Worth a Read: Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption

“I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere.”

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In this week’s Worth a Read, which you can find below, Meaghan walks you through a damning report about how President Trump is using his office to enrich himself and his family via the cryptocurrency industry. But articles like this are just one piece of what Democracy News provides readers each week.

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Worth a Read: Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption

If you’re not an investor or a fin-tech news junkie, cryptocurrency may be one of those subjects that seems impenetrably opaque or, as President Trump once hailed it, just “a scam.” There have been plenty of headlines about the Trump family enriching themselves by the billions with cryptocurrency. None of those dispatches has struck me as quite as clear as the new report just published by the office of U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin (D, MD-08), who has earned a reputation for his effectiveness when fighting back against President Trump and his band of oligarchs.

The report, Trump, Crypto, and A New Age of Corruption, lays out the myriad ways President Trump has “embarked on a single-minded, brazen campaign to pump the cryptocurrency industry in which he is now a key player.” Best of all, the report presents Trump’s crypto grift with a clarity, precision, and directness that passes George Orwell’s test for good, honest political writing, which means that it makes the crypto corruption understandable, and I genuinely recommend that you read it.

President Trump has profited wildly from cryptocurrency during his second term:

• “According to Reuters, the Trump family raked in more than $800 million in income from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone.”

• “Some estimates put the value of Trump’s crypto holdings as high as $11.6 billion.”

Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption breaks down the grift:

• “President Trump and his family have been pocketing billions of dollars through corruption of unprecedented scale. This report shows how the President has leveraged his office to make himself a crypto billionaire and how he has extended broad protection to fraudsters, scam artists, and other online criminals — who, in turn, repay the President and his family with millions of dollars in tribute.”

• “Perhaps most troublingly, these crypto ventures allow anyone — including foreign governments, organized crime groups, corporate interests, and criminals seeking pardons and persons seeking government contracts, appointments, or other presidential favors — to secretly place huge sums of money directly into the President’s pockets.”

• “[President Trump] has built this wealth from the Oval Office by steering investment to his family firm, shielding his investors from federal fraud and securities investigations and prosecutions, bilking his political base, and degrading the federal agencies ordinarily responsible for investigating bribery and tracking known bad actors online.”

• “[President Trump’s] ability to accumulate billions of dollars in cryptocurrency in less than a year implicates glaring weaknesses in our campaign finance system, conflict-of-interest and lobbying laws, and bribery statutes.”

• “Due to the anonymous nature of crypto transactions and the lax regulations governing the industry and financial regulators, Members of Congress and the public interested in conducting oversight are largely unaware of who exactly has invested in the Trump family’s crypto ventures.”

A New Pay-to-Play System:

• According to the report, the Trump Administration opened the door for the Trump family to enrich themselves – and their political donors and allies – in three big ways:

• Eliminating crypto investor protections;

• Dismissing enforcement actions; and

• Undermining the Department of Justice, the Security Exchange Commission, and other federal agencies responsible for tracking the crypto industry.

• President Trump has raised tens of millions of dollars from the crypto industry.

• “President Trump’s SEC and DOJ, in turn, have dismissed a number of lawsuits and investigations brought by the federal government against cryptocurrency companies that have supported President Trump politically and financially.”

• President Trump has also pardoned a major crypto business executive, Changpeng Zhao, soon after he shilled for Trump’s crypto business.

• President Trump’s administration is rapidly changing crypto policy and is killing ongoing enforcement against crypto industry players, “many of whom have donated to him or invested in his ventures.”

One expert cited in Trump, Crypto, and a New Age of Corruption said, “I have never seen such open corruption in any modern government anywhere.” And by the end of the report, that’s not hard to believe. You can catch yourself up on all the layers of Trump’s crypto scams here.