500,000. These details were part of a revised financial filing submitted by Trump. The filing outlined various income sources for the Trump family and exceeded over $1.2 billion.
While the document only referenced an item described as a “Cryptocurrency Wallet (Ethereum)”, it did not elaborate on the exact source or content. However, the prevailing opinion suggests that the content may be linked to the president’s sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Possible Source of Ethereum Holding
In December 2022, Donald Trump launched a limited edition NFT collection after exiting the White House. The collection comprised 44,000 digital trading cards that sold at $99 apiece. Each piece showed the president in different poses and outfits. The NFT collection was generally successful selling out within a day and netting over $8.9 million in sales.
Donald Trump is believed to have earned around $298,000 in licensing fees from this NFT adventure. Interestingly, the crypto wallet that received the earnings is held under CIC Digital, the same Trump entity that collected the licensing fees.
Afterward, Trump launched a second edition of NFTs which also sold out, although it did not gather as much traction as the first. Also, former first lady Melania Trump launched an NFT collection. The collection featured several popular images from NASA’s Apollo moon landings into digital pieces, selling them for $75 each.
Is Trump’s Position on Cryptocurrencies Changing?
This development may suggest that Trump’s view of cryptocurrency may be changing. In 2019, the former president tweeted that he was not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Later, former White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci, noted, that Trump himself may not have authored the tweet.
However, in 2021, Trump removed every doubt about his position, labelling the asset class as ‘fake”. Trump said:
“I don’t like it, because it’s another currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world. That’s what I’ve always said.”
Such claims are contrary to the latest findings regarding his Ethereum holdings.
Trump’s aversion to crypto is directly opposed to the position of the rest of his party. Many Republicans in the House and Senate have been responsible for sponsoring new bills to improve regulations in the crypto industry.