London šC For years, Donald J. Trump has followed a simple playbook for making money: He lent his marquee name to a product, a company or a real estate project, often invested little to no money in it, touted it heavily, and waited for the cash to ?pour in. Since mid-2024, when he was campaigning for what would become his second presidential term, Trump and his family have applied the same template to the freewheeling world of cryptocurrency ¡ª with spectacular results.

Reuters set out to determine just how much money the Trumps have made from their four main crypto projects, how much of their own cash they staked on those projects, and how outside investors in those projects have fared. The conclusion: The Trump family has made $2.3 billion from crypto with little-to-no downside risk, while other investors have lost $2.3 billion, including paper losses, as of the end of April. To reach that result, Reuters built on its earlier work on the Trumps¡¯ crypto money-making machine, examining thousands of pages of corporate filings and statements and interviewing more than a dozen crypto consultants and academics and 27 individual investors.

Startup costs for the Trumps¡¯ largest crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, and the $TRUMP meme coin project probably came in at less than $1 million ¡ª and possibly much less ¡ª to cover developing code, building a website and legal ?expenses, according to two professors of finance, one law professor and four industry consultants. ¡°It¡¯s just small amounts,¡± said Seoyoung Kim, associate professor of finance at Santa Clara University, adding that the outlay could have been nothing if developers and advisers were paid in tokens rather than cash.