Reuters: Trump Cryptocurrency Token May Have Generated $100 Million in Trading Fees

Reuters reported Monday that the entities behind U.S. President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency token "generated between $86 million and $100 million in trading fees"

Entities behind U.S. President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency token generated tens of millions of dollars in trading fees, according to a report.

The tokens, announced by Trump on the Friday night of the first-ever Crypto Ball in Washington, D.C., ahead of his Monday inauguration, saw three crypto wallets earning $86 million in trading fees from January 17 to January 30, Merkle Science estimated.

Chainalysis put it at about $94 million for the same period, while a third blockchain analytics firm, whose founder requested that it not be identified, found that by January 29, it was roughly $100 million, according to the report.

Responding to the reporting on the social media platform Bluesky, an account called Trumpflation Tracker declared that "Trump and his cronies get rich while the little guy gets fucked, same story different year."

Software engineer Jonathan McHugh similarly said, "His entire life is one giant grift, most often of people who can least afford it."

Rodrigo Fernandez, a senior researcher at the Amsterdam-based Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), said that "the conflict of interest if obvious—but he managed to flood the zone to such an extend that this detail will go unnoticed."

The White House did not address Reuters' questions about the trading fees; instead, it sent a fact sheet about Trump's executive order on digital financial technology.

The news agency noted that the president "has pledged to put his assets in a trust managed by his children on entering the White House" and his son Eric Trump did respond on behalf of the Trump Organization.

Eric Trump told Reuters that he is proud of what "we continue to accomplish in crypto. $TRUMP is currently the hottest digital meme on Earth."

Echoing his previous comments on the coin, the president's son added that "we are just getting started."

Late last month, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich wrote about the $TRUMP coin — as well as the first lady's $MELANIA coin that soon followed — and tied both to the president's related executive order "protecting and promoting" the crypto industry.

"In effect, Trump is writing the rules for a business venture from which he and his family are personally profiting. It could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars," he stressed. "The real significance of such blatant profiteering off the highest office in the land is what it reveals—not just about Trump but about the entire oligarchic enterprise he fronts for. It is likely to contribute to a vast wave of public alarm and disgust."